Hirota Kōki

Hirota Kōki

Hirota Kōki delivering his death sentence

Hirota Kōki ( Japanese 広 田 弘毅 ; * February 14, 1878 ; † December 23, 1948 in Sugamo Prison ) was a Japanese politician and 32nd Prime Minister of Japan from March 9, 1936 to February 2, 1937.

Life

Hirota Kōki was born in Fukuoka Prefecture. He completed his law studies at the Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku , the Imperial University of Tokyo. He entered the Japanese Foreign Ministry to pursue a career as a diplomat. From 1928 to 1932 he was the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union . In 1933 he became foreign minister shortly after Japan left the League of Nations .

As a result of the coup attempt of February 26, 1936 , Hirota Kōki was made Prime Minister by the militarist faction in the Japanese government. At this point, various great powers (notably the Soviet Union) began to question the views of the Japanese government and, in particular, its demands for national security. Hirota's government signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with the German Empire with the approval of the military . During his tenure as Prime Minister, the influence of the Japanese military on the country's politics continued to grow. On February 2, 1937, Kōki was replaced by Hayashi Senjūrō at the instigation of the Japanese military ; this was followed after four months by Hayashi Senjūrō. He became foreign minister in Konoe Fumimaro's cabinet .

Because he hated the war that Japan was waging in China , he was forced to resign by the Japanese military in 1938 . In 1945 he worked again as a diplomat when he tried in vain to dissuade the Soviet Union from entering the war against Japan. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and immediately began Operation August Storm , the invasion of Manchukuo , the Japanese-occupied Manchuria .

The crimes that were committed during his second term as foreign minister by the Japanese military, were among the main reasons why Hirota Kōki was indicted in the Tokyo Trials (1946-1948). At the end of 1937, Japanese troops marched into Nanjing and carried out the Nanking massacre. Hirota was not notified of the start of the attack on Nanjing, but had received information from the Japanese military about the ongoing killing of a total of 300,000 people in the city. After the end of the Second World War , he was accused of having done nothing against the perpetration of the crimes at that time.

Kōki did not defend himself against the allegations made; he was the only civilian classified as a Class A war criminal and sentenced to death by hanging . The sentence was carried out on December 23, 1948. This death sentence was criticized as being too harsh because it was viewed as powerless within the military-ruled government.

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Hirota Kōki . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 541-
• Hunter, Janet: Hirota Kōki . In: Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History. Kodansha International, 1984. ISBN 4-7700-1193-8 .

Web links

Commons : Hirota Kōki  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Exhibition of the Japanese parliamentary library with portraits and short biographies of important Japanese personalities of the modern age (English and Japanese)
• Newspaper article about Hirota Kōki in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Hunter: Hirota Kōki .

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