Asō Takakichi

Asō Takakichi (left) and his father-in-law, former Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru , on February 9, 1955.

Asō Takakichi ( Japanese 麻 生 太 賀 吉 ; born September 29, 1911 in Iizuka , Fukuoka Prefecture ; † December 2, 1980 ) was a Japanese businessman and politician. He headed the family business KK Asō for over 40 years . Between 1949 and 1955 he was a member of the Shūgiin , the Japanese lower house, for the Liberal Party .

Life

Family and education

Asō was the son of Asō Tarō and grandson of Asō Takichi , a member of the Kizokuin , the Japanese mansion, and founder of the Asō family business , which started out from a coal mine in the manufacture of building materials and also in the railroad and electricity business. His mother Kanō Natsuko was a daughter of Vice Count Kanō Hisayoshi ( 加納 久 宜 ), the last liege of Ichinomiya in the province of Kazusa , member of the Kizokuin, banker and governor of Kagoshima Prefecture . His maternal uncle, Kanō Hisaakira ( 加納 久 朗 ), was the third elected governor of Chiba Prefecture from 1962 to 1963 .

After graduating from Fukuoka Middle School in 1929 - which corresponds to a post-war high school - Asō studied until 1932 at the Faculty of Law and Humanities of the Imperial University of Kyūshū .

Entrepreneurial career

Asō Takakichi joined the family business in 1933 and, after the death of his grandfather, took over the management of the company at the age of 22. He adhered to the nationalist ideology that dominated Japan in the early Shōwa period . Established in 1939 by Asō, Asō- Juku , a private "Paukschule", was intended to educate young people in the spirit of serving the nation through "mind, body and technical skills". Asō quickly adapted his company to the conditions of the war economy and the expansionist-motivated political climate; In January 1940, three years after the war broke out on the mainland, he told his staff:

「わ が 国 で は 労 使 は 一体 で あ る, 労 使 は 同 じ 方向 を 向 い て, 即 ち 共 に 天皇 陛下 の 方 を 向 い て, ... 万一 こ の ご 奉公 の 精神 が 判 ら な い と い う よ う な 方 が あ る な ら ば, そ の 方 は実 に 日本 臣民 と し て 恥 ず べ き 方 で で あ り 、… 」

"In our country, the workforce and management are one, they are turning in the same direction, namely in the direction of the Tennō ... Should anyone not understand the spirit of this duty, this person as a citizen of Japan should be truly ashamed ..."

At the same time, he pursued the vision - widespread among Japanese companies - that the profits generated should not only be used to enrich his family, but also to improve the living standards of workers.

According to historians, the Asō family profited greatly from the forced labor of Koreans and Allied prisoners of war during the Second World War : The Asō group used an estimated 12,000 Koreans and around 300 Allied prisoners of war as forced labor between 1939 and 1945. Of the Koreans, 61.5% were able to avoid recruitment by fleeing - the highest proportion in the region and an indication that the security precautions of the camps did not correspond to those of a prison. Still, conditions in the coal mines were extreme and a police report from January 1944 found 56 deaths. Most workers were never paid for their work or were compensated later. Asō Takakichi and his sons Tarō and Yutaka, who succeeded him in the management, have been criticized by former slave laborers and their relatives for never making a clear apology or for never acknowledging their responsibility. The poor treatment of Korean workers before the outbreak of the war is also publicly discussed by Korean groups. According to research by some local historians, Asō had already begun bringing Korean workers to Kyūshū in the mid-1930s.

After the end of the war, Asō reorganized the group of companies: The industrial activities and the railway from the Sangyō Cement Tetsudō KK and the mining company Asō Kōgyō KK ( 麻 生 鉱 業 株式会社 , Aso Mining Co., Ltd. ) were established in 1954 under his leadership in the Asō Sangyō KK ( 麻 生産 業 株式会社 , Asō Industry Co. Ltd. ). Asō reduced the coal mining and expanded the company's cement production, in 1966 Asō Cement KK was created as an offshoot. At the same time, he promoted the internationalization of business by expanding to Latin America and Africa - his eldest son Tarō drove diamond mining in Sierra Leone for two years before the civil war forced him to retreat. 1973 Asō Takakichi began to retire in favor of Tarōs from the management.

At the same time as his entrepreneurial career, Asō Takakichi became involved in politics.

Political career

During a trip to London, Asō met Yoshida Shigeru , who was ambassador there from 1936 to 1938. A private and political friendship developed between the two, which was strengthened in 1938 by Asō's marriage to Yoshida's daughter Kazuko ( 和 子 ). When Yoshida became the determining figure on the political stage of the post-war period after the establishment of the Liberal Party of Japan and was Prime Minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954 , he also introduced Asō into politics. From the Shūgiin election in 1949 , Asō represented the 2nd constituency of Fukuoka (five mandates), which included northern parts of the prefecture and his hometown Iizuka, for three electoral terms. In 1952 and 1953 he was re-elected as the candidate with the most votes. Although he never received a cabinet post, he was influential through his close relationships with leaders such as Yoshida and Tanaka Kakuei and acted as a point of contact at the interface between politics and industry. After the "Conservative Fusion" in 1955 and Yoshida's withdrawal, Asō also left politics.

progeny

With his wife Kazuko, the daughter of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru and a great-granddaughter of Ōkubo Toshimichi , Asō had six children, some of whom play important roles in public life:

• Taro , his eldest son, initially followed him in the management of the family business and then switched to politics, where he made it to chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and prime minister in 2008 .
• His eldest daughter Setsuko ( 雪 子 ) married Sōma Kazutane ( 相 馬 和 胤 ), the 33rd heir of the Sōma family, the former daimyo family of the Sōma-Nakamura - Han in Mutsu Province (later: Iwaki Province ).
• His second oldest daughter Asako ( 旦 子 ) married the diplomat Arafune Kiyohiko ( 荒 船 清 彦 ), among other things Japanese ambassador to Spain .
• The third oldest son Yutaka ( 泰 ) took over the management of the Asō group of companies from his older brother Tarō.
• The youngest daughter Nobuko ( 信 子 ) married Prince Tomohito von Mikasa , a grandson of Taishō - Tennō and thus cousin of the current Tennō Akihito .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Japan Focus: Bilingual version Japanese & English  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from Japan Times , June 26, 2007, William Underwood: The war according to Aso Co.  
2. ^ William Underwood: The Aso Mining Company in World War II: History and Japan's Would-Be Premier. In: Japan Focus. June 10, 2007, accessed October 18, 2014 . 
3. ^ William Underwood: WWII forced labor issue dogs Aso, Japanese firms. In: The Japan Times. October 28, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
4. ↑ 〈朝鮮 人 強制 連 行 と 麻 生 炭 鉱 - 上 -〉 労 働 争議 に 警察 、 暴力 団 を 動員 . (No longer available online.) In: Joseon Sinbo / Chōsen Shimpō / The People's Korea , Japanese edition. April 5, 2006, archived from the original on September 26, 2008 ; Retrieved December 29, 2008 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Christopher Reed: Family Skeletons: Japan's Foreign Minister and Forced Labor by Koreans and Allied POWs. In: Japan Focus. May 6, 2006, accessed October 18, 2014 . 
6. ↑ ザ ・ 選 挙: 衆議院> 第 27 回 衆議院 議員 選 挙> 福岡 県> 福岡 2 区  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• KK Asō: history of the Asō group of companies on the centenary (Japanese)
• Literature by and about Asō Takakichi in the bibliographic database WorldCat

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