Background
Giichi Tanaka was born on 22 June 1863 in the domain of Choshu. Tanaka was born to a samurai family.
Tanaka (politician)
Portrait of Tanaka Giichi
Prime Ministers Korekiyo Takahashi (1854–1936, in office 1921–22, left) and Giichi Tanaka (1864–1929, in office 1927–29)
Baron Tanaka Giichi.
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1931
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1941
義一, 田中
Giichi Tanaka was born on 22 June 1863 in the domain of Choshu. Tanaka was born to a samurai family.
He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and the 8th class of the Army War College in 1892, and served in the First Sino-Japanese War.
In 1898 Giichi Tanaka was chosen by Kawakami Soroku, the chief of the General Staff, to go to Russia, where he spent four years studying the military and social situation there. He was able to make good use of his experience at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, when he served as a member of the staff of the Japanese army in Manchuria and urged an early cessation of hostilities.
In 1907 he volunteered to become commander of the Third Infantry Regiment and in 1909 became head of the military section in the War Ministry, working to reorganize Japanese military forces.
In 1911, as head of the Bureau of Military Affairs, he advocated the establishment of two new army divisions. In 1913 he went to Europe and America in order to inspect the armaments in those areas. After his return to Japan in 1914, he became a member of the General Staff and in 1915 vice-chief of the General Staff. While holding such key positions in the army, he at the same time devoted his energies to organizing the Imperial Army Veterans’ Association in 1910 and the Greater Japan Young Men’s Organization in 1917, working to spread militaristic ideals throughout the country.
In 1918 he became minister of war in the cabinet of Hara Takashi, embarking on a political career. He presided over the dispatch of Japanese forces to Siberia and urged that Japan increase its expenditures for national defense. In 1921 he reached the rank of full general of the army and in 1923 became minister of war in the Yamamoto Gombei cabinet.
After his retirement from active military service, he entered the reserve in 1925 and became president of the political party known as the Seiyukai. In 1927, after financial crisis had brought about the fall of the Wakatsuki Reijiro cabinet, lanaka formed his own cabinet, serving simultaneously as prime minister, foreign minister, and minister of colonization.
After the death of Yamagata Aritomo in 1922, Tanaka had replaced him as leader of the Choshu faction within the bureaucracy and was highly critical of the conciliatory foreign policy of his predecessor, Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijiiro. In 1928, on urgent imperial order, he put through changes in the Peace Preservation Act that allowed him to take stem measures to suppress the Japanese Communist Party, as seen in the mass arrests of party members on March 15, 1928, and April 16, 1929. But he came under attack because of his forceful policies at home and abroad, and problems arising out of the signing of the Paris Antiwar Pact and the assassination of the Chinese warlord Chang Tso-lin by Japanese army officers in Manchuria forced him to resign in July 1929. He died abruptly not long after.
He himself pursued a highly active foreign policy, dispatching Japanese troops to Shantung, calling a conference of Chinese leaders in Tokyo, interfering in the Chinese revolution, and doing all he could to secure Japanese rights in Manchuria and Mongolia. On the internal scene he appointed Takahashi Korekiyo as his finance minister and worked to allay the agitation brought about by the financial crisis.
