Background
Kikujirō Ishii was born on 24 April 1866 in in the province of Awa, later a part of Chiba Prefecture.
石井 菊次郎
Kikujirō Ishii was born on 24 April 1866 in in the province of Awa, later a part of Chiba Prefecture.
After graduating from the law department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1890, he entered the Foreign Ministry, serving in the Japanese legations in Paris and Inchon in Korea.
He was stationed in Peking in 1900 when the Boxer Rebellion broke out and the foreign legations were besieged. After the siege was lifted and he returned to Japan, he was made a secretary of the Foreign Ministry and later chief of the telephone section of the general affairs bureau. In 1908 he became vice-minister under Foreign Minister Hayashi Tadasu. In 1912 he was minister plenipotentiary to France and in 1914 he became foreign minister in the Okuma Shigenobu cabinet, taking over the management of foreign affairs after the resignation of Kato Taka- aki.
In 1927 he was a minister plenipotentiary to the Geneva Disarmament Conference and in 1929 became an advisor to the Privy Council. In 1933 he served as Japan’s representative to the International Economic Conference. From this period on, he held a position of respect and importance as a veteran of the diplomatic world. In 1940, when the Privy Council was holding deliberations concerning the concluding of a tripartite pact with Germany and Italy, he warned the government to proceed with utmost caution. Shortly before the end of the Pacific War, he was killed in an American bombing raid.
He is regarded by scholars of diplomatic history as a man who was extraordinarily skilled in matters of diplomacy.
He held the title of viscount.