Background
Kijūrō Shidehara was born on 13 September 1872 in in Osaka Prefecture. His elder brother Shidehara Taira was president of Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan.
幣原 喜重郎
Kijūrō Shidehara was born on 13 September 1872 in in Osaka Prefecture. His elder brother Shidehara Taira was president of Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan.
He graduated from the law course of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1896 he passed the examination for diplomatic service and thereafter served in the Japanese consulates in Inchon in Korea, London, Antwerp, and Pusan in Korea. and graduated from the law course of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1896 he passed the examination for diplomatic service and thereafter served in the Japanese consulates in Inchon in Korea, London, Antwerp, and Pusan in Korea.
In 1904 he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry office in Tokyo and the following year became head of the Telegraph Section of the ministry. Around this time, he became close friends with an American advisor to the ministry named Denison and learned much from him concerning English and the language of diplomatic documents.
In 1911 he became head of the Investigation Bureau of the ministry and later served as councilor in the Japanese embassy in America and in England. In 1914 he went to Holland as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary and in 1915 he became vice-minister of foreign affairs. From then until 1919, roughly the period when the First World War was in progress, he served in that capacity under five succeeding foreign ministers. In 1919 he became ambassador to the United States, a post that he held until 1922, when he resigned and returned to Japan. In 1924 he was appointed foreign minister in the Kato Takaaki cabinet and continued in that capacity in the Wakatsuki Reijiro cabinet formed in 1926. During this time he developed the so-called Shidehara diplomacy, a policy based on international cooperation that refrained from interfering in internal affairs in China and sought to develop harmonious relations with Britain and the United States. As a result, he gained considerable trust in international circles.
In 1929, after the fall of the Tanaka Giichi cabinet, he once more became foreign minister, this time in the cabinet formed by Hamaguchi Osachi, the president of the Minseito (Democratic Party). In 1930 Japan attended the London Disarmament Conference, and though Shidehara and Hamaguchi were accused of violating the rights of the Supreme Command, they succeeded in gaining ratification of the disarmament agreement. Shidehara was attacked by military leaders and right-wing political organizations such as the Seiyukai for pursuing a weak-kneed policy and he likewise incurred the displeasure of the Privy Council. After Hamaguchi was wounded in an assas¬sination attempt in November of 1930, Shidehara acted as prime minister in his place for a period of four months. He continued in the post of foreign minister in the second Wakatsuki cabinet formed in the spring of 1931, but with the development of the Manchurian Incident later in the year, the cabinet was forced to resign en masse. Shidehara largely retired from the world of politics, only continuing to hold the position of member of the Upper House of the Diet to which he had been appointed in 1926.
After the end of the Pacific War, when the Higashikuni-no-miya Naruhiko cabinet resigned in October of 1945, Shidehara became prime minister, formed a new cabinet, and immediately received orders from the general headquarters of the Occupation forces to carry out various reforms. He drafted the announcement made by the emperor at the beginning of 1946 in which the latter denied his divinity and he held discussions with General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Occupation forces, concerning the proposal that Japan renounce the right to make war. In March of 1946, a draft outline of proposed constitutional changes was made public, and the following month Shidehara and his cabinet resigned. He became the president of the newly formed Shimpoto (Progressive Party) and was appointed state minister in the Yoshida Shigeru cabinet that succeeded his own. In the general election of 1947 he w'as elected to the Diet and, after being reelected in 1949, he became Speaker of the Lower House. He died of illness in 1951 while holding this position.
After the war, he served for a time as head of the board of directors of the Tyoyo Bunko, a research institute devoted to Chinese studies, and worked vigorously to revive its activities.
His wife was the daughter of the famous financier Iwasaki Yataro and the younger sister of the wife of Kato Takaaki.