Kosaka Zentaro

Kosaka Zentaro

Kosaka Zentarō ( Japanese 小 坂 善 太郎 ; * January 23, 1912 in Nagano , Nagano Prefecture ; † November 26, 2000 ) was a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyūminshutō) , who was Foreign Minister from 1960 to 1962 and again in 1976 .

Life

Family origin, member of parliament and minister of labor

Kosaka Zentarō came from a politically influential family. His grandfather Kosaka Zennosuke was the founder of the daily Shinano Mainichi Shimbun and a member of the Lower House ( Shūgiin ) . His father Kosaka Junzo was both a member of the lower house and the upper house ( Kizokuin ) and founder and chairman of the electricity company Nippon Hassoden Co. and the chemical company Shin-Etsu Chemical . His younger brother Kosaka Tokusaburō was also a member of the House of Commons and was also a minister several times. After attending school, he graduated from Tokyo State Commercial College and began his professional career at Mitsubishi Bank, Ltd. after graduating in 1935 . before joining the chemical company Shin-Etsu Chemical, which his father founded .

In the election of April 10, 1946 , the first after the surrender of Japan and the end of the Second World War , Kosaka Zentaro was first elected to the House of Representatives ( Shūgiin ) and represented Nagano Prefecture in this until 1992. During his membership in parliament he was chairman of the budget committee between 1950 and 1951 and took over from May 21, 1953 to December 9, 1954 in the fifth Yoshida cabinet as labor minister for the first time a ministerial post . Furthermore, he was from July 1 to October 1, 1954 chairman of the National Commission for Public Security (Kokka kōan iinkai) , which was created according to the Police Act of 1954 together with the police authority ( Keisatsu-chō ) , and for central monitoring the police (Nihon no keisatsu) is responsible. After the merger ( Hoshu Gōdō ) of the Democratic Party of Japan (Nihon Minshutō) with the Liberal Party (Jiyū-tō) on November 15, 1955, he became a member of the newly formed Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyūminshutō) . In 1957 he joined the Kōchikai , founded and led by Ikeda Hayato , which is now the oldest and largest faction of the LDP.

Foreign ministers and foreign policy missions

Foreign Minister Kosaka Zentarō (left) with Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato (2nd from left) on a visit to US President John F. Kennedy (1961)

After Ikeda Hayato became Prime Minister of Japan on July 19, 1960 , this Kosaka Zentarō appointed Foreign Minister (Gaimu Daijin) in his first cabinet . He also held this ministerial office in the second cabinet and after the first reshuffle of the second Ikeda cabinet until July 18, 1962, whereupon Ōhira Masayoshi succeeded him. In this capacity, he paid a visit to Seoul on September 6, 1960 , the first official visit by a Japanese politician to South Korea since the end of World War II.

In August 1966, he and Furui Yoshimi headed an eight-member LDP delegation that visited the People's Republic of China . Both belonged to the conservative wing of their party, which advocated independence for Japan from the United States and normalization of relations with China. After the visit, he wrote the Kosaka report named after him, which was submitted to the Political Research Council of the LDP. On December 1, 1966, he applied for the election of the chairman of the LDP . However, he was defeated by only two votes, well behind Satō Eisaku (289 votes), who was elected party chairman, as well as Fujiyama Aiichirō (89 votes), Maeo Shigesaburō (47 votes), Nadao Hirokichi (11 votes) and Noda Uichi (9 votes). , while the former party leader and Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and Matsumura Kenzō and Murakami Isamu each received only one vote.

In 1968 he expressed his wish to visit the Mongolian People's Republic to examine the possibilities for economic support for that country. In 1970 he advocated that Japan should issue a "declaration of war renunciation" in order to further reduce tensions between Japan and the People's Republic of China. In July 1971 he finally succeeded Mizuta Mikio as chairman of the Political Research Council and was a member of the LDP party executive until his replacement by Sakurauchi Yoshio in July 1972 . Subsequently, the new LDP chairman and Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei appointed him chairman of the LDP's newly established party council for the normalization of Japanese-Chinese relations. The task of this 312-member council was to reach consensus after the party's pro- Taiwanese and pro-Chinese camps on the peace process. In September 1972 he paid a visit to Beijing as Prime Minister Tanaka's special envoy .

Subsequently, Kosaka Zentaro acted from December 22, 1972 until the cabinet reshuffle on November 25, 1973 as head of the Office for Economic Planning (Keizai-kikaku-chō) in the second Tanaka cabinet . In January 1974 he made a visit to Libya . After the reshuffle of Prime Minister Miki Takeo's cabinet, he again held the post of Foreign Minister from September 15, 1976 until the cabinet resigned on December 24, 1976. In this capacity he called for a reform of the UN Security Council in a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations . At the beginning of the 1980s he was still chairman of the Foreign Policy Research Council of the LDP and during this time received a delegation of politicians from the GDR such as Hans Modrow, together with the President of the Upper House ( Sangiin ) , Kenzō Kōno , and the President of the Lower House, Funada Naka .

Kosaka, who was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rising Sun (Kyokujitsushō) , wrote various political writings together with the economists Ôuchi Hyōe and Hiromi Arisawa and the socialist journalist Suzuki Mosaburō, for example on the structure of an adapted capitalism . His son Kosaka Kenji was also a member of the House of Representatives and Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology from 2005 to 2006.

Background literature

• Kurt Werner Radtke, Kurt W. Radtke, Chengzhi Liao: China's Relations with Japan, 1945–83: The Role of Liao Chengzhi , p. 166 et al., Manchester University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-7190-2795-0
• Qingxin Ken Wang: Hegemonic Cooperation and Conflict: Postwar Japan's China Policy and the United States , p. 145 et al., Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000, ISBN 0-2759-6314-4
• Kweku Ampiah: The Dynamics of Japan's Relations with Africa: South Africa, Tanzania and Nigeria , Routledge, 2013, ISBN 1-1348-2533-1
• Hirosuke Kawanishi: Human Face Of Industrial Conflict In Japan , Routledge, 2014, ISBN 1-1368-8437-8
• Robert Hoppens: The China Problem in Postwar Japan: Japanese National Identity and Sino-Japanese Relations , p. 80 et al., Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, ISBN 1-4725-7548-2

Web links

• Entry in prabook.com
• Entry in prabook.com
• The Governments of Japan 1945 - today

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kosaka Junzo in prabook.com
2. ↑ Kosaka Tokusaburō in prabook.com
3. ↑ Mikuriya Takashi, Nakamura Takafusa: Politics and Power in 20th-Century Japan: The Reminiscences of Miyazawa Kiichi , p. 144 et al., Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, ISBN 1-4725-3321-6
4. ↑ Japan: Key Ministries
5. ↑ Gerald L. Curtis: The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change , p. 13, Columbia University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-2315-0254-0
6. ↑ Reinhard Drifte: Japan's Quest For A Permanent Security Council Seat: A Matter of Pride or Justice? , P. 166 et al., Springer, 2016, ISBN 1-1370-7467-1
7. ^ Christian Heideck: Between East-West Trade and Opposition: Die Japanpolitik der DDR 1952–1973 , p. 239, IUDICIUM Verlag, 2014, ISBN 3-8620-5045-9

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