Ogata Taketora

Ogata Taketora

Ogata Taketora ( Japanese 緒 方 竹 虎 ; born January 30, 1888 in Yamagata ; died January 28, 1956 ) was a Japanese journalist and politician of the Shōwa period .

Live and act

Ogata Taketora graduated from Waseda University . In 1911 he began working for the newspaper "Tōkyō Asahi Shimbun" (東京 朝日 新聞). In 1925 he became co-editor and in 1934 editor of the newspaper.

As a liberal, he suffered the attacks of growing militarism in Japan from the 1930s, including the attack that soldiers carried out on his office during the attempted coup on February 26th . During the Pacific War he was Minister of State and Head of the Information Office in the Koiso Cabinet . Ogata, supported by Prime Minister Koiso , made an attempt to negotiate a separate peace with the Chiang Kai-shek government in Chongqing . Most of the ministers, including the emperor, were against it. That led to the resignation of the cabinet.

Immediately after the end of the war, Koiso played an important role as Minister of State and Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Higashikuni cabinet when it came to ensuring the smooth landing of the Americans in Tōkyō.

When his banishment from public life in the Red Purge came to an end after the war , he was elected to the lower house of the Reichstag in 1952 and was Deputy Prime Minister from 1952 to 1954. In 1954 he became president of the Liberal Party (自由 党) and from 1955 one of the four vice-presidents of the newly founded Liberal Democratic Party. (自民党).

In 1954, Ogata was defeated by Hatoyama in the election for prime minister. His early death prevented another career.

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Ogata Taketora . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1130.

Web links

Commons : Ogata Taketora  - collection of images, videos and audio files

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