Inukai Tsuyoshi

Inukai Tsuyoshi

Inukai Tsuyoshi's childhood home

Inukai Tsuyoshi ( Japanese 犬 養 毅 ; born April 20, 1855 in Bitchū Province (today: Okayama Prefecture ); † May 15, 1932 ) was a Japanese politician and the 29th Prime Minister of Japan from December 13, 1931 until his death on May 15, 1932 .

Inukai was the second son of a country samurai from feudal Niwase born.

He studied at Keio University before working with the army for the first time as a reporter on the front lines of the Satsuma rebellion for the political magazine Yubin Hochi Shinbun .

After further activities as a reporter, he joined the newly founded Rikken Kaishintō (Constitutional Reform Party) and was active in the coalition movement ( danketsu ).

In 1890 he was elected a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and was re-elected until the 18th general election. In the cabinet of Ōkuma Shigenobu he held the post of education minister and communications minister in the second cabinet of Yamamoto Gonnohyōe from 1898 . In 1929 he was elected President of the Rikken Seiyūkai ("Assembly of Friends of the Constitutional Government") and in 1931 Prime Minister of Japan.

In 1932 Inukai was the victim of a fatal assassination attempt by eleven young naval officers as part of a larger but unsuccessful attempted coup on May 15 . The assassins were in the court-martial sentenced only to very low penalties, during which hundreds of thousands were collected signatures, the sympathy expressed with them.

Inukai's violent death and its assessment by the public opinion of the Japanese population is generally seen by historians as a turning point, after which the Japanese military increasingly took the upper hand in the Japanese system of government and the parliamentary parties could exercise less and less influence.

literature

• Yoshitake Oka: Five political leaders of modern Japan: Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu, Hara Takashi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Saionji Kimmochi. (Translated by Andrew Fraser and Patricia Murray), Tokyo, University of Tokyo Press, 1986. ISBN 4-13-037014-6

Web links

Commons : Tsuyoshi Inukai  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Inukai Tsuyoshi in the catalog of the German National Library

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