Saitō Makoto

Saitō Makoto

Shishaku Saitō Makoto ( Japanese 斎 藤 実 ; born November 13, 1858 in Lehen Mizusawa , Mutsu Province (today: Ōshū , Iwate Prefecture ), Japan ; † February 26, 1936 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese admiral , politician and 30th Prime Minister of Japan .

biography

Navy Minister and Governor General of Korea

Saitō joined the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1873 and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1879 . In 1884 he went to study in the USA , where he was also a naval attaché at the embassy in Washington, DC for several years . In 1897 he was promoted to frigate captain and in the same year to sea captain. In 1898 he was appointed Vice Minister of the Navy and in 1900 as Rear Admiral . During the Russo-Japanese War from February 1904 to September 1905 he also served as a commander and was promoted to vice admiral in 1904 .

In January 1906 he was appointed Minister of the Navy in his government by Prime Minister Saionji Kimmochi and kept this office in the subsequent governments of Katsura Tarō and Yamamoto Gonnohyōe until 1914. In 1907 he was raised as a baron to the nobility ( Japanese Kazoku ). In 1912 he was promoted to admiral . In March 1914, he and his successor as Minister of the Navy, Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, were demoted because of the Siemens scandal . Yamamoto resigned due to the Siemens scandal. He and his government had been accused of having been bribed by Siemens to influence the procurement of naval ships. However, Yamamoto was innocent and only took responsibility for his subordinates.

In August 1919 he was appointed Governor General of Korea . At the beginning of his work there, he was met with hostility and several attacks on his life were carried out, but he managed to gain respect through his conciliatory performance. So he spoke out during his tenure for the protection of Korean culture and customs and the welfare and wanted to serve the happiness of the people of Chōsen . Secondly, certain Japan the province during his tenure as governor general chosen for rice growing area in order by the unilateral industrialization vulnerable supply of rice to secure. In 1925 he was appointed vice count (Shishaku). In 1927 he was appointed head of the Japanese delegation in preparation for the Geneva Disarmament Conference . Upon his return, he resigned from his post as Governor General of Korea and instead became an advisor to Tennō Hirohito .

In 1929 he became Governor General of Korea again and held this post until his resignation in 1931.

Prime Minister and Assassination

After the murder of Inukai Tsuyoshi on May 15, 1932 and a transitional government under Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo , he was commissioned by Emperor Hirohito on May 26, 1932 as Prime Minister to form a new government.

After the attempted coup on May 15, 1932, Saitō Makoto's cabinet began the period of "cabinets of national unity" ( kyokoku itchi naikaku ), which marked the end of party rule . The bourgeois parties Seiyūkai and Minseitō responded to the loss of power by calling for a more aggressive foreign policy and being prepared to compromise with the military.

In his role as Prime Minister he undertook the controversial recognition of the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo and on March 27, 1933, revoked Japan's membership of the League of Nations after a disapproving declaration by the League of Nations on February 16, 1933 because of the Japanese attack on Shanghai and the subsequent occupation of the Jehol Province .

On the other hand, to the indignation of the reactionaries , he issued a cut in the army budget by a third. In 1932 he was also foreign minister for a time . On July 8, 1934, he and his cabinet had to resign as Prime Minister because of the Teijin scandal , a financial scandal.

On February 26, 1935 he was appointed Lord Seal Keeper ( Naidaijin ) during the reign of Prime Minister Okada Keisuke . As such, he was murdered by a group of young officers along with Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo in the attempted coup on February 26, 1936 .

See also

• Saitō cabinet

Web links

• rulers.org
• Newspaper article about Saitō Makoto in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PLOETZ WORLD HISTORY. The non-European world until 1945 (Korea) , 1984, p. 25
2. ↑ PLOETZ WORLD HISTORY. The non-European world until 1945 (Japan) , 1984, p. 33

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