Okada Keisuke

Okada Keisuke

Okada Keisuke ( Japanese 岡田 啓 介 ; * Keiō 4/1/21 ^lunisolar / February 14, 1868 ^greg. In Fukui , Echizen province ; † October 10, 1952 ) was a Japanese admiral in the Imperial Navy , who served from 1927 to 1929 and again between 1932 and 1933 was Minister of the Navy . From July 8, 1934 to March 9, 1936, he was the 31st  Prime Minister of Japan and had to resign just two weeks after the attempted coup on February 26, 1936 .

Life

Military training and naval officer

Okada Keisuke, the son of a samurai from the Matsudaira ruled -Klan Principality Fukui , began as a midshipman and participants of the 15th course his education at the Imperial Japanese Navy Academy (Kaigun Heigakkō) in Tsukiji . After he had completed his training as the seventh best of 80 participants, he was promoted to ensign at sea on April 20, 1889 and transferred to the training ship Kongo . He was then used on board the protected cruiser Naniwa from March 14, 1890, and was there after being promoted to lieutenant at sea (Shōi) on July 9, 1890, initially as a deputy department officer and then as a deputy navigator from August 28, 1891 . He was then transferred to the paddle steamer Jingei on May 23, 1892 , before completing the C course at the Naval College (Kaigun Daigakkō) from December 21, 1892 to December 19, 1893 after a waiting position started on October 20, 1892 . He then became deputy section officer on the protected cruiser Itsukushima and was then acting section officer in the Sailor Corps of the Yokosuka Marine District , before he was used as acting section officer on the Naniwa from June 8 to October 5, 1894 .

Thereupon Okada was transferred as acting section officer to the protected cruiser Takachiho , on which he was section officer after his promotion to lieutenant captain ( Daii ) on December 9, 1894. On this he took part in patrols in the Gulf of Bohai and missions off Port Arthur during the First Sino-Japanese War. This was followed between February 20, 1895 and April 1, 1896 as a section officer of the mine layers of the Tsushima torpedo group and from April 1 to December 26, 1896 as a section officer of the Nagasaki torpedo group belonging to the Sasebo torpedo corps . He then became a section officer and, from October 26, 1897, also a senior navigation officer on the armored corvette Hiei , before he became a section officer on the unit ship of the line Fuji on November 5, 1897 . After he had attended the B course at the Naval College between April 29 and December 19, 1898, he was employed as an instructor in the torpedo training center. He then completed the A course at the Naval College between March 22, 1899 and June 20, 1900 and was promoted to Corvette Captain (Shōsa) during this time on September 29, 1899 .

Russo-Japanese War

As the commander of the armored cruiser Kasuga , Captain Okada Keisuke took over his first own ship command in 1910

Okada Keisuke then returned first as a section officer on the Fuji before he was chief torpedo officer on the unit ship of the line Shikishima from September 1 to December 6, 1900 . After he had continued attending the A course at the Naval College from December 6, 1900 to May 24, 1901, he was initially in a waiting position and then between June 7, 1901 and July 7, 1903 in duties as an officer in the staff department 3 of the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy and as an instructor at the naval college. He was then from July 7 to October 5, 1903 acting deputy commander of the protected cruiser Chitose and after a renewed waiting position from March 7 to April 11, 1904 staff officer in the naval district of Sasebo. After a brief employment as an equipment officer at the Yokosuka naval shipyard, he was deputy commander of the unprotected cruiser Yaeyama between April 21, 1904 and January 12, 1905 . In this role he was promoted to frigate captain (Chūsa) on July 13, 1904 and took part in the naval battle in the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War .

Okada became deputy commander of the Chitose on January 12, 1905 and deputy commander of the armored cruiser Kasuga on April 5, 1905 . With this he also took part in the naval battle at Tsushima from May 27 to 28, 1905 , which ended in a devastating defeat on the Russian side and which was decisive for the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War. After the end of the war, on December 20, 1905, he became the deputy commander of the Asahi unit, and then on May 11, 1906, an instructor in the torpedo training center and at the naval college. After being promoted to sea captain (Daisa) , he became rector of the torpedo school on September 25, 1908, before taking over his first command of the ship from July 25, 1910 to January 4, 1911 as commander of the armored cruiser Kasuga . After a brief employment in the staff of the Yokosuka Marine District, he was on January 16, 1911 staff officer in the personnel department of the Ministry of Navy and on December 1, 1912 commander of the light cruiser Kashima .

Promotion to Admiral and Minister of the Navy

After his promotion to Rear Admiral (Shōshō) Okada was on December 1, 1913 head of the weapons department of the naval shipyard Sasebo and then on August 18, 1914 commander in the 2nd fleet, before he was on December 1, 1914 commander of the 1st squadron and on April 1, 1915 became commander of the 3rd squadron. He then acted from October 1 to December 13, 1915 as head of departments 2 and 3 of the naval engineering command and then as head of the personnel department of the naval ministry.

On December 1, 1917, Okada Keisuke was appointed director of the naval shipyard Sasebo after his promotion to Vice Admiral (Chūjō) and then on September 4, 1918 a member of the Admiralty Committee. He then acted as head of the shipbuilding department in the Ministry of the Navy between October 18, 1918 and October 1, 1920 and as director of the naval shipbuilding command from October 1, 1920 to May 25, 1923. June 1924 was Vice Minister of the Navy. During this time, he was again a member of the Admiralty Committee from October 11, 1920 to June 11, 1924. After his promotion to Admiral (Taisho) he became a member of the Naval Council on June 11, 1924 and then on December 1, 1924 successor to Admiral Suzuki Kantarō as Commander in Chief of the 1st Fleet and Combined Fleet . In this post he remained until his replacement by Vice Admiral Katō Hiroharu on December 10, 1926. He himself was then between December 10, 1926 and April 20, 1927 Commander in Chief of the Yokosuka Marine District and again a member of the Admiralty Committee.

Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi appointed Okada for the first time on April 20, 1927 as Minister of the Navy in his cabinet , to which he was a member until the end of Tanaka's term on July 2, 1929. Subsequently, on July 2, 1929, he was again a member of the Navy Council and on December 11, 1929 a member of the Privy Council Sūmitsu-in , a body that advised the Tennō . On May 26, 1932, Prime Minister Saitō Makoto appointed as naval minister in his cabinet and held this ministerial office until his replacement by Admiral Ōsumi Mineo on January 9, 1933. After a subsequent short wait, he was transferred to the second reserve on January 21, 1933 .

Prime Minister 1934 to 1936

Okada Keisuke (left) with his brother-in-law and private secretary Colonel Denzō Matsuo, who was mistaken for him and instead murdered in the attempted coup on February 26, 1936 (ni-niroku jiken)

Okada Keisuke finally took over the post of Prime Minister himself on July 8, 1934 from Saitō Makoto. At the same time he took over from the previous minister Ryūtarō Nagai the post of colonial minister, which he handed over to Hideo Kodama on October 25, 1934 as part of a cabinet reshuffle . As part of a new government reshuffle , he took over the post of communications minister from Tokonami Takejirō on September 9, 1935 and handed this over to Mochizuki Keisuke three days later on September 12, 1935, in a further cabinet reshuffle . His “ Cabinet of National Unity ” was supported by the Constitutional Democratic Party ( Rikken Minseitō ) like the previous Saitō cabinet .

During his tenure there was an attempted coup on February 26, 1936 (ni-niroku jiken) , in which 1,500 young soldiers, mostly from the ranks of the Kōdō-ha party , took up arms in Tokyo and the parliament , the Army Ministry and the headquarters occupied by the police . Almost all of Tokyo was temporarily under the control of the insurgents. Three cabinet members were killed, former Prime Minister Saitō Makoto , Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo and General Watanabe Jōtarō , a leader of the Tōsei-ha . A group of officers stormed the prime minister's residence ( Kantei ) and tried to kill Prime Minister Okada Keisuke, Admiral Suzuki Kantarō and Prince Saionji Kimmochi , but they failed. The killing of Okada failed, among other things, because the insurgents thought his brother-in-law and private secretary Colonel Denzō Matsuo for him and murdered him instead. But he himself remained missing until February 28, 1936, so that Interior Minister Gotō Fumio exercised the post of Prime Minister ad interim.

The insurgents saw themselves as fighters in the name of the Tennō . They were of the opinion that the government was not approaching the Japanese conquest of Asia aggressively enough and was pursuing political and industrial interests too much. However, Emperor Hirohito ordered the armed forces to put down the uprising. On February 29, the crackdown on the coup was reported. The ringleaders were sentenced to death or life imprisonment . Although the coup was suppressed within three days, its political consequences were considerable. Martial law was imposed up to and including July 1936 and Okada had to resign on March 9, 1936, whereupon the previous Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki was his successor. Significant influence on Tennō Hirohito in the appointment of Hirota had in particular the Prince Asaka Yasuhiko , who belonged to the imperial family and who considered the new government more acceptable to the rebels.

Okada Keisuke, who was retired on January 21, 1938, was involved in the negotiations on the surrender of Japan to end the Second World War . His son-in-law was the politician Hisatsune Sakomizu , who was, among other things, head of the cabinet secretariat in 1945, head of the economic planning office between 1960 and 1961 and Minister of Post and Telecommunications from 1961 to 1962 .

literature

• Herbert P. Bix: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan , Harper Perennial, 2001, ISBN 978-0-06-019314-0
• Piers Brendon: The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s , Vintage; Reprint Edition, 2002 ISBN 0-375-70808-1
• Marius B. Jansen: The Making of Modern Japan , Harvard University Press, 2002, ISBN 9780674003347
• Andrew Gordon: A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present , Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-511061-7

Web links

• Entry on Imperial Japanese Navy
• Entry in Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures at the National Library of Parliament (English, Japanese )
• Newspaper article about Okada Keisuke in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Okada is the family name, Keisuke the first name.