Background
Kuniaki Koiso was born on 22 March 1880 in Japan. He was a son of a samurai family of Yamagata Prefecture.
Kuniaki Koiso was born on 22 March 1880 in Japan. He was a son of a samurai family of Yamagata Prefecture.
He graduated from the Yamagata Middle School, Military Academy, and Military Staff College and served in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 as a lieutenant.
During the years from 1915 to 1917 Kuniaki Koiso was a member of the General Staff Office, being assigned to handle intelligence strategy. He lent assistance to the former ruling family of the Ch'ing dynasty in China and devised plans for the Manchurian and Mongolian independence movement. In 1922 he advanced to the rank of colonel and was sent to Europe to study the methods of total warfare that had been employed in the First World War. Kuniaki Koiso returned to Japan the following year and in 1926 he became an instructor in the Military Staff College. In 1930 he became head of the Bureau of Army Affairs in the War Ministry and in 1931 advanced to the rank of lieutenant general. Kuniaki Koiso was one of the leaders in the plot to carry out a coup d’etat in March of the same year, though the plot was not put into execution.
In 1932 Kuniaki Koiso became vice-minister of war, serving under War Minister Araki Sadao, and later served as chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, commander of the Fifth Division at Hiroshima, and commander of the Chosen Army. He entered the reserve in 1938, and in 1939-1940 served as minister of overseas affairs in the Hiranuma and Yonai cabinets. In 1942, after the outbreak of the Pacific War, Kuniaki Koiso was appointed governor-general of Chosen (Korea). In 1944, after the resignation of the Tojo cabinet, he became prime minister through the cooperation of Yonai Mitsumasa and was ordered to form a new cabinet. He attempted to reorganize the direction of the war effort and to improve Japan’s fortunes, but with the defeat of the Japanese forces in the Philippines, the collapse of efforts to bring about a peaceful settlement with China, and the differences of opinion between himself and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, he and his cabinet were obliged to resign.
After the conclusion of the war, Kuniaki Koiso was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East as a first-class war criminal and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of illness in prison.