Ōshima Ken'ichi

Ōshima (center) with Tanaka Giichi (left) and Uehara Yūsaku (right), around August 1, 1918

Ōshima Ken'ichi ( Japanese 大 島 健 一 ; born June 19, 1858 in Iwamura-han , Mino Province , Japan ; † March 24, 1947 ) was a lieutenant general of the Imperial Japanese Army and a politician.

Life

Ōshima Ken'ichi was established in June 1858 Iwamura- han in the province of Mino, a part of today's Gifu Prefecture , was born. In 1881 he graduated from the fourth year of the Army Officer's School with, among others, Oka Ichinosuke . There he had specialized in serving in the artillery . From 1891 to 1893 he was sent to the German Empire and France as a military attaché for further studies .

During the First Sino-Japanese War he was Chief of Staff of the 1st Army under Yamagata Aritomo . In the Russo-Japanese War he served in the Imperial Headquarters and subsequently served in various administrative and staff positions in the Army General Staff . In 1907 he was promoted to major general and six years later, in 1913, to lieutenant general.

On March 30, 1916, he succeeded Oka Ichinosuke, who had resigned for health reasons, as Minister of the Army in Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu's second cabinet . After the cabinet was dissolved on October 9 of the same year, he held the same post in Terauchi Masatake's cabinet until it was dissolved on September 29, 1918.

In the following year he was transferred to the Führerreserve and from 1920 took a seat in the upper house of the Japanese parliament . From 1940 to 1946 he also had a seat on the Japanese Privy Council .

His son Ōshima Hiroshi was also a lieutenant general in the Japanese army and Japanese ambassador to the German Empire during World War II .

literature

• Meirion Harries: Soldiers of the Sun. The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Random House, 1994, ISBN 0-679-75303-6 .

Web links

Commons : Ōshima Ken'ichi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Ōshima is the family name, Ken'ichi the first name.