Tōgō Shigenori

Tōgō Shigenori

Tōgō Shigenori ( Japanese 東 郷 茂 徳 ; * December 10, 1882 in Hioki , Japanese Empire , † July 23, 1950 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese politician who held various ministerial posts immediately before and during the Pacific War .

Life

Tōgō was born in 1882 in what is now the city of Hioki in Kagoshima Prefecture . After graduating from the Faculty of Literature at Tokyo University in 1904 , he enrolled at Meiji University , where he studied German . In 1912 he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs .

After Japan ratified the Versailles Peace Treaty , Tōgō was sent to the Weimar Republic in 1920 to help rebuild German-Japanese relations. During his stay in Germany he met a German woman whom he later married. In 1937 he was the Japanese ambassador to Germany for a short time before being sent as ambassador to the Soviet Union the following year until 1940 .

Even in the run-up to the Pacific War, Tōgō was one of the most prominent advocates of the opinion that Japan would not be able to survive a war with the USA , and therefore propagated a more conciliatory policy towards the great Western powers. After he had become Foreign Minister on October 18, 1941, Tōgō stood up even more strongly for this policy and announced on January 21, 1942 that the Japanese troops should adhere to the Geneva Conventions , even if Japan had not ratified them. On September 1, 1942, he resigned from his post as foreign minister because he did not want to support the planned establishment of a ministry for the occupied territories, which was finally established in November of the same year. For the next two and a half years he held no government post before he was reappointed foreign minister in the cabinet of Suzuki Kantarō in April 1945 . In this cabinet he was one of the main advocates of the opinion that Japan should accept the Potsdam Declaration because it would represent the best possible peace conditions in the current situation. Nonetheless, until Japan surrendered , he hoped that the Soviet Union would negotiate a more favorable peace with the Allies. After the declaration was announced, Tōgō enforced that initially there would be no official response and that a censored version of the Japanese civilian population should be made available. With this he wanted to gain time in which he hoped for a signal from Moscow, which however did not come. The Allies interpreted the silence of the Japanese government as a rejection of the declaration and resumed their short-term reduced bombing of Japan with full intensity.

Tōgō was one of the few ministers who often advised Japan to surrender in the summer of 1945, which finally took place after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

After the war ended, he refused to blame anyone for the failure of the policy and signed a document declaring himself responsible for declaring war on the Allies. For this he was indicted in the Tokyo trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died of cholecystitis on July 23, 1950 while in custody .

His memoirs were published posthumously under the title The Cause of Japan , which had been edited by his former defense attorney in the Tokyo trials, Ben Bruce Blakeney .

family

Tōgō was a Japanese of Korean descent . His ancestor, Park Pyeon-ui (박 평의 around 1558–1623), was a potter who was abducted to Japan during the Imjin War . He was the creator of the Satsuma pottery , which was later considered typical of Japan. Shigenori's father changed the family name Park to Tōgō when Shigenori was five years old.

Web links

• Newspaper article about Tōgō Shigenori in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Professor Aiko Utsumi, "The Japanese army and its prisoners: relevant documents and bureaucratic institutions" [1]

predecessor	Office	successor
Toyoda Teijirō	Colonial Minister October 18, 1941 - December 2, 1941	Ino Hiroya
Toyoda Teijirō	Foreign Minister October 18, 1941 - September 1, 1942	Tōjō Hideki
Suzuki Kantaro	Foreign Minister April 9, 1945 - August 17, 1945	Shigemitsu Mamoru
Suzuki Kantaro	Great East Asia Minister April 9, 1945 - August 17, 1945	Shigemitsu Mamoru

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