Wakatsuki II cabinet

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The second Wakatsuki cabinet ( Japanese 第 ２ 次 若 槻 内閣 , dai-niji Wakatsuki naikaku ) ruled the Japanese Empire under Prime Minister Baron Wakatsuki Reijirō from April 14 to December 13, 1931.

On April 13, 1931 Wakatsuki succeeded Hamaguchi Osachi as party leader of the (Rikken) Minseitō , who wanted to resign because of his ailing health. A day later, Wakatsuki was appointed Prime Minister by Shōwa -Tennō (during his lifetime: Hirohito ). Most of the ministers were taken over from the previous cabinet . Wakatsuki himself, like Hamaguchi, was a member of the Kizokuin , the noble upper house, but many ministers were members of the Shūgiin , the elected lower house of the Reichstag, for the Minseitō .

The Imperial Army proceeded unauthorized on the mainland and triggered the Manchuria crisis with the Mukden incident in September 1931 ; by the end of 1931 it had conquered large parts of Manchuria. The public and the media supported the military's position against party politicians, and the political position of the Wakatsuki cabinet was so weak that the military ignored its demands for a diplomatic solution in continuation of the " Shidehara diplomacy " without consequences. As in March , nationalist groups around the Sakurakai tried to overthrow the government with a coup in October .

In December 1931, the Wakatsuki cabinet finally resigned as a whole, when demands for cooperation between the two major parties in a “government of national unity” were voiced in the cabinet. The Seiyūkai chairman Inukai Tsuyoshi was appointed as his successor, but he nominated a pure Seiyūkai cabinet. Among other things, Inukai wanted to give up the gold standard - by sticking to it, the Minseitō governments had aggravated the effects of the global economic crisis - and the Seiyūkai also stood for more aggressive foreign policy (" Tanaka diplomacy "), which on the one hand enabled a diplomatic compromise with the Republic of China should, but on the other hand was able to accept the invasion of Manchuria as a created fact in order to prevent a direct takeover of power by the military.

Minister of State

Second Wakatsuki Cabinet - April 14 to December 13, 1931.
Office Surname Chamber (constituency / method) Parliamentary group / party
prime minister Baron Wakatsuki Reijirō Kizokuin (appointment) ? / Minseitō
Foreign minister Baron Shidehara Kijūrō Kizokuin (appointment) Dōwakai / Minseitō
Interior minister Adachi Kenzō Shūgiin ( Kumamoto 2) Minseitō
Finance minister Inoue Junnosuke Kizokuin
Army Minister General Minami Jirō - -
Naval Minister Admiral Abo Kiyokazu - -
Minister of Justice Watanabe Chifuyu Kizokuin (appointment) Kenkyūkai
Minister of Education Tanaka Ryūzō Shūgiin ( Akita 1) Minseitō
Minister for Agriculture and Forests Machida Chūji Shūgiin (Akita 1) Minseitō
Minister for Industry and Trade Sakurauchi Yukio Shūgiin ( Shimane 1) Minseitō
Communications minister Koizumi Matajirō Shūgiin ( Kanagawa 2) Minseitō
Railway Minister Egi Tasuku until September 10, 1931 Kizokuin
Hara Shūjirō from September 10, 1931 Shūgiin ( Ibaraki 3) Minseitō
Colonial minister Hara Shūjirō until September 10, 1931 Shūgiin (Ibaraki 3) Minseitō
Baron Wakatsuki Reijirō from September 10, 1931 Kizokuin (appointment) ? / Minseitō

Other positions

Office Surname Chamber (constituency / method) fraction
Head of the Cabinet Secretariat Kawasaki Takukichi
Head of the Legislative Office Takeuchi Sakuhei until November 8, 1931 Shūgiin ( Osaka 3) Minseitō
Saitō Takao from November 8, 1931 Shūgiin ( Hyōgo 5) Minseitō

Web links

literature

  • Peter Duus (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century. , Cambridge University Press 1988. Therein:
    • Cape. 2, Taichirō Mitani: The establishment of party cabinets, 1889-1932.
    • Cape. 3, Gordon M. Berger: Politics and mobilization in Japan, 1931-1945.
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Wakatsuki is the family name, Reijirō the first name.