Arita Hachirō

Arita Hachirō

Arita Hachirō ( Japanese 有 田 八郎 ; born September 21, 1884 in Mano , Sado County (today: Sado ), Niigata Prefecture as 山 本 八郎 , Yamamoto Hachirō ; † March 4, 1965 in Tokyo Prefecture ) was a Japanese diplomat and politician . Between 1936 and 1940 he was Japanese Foreign Minister four times.

Life

Arita was born into the Yamamoto family and adopted by the Arita family; his biological older brother was the future Rikken-Seiyūkai MP and Minister Yamamoto Teijirō .

In 1909, after completing his studies at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Arita became an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1919 he was part of the Japanese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference . Under Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi (1927-29), who was also Foreign Minister, Arita was appointed head of the Asia Department in the Foreign Ministry. In 1930 he became Minister ( kōshi ) in Austria , in 1932 State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry ( gaimu jikan ), and a year later Ambassador to Belgium . Before the Second World War he belonged to the "Asia faction" in the State Department, which opposed cooperation with the European powers or the United States. In the reign of Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro , Arita promoted the idea of ​​a "Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere" . He opposed the three-power pact with Germany and Italy to the end.

In 1936, Hirota Kōki first appointed Arita to the cabinet as Foreign Minister. During his first term in office, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with the German Empire . Under Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro he was again (until 1939) foreign minister in 1938 and taken over by Hiranuma Kiichirō in 1939 . He lost this post under Abe Nobuyuki , but was made foreign minister for the fourth and last time under Prime Minister Yonai Mitsumasa in 1940 .

In 1938 he was appointed a member of the Herrenhaus .

Return as a politician on the left

After the war, Arita was initially excluded from public office by the occupation administration . After the ban on office was lifted, he returned to politics as a progressive politician, reversing his earlier views. Arita rejected the rearmament of Japan (in the form of the self-defense forces ).

In 1953, Arita was elected to the Shūgiin in his home constituency Niigata 1 . In 1955 as an independent and in 1959 as a candidate for the Socialist Party of Japan , he stood in the gubernatorial election in Tokyo , but received only the second highest share of the vote.

In 1961 he sued Mishima Yukio for a violation of his privacy in the novel Utage no ato ( 宴 の 後 ). Arita won justice in Tokyo District Court three years later . He was awarded 800,000 yen in compensation.

Works

• 1939: Japan's Diplomacy, Japan Times & Mail, 1939. Published in: Japanese propaganda: selected readings, series 2: pamphlets, 1891–1939. Volume 6: Retreat from internationalism. 1932-1939. Peter O'Connor (Ed.), Tokyo 2005. ISBN 1-901903-92-3 >
• 1959: 馬鹿 八 と 人 は 言 う - 外交官 の 回想 ( bakahachi to hito wa iu - gaikōkan no kaisō ), Kōwadō Verlag, ISBN 4-8433-0682-7

Web links

• Newspaper article about Arita Hachirō in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Arita is the family name, Hachirō the first name.