Kōki Hirota was a Taisho and Showa period diplomat and political leader.
Background
Hirota was born in Kaji-machi dori (鍛冶町通り) in what is now part of Chūō-ku, Fukuoka city, Fukuoka Prefecture. His father was a stonemason whose family name was Tokubei (徳平), and who was adopted into the Hirota family. Tokubei married Take (タケ), a daughter of the president of a Japanese noodle company. On 14 February 1878, the couple had a son, whom Tokubei named Jōtarō (丈太郎). They later had three more children. Tokubei's name is engraved on the epigraph which recognized masons who contributed to the construction of a statue of Emperor Kameyama in Higashi kōen (東公園) in Fukuoka city.
Education
Hirota's writing was recognized as good from a young age; the name plate of the torii gate of Suikyo Shrine was written by Hirota when he was 11. After attending Shuyukan, he continued his education at Tokyo Imperial University and graduated with a law degree. One of his classmates was postwar Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.
Career
In his youth, he was influenced by the nationalistic thinking of the Gen’yosha, a patriotic society formed by ex-samurai in Fukuoka in 1881, though he never formally became a member of the society. At the conclusion of the Sino-Japancsc War, when Russia, Germany, and France forced Japan to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China, he realized the importance of the role of diplomacy in international affairs and gave up earlier ambitions for a military career in favor of the diplomatic profession. While still a student in the law' course of Tokyo Imperial University, he was requested by Yamaza Enjiro, a native of Fukuoka and head of the Bureau of State Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, to conduct a secret tour of inspection of the Manchuria- Korea region because of the dangerous state of Russo-Japanese relations in the area, a task that he carried out successfully.
After his graduation in 1905, he served for a time as an official in the office of the Resident-General of Korea. The following year, having passed the examination for diplomatic service, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After holding posts in China and England, he became a section chief in the Commerce Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1923, he was made head of the Bureau of European and American Affairs. He became minister to Holland in 1926, and ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1930.
In 1933 he became foreign minister in the Saito cabinet, replacing Uchida Kosai, who had retired because of illness. He continued in this post in the succeeding Okada cabinet, working to counteract the tendency toward isolation that resulted from Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations.
After the February 26’ incident in 1936, when young army officers attacked and killed a number of high government officials, Hirota became prime minister and formed his own cabinet, at first serving as foreign minister also, but later appointing Arita Hachiro to that post. He had to contend with interference from the militarists, which forced him to restore the system of appointing only men on active duty to the posts of war and navy ministers. He signed the Japan-German Anti-Comintern Pact and w'orked to provide more funds for national defense. But when the Seiytikai representative Hamada Kunimatsu made a speech in the Diet criticizing the militarists for meddling in government matters, it aroused the ire of War Minister Ter- auchi Hisaichi, and the resulting opposition between the army and the political parties brought about cabinet dissension that forced Hirota and his cabinet to resign. In 1937 he became foreign minister in the Konoe cabinet, but hostilities between Japan and China broke out shortly after, and he was unable to restore peace. The following year, he turned over the post to Ugaki Kazushige.
In 1940 he became a councilor to the Yonai cabinet and was counted among the high officials who took part in deliberations on who should succeed to the post of prime minister. During the war, he was dispatched to Thailand in 1942 as congratulatory ambassador on the conclusion of an economic agreement between the two countries. In 1945, when it became increasingly apparent that Japan was heading for defeat, he was requested by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori to meet with the Soviet ambassador Y.A. Malik and ask Russia to act as a mediator in negotiating peace, but the plan came to nothing. After the war, he was tried by the International Tribunal for the Far East as an A-class war criminal and, without ever taking the witness stand to defend himself, was condemned to death, the only civilian official among those so sentenced. His wife Shizu had already committed suicide in 1946.
Politics
In terms of foreign policy, the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was signed during his premiership. This treaty was the predecessor to the Tripartite Pact of 1940.
Hirota's term lasted for slightly less than a year. He resigned after a disagreement with Hisaichi Terauchi, who was serving as the war minister, over a speech by Kunimatsu Hamada. Kazushige Ugaki was appointed as his successor, but was unable to form the government due to army opposition. In February 1937, Senjūrō Hayashi was appointed to replace Hirota as prime minister.