Makoto Saitō was a statesman and naval leader of the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras.
Background
Makoto Saitō was born in the domain of Mizusawa in what later became Iwate Prefecture on 27 October 1858. In his early years he went by the name Tomigoro. He was a friend of the future statesman Goto Shimpei, who was one year older and came from the same region.
Education
Saito studied under his father, a samurai who headed a terakoya, or small private school, and also pursued Chinese studies in the official school of the domain. In 1870 he was selected to serve as an office boy in the prefectural office of Izawa (later a part of Iwate Prefecture) and won the admiration of the governor for the alacrity with which he acted when a fire broke out. In 1872 he went to Tokyo, and the following year entered the school that later became the Naval Academy. It was at this time that he changed his name to Makoto. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1879 and in 1882 was commissioned as an ensign.
In 1884 he was sent to the United States for study, at the same time serving as naval attache to the Japanese legation there. He remained in America until 1898 and, on his return to Japan, served as a member of the Naval General Staff and later as a staff officer in the command of a standing squadron.
Career
In 1897 he advanced to the rank of captain and took command of his own ship. In 1898, when Yamamoto Gombei was appointed minister of the navy, Saito was selected to serve as vice-minister, and the two men continued to serve in these posts over a period of seven years. Meanwhile, Saito advanced to the rank of rear admiral in 1900 and vice admiral in 1904. In 1906 Saito succeeded Yamamoto as minister of the navy, working to reinforce Japan's naval strength in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. He remained in that post for the following eight years, serving in five different cabinets, but in 1914 took responsibility for the Siemens affair (the disclosure of bribes passed by a German company named Siemens to affect naval contracts), and joined the other members of the Yamamoto Gombei cabinet in resigning his position. Thereafter he entered the reserve.
In 1919 he returned to active service long enough to assume the post of governor-general of Korea. Shortly after, a bomb was thrown at the carriage in which he was riding, but he escaped injury. He worked to change the character of the Japanese colonial administration in Korea from a purely military to a civil one. In 1927 he attended the Geneva Disarmament Conference as a plenipotentiary and, after his return to Japan, resigned the post of governor-general of Korea. He became an advisor to the Privy Council, but in 1929 once more assumed the post of governor-general of Korea, holding it until 1931.
On 15 May, 1932, when a group of young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoki, Saito was recommended by the elder statesman Saionji Kimmochi to replace him as prime minister. He did so, announcing the formation of a “whole-nation” cabinet, that is, a coalition cabinet in which the military, the bureaucrats, and the party members were equally represented. He presided over the recognition of Manchukuo and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, but in 1934, when high officials in the Finance Ministry were implicated in scandals relating to the sale of stock in the Teikoku Rayon Company, Saito and the members of his cabinet resigned en masse. In 1935 he became Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and served close to the emperor, but was attacked and killed by the young army officers in the February 26 incident of 1936.