Shidehara Kijūrō

Shidehara Kijūrō (1930)

Shidehara Kijūrō ( Japanese 幣 原 喜 重 郎 ; born September 13, 1872 in Matta County (today: Kadoma ), Osaka Prefecture ; † March 10, 1951 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese diplomat and politician. Before the Second World War, as Foreign Minister, he was the architect of the Shidehara diplomacy named after him , a foreign policy aimed at reconciliation with the great western powers, which renounced territorial expansion in China, was the 44th from October 9, 1945 to May 22, 1946. Prime Minister of Japan and from 1949 until his death President of the Shūgiin , the lower house of the national parliament .

Life

Early years

Shidehara was born into the family of a wealthy landowner. In his youth he was influenced by liberal ideas. He completed his law studies at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1895 and then entered the diplomatic service . His first stay abroad took him to Korea in 1896 , where he served in the consulate in Chemulpo under Ishii Kikujirō . Delegations to London and Antwerp followed , where he served as consul from 1900. In 1903 he married Iwasaki Masako, a daughter of the founder of the Mitsubishi concern Iwasaki Yatarō . Masako was of Christian faith and probably exercised a great influence on her husband with her pacifist views, which were shaped by the ideas of Uchimura Kanzo . She later supported the liberal Kenseikai party.

Diplomat and foreign politician

In 1904 Shidehara returned to Tokyo and took up a post in the Telegraphic and Research Department of the State Department , where he again served under Ishii. From 1912 he was employed as counselor in Washington and London and as envoy in The Hague and Copenhagen . From 1915 to 1919, Shidehara served as vice foreign minister under five different ministers, starting with Ishii Kikujirō. He was then appointed ambassador to Washington, which he remained until 1922. He headed the Japanese preparatory committee for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and represented Japan as negotiator at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921/22. The return of Kiautschou in Shandong to China is largely due to his influence. In 1920 Shidehara was raised to the nobility with the award of the title danshaku (baron) and in 1925 received a seat in the Kizokuin (mansion).

In 1924 Shidehara was appointed foreign minister in the government of Katō Takaaki and kept this post in the following government of Wakatsuki Reijirō . In this capacity he negotiated several trade agreements and paved the way for diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in 1925 and for Japan to join the Briand-Kellogg Pact in 1929. His policy of leaning towards the Western powers, of non-interventionism, especially with regard to China, and of adhering to the principles of the League of Nations is known as Shidehara diplomacy. After the First World War, Shidehara was the leading representative of the so-called "Greater Japanese" Liberals, who in contrast to the lesser " Little Japanese " Liberals wanted to hold onto the acquired colonies - the two groups together dominated the bourgeois pre-war parties Seiyūkai and Minseitō and their forerunners -, but unlike the Asianists and militarists, they did not seek further expansion in East Asia.

After the conservative Tanaka Giichi took over the government in the meantime , Shidehara returned to the government in 1929 as Foreign Minister under Hamaguchi Osachi . His willingness to make concessions when negotiating a new naval agreement at the London Conference in 1930 was sharply criticized by the militarist faction. After Hamaguchi was injured in an assassination attempt in November 1930, he temporarily represented Hamaguchi as Prime Minister. The Mukden incident of September 1931 ultimately led to the resignation of the second Wakatsuki government in December 1931. Against Shidahara personally, the military faction brought additional allegations of a wiretapping affair, dating from the time of the Washington Naval Conference, into play. As a result, Japanese foreign policy was increasingly determined by the military.

After retiring from active politics, he lived in Tokyo until 1938, after which it became too dangerous for him and he moved to Kamakura . He kept his seat in the House of Lords without being particularly prominent there. In 1941 he was commissioned by the government of Konoe Fumimaro to work out proposals for negotiating the settlement of the mutual disputes with the United States. During the Second World War he was a member of the group of politicians who were sidelined and who, through their existing connections, conducted explorations about an early end to the war.

After the war

After the end of the war and the resignation of the interim premier Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko in October 1945, Shidehara was commissioned by the Shōwa-Tennō ( Hirohito ) to form a government. His duties included working with the occupation authorities under Douglas MacArthur in the prosecution of war criminals and the smooth repatriation of Japanese soldiers. Probably the most important task of his government, however, was the drafting of the new Japanese constitution in coordination with the Americans. According to MacArthur, the inclusion of Article 9 with the renunciation of war stipulated therein goes back to Shidehara. He also ensured the Tennō's declaration of renunciation of his claim to divinity . This and the restriction to a purely representative function made it possible to preserve the institution of the Tennō (Article 1).

In the first Yoshida cabinet he remained minister of state , was head of the demobilization authority and later for a short time deputy prime minister. After Machida Chūji was banned from office in 1946 by the occupation authorities, he succeeded him as chairman of the Progressive Party of Japan ( Nihon Shimpotō ), later he joined the Democratic Party , where he was an opponent of the coalition with the socialists and left the party in 1947 . He was then a co-founder of the Dōshi Club , in 1948 a member of the "Democratic Club" ( Minshu Club ) and finally the Democratic-Liberal Party .

In 1947 Shidehara was elected to a political office for the first time: in the election on April 25, 1947 for Shūgiin , the lower house, he received the highest percentage of votes in the four-mandate constituency of Osaka 3 and entered parliament for the first of two legislative periods. After the election victory of the Liberals, which most of the Democrats had now joined, in the Shūgiin election in 1949 , he was elected President of the Shūgiin and held the position until his death in March 1951.

useful information

Shidehara on the cover of Time

• Shidehara's brother Taira was the first president of Taihoku Imperial University .
• Shidehara was featured on the front page of Time during the Manchurian Crisis triggered by the Mukden incident in October 1931 as “Japan's Man of Peace & War” .
• Shidehara was the last Prime Minister of Japan who belonged to the Japanese nobility ( Kazoku ). This was abolished in the 1947 constitution.

See also

• Shidehara cabinet

Web links

Commons : Shidehara Kijūrō  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Britannica.com
• Klaus Schlichtmann: A Statesman for the Twenty-First Century? The Life and Diplomacy of Shidehara Kijuuroh (1872-1951)
• National Parliamentary Library , Portraits of Modern Japanese: Shidehara Kijūrō (Japanese, English )
• Janet Hunter (Ed.): Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History , University of California Press, Berkeley 1984, pp. 197 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Richard J. Samuels: Securing Japan. Tokyo's grand strategy and the future of East Asia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8014-7490-3 , chap. 1, pp. 13-37: Japan's Grand Strategies. Connecting the Ideological Dots.
2. ↑ The Senkyo: 23rd Shūgiin election, constituency result Ōsaka 3 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

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