Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

106 • HIROTA KO – KI
delaying the war’s end, it was Hirohito’s “sacred decision” that made
it finally possible for a government divided between those advocating
surrender and those who refused to admit defeat to surrender.
HIROTA KŌKI (1878–1948). Hirota was an influential diplomat and
politician throughout the Taishō and Shōwa periods, and was the only
civilian tried and found guilty as a Class A war criminal at the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East. As a student of Tokyo
Imperial University—from which he graduated in 1905—he received
instruction from career diplomat Enjirō Yamaza. He entered the Foreign
Ministry in 1906, the same year as Shigeru Yoshida and Eijirō
Hayashi. He served in various posts in China, Britain, and the United
States before he was appointed head of the Foreign Ministry’s
Europe–America Bureau in 1923. Three years later, he was sent to
Holland, and in 1930 he was appointed ambassador to the Soviet
Union. He returned to Japan in November 1932, and, in September
1933, assumed the foreign minister’s post. In a speech before the Imperial
Diet in January 1934, Hirota declared that Japan alone bore responsibility
for the maintenance of peace in Asia and that foreign nations
must recognize that fact. Hirota repeatedly professed that he
sought cooperative relations between Japan and China, although his
willing acquiescence in the application of military pressure against
China’s northern provinces provided a revealing pointer as to his conception
of Sino–Japanese cooperation.
Hirota assumed the prime minister’s post following the February
26 Incident of 1936. Insofar as it concerned itself with foreign affairs,
his cabinet placed highest priority on Soviet Russia, and in November
1936, Japan and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact.
This, in turn, helped facilitate Japanese aggression in China by reducing
the threat of Soviet intervention.
In January 1937, Hirota’s cabinet was replaced by that of General
Hayashi Senjūrō, which, in turn, was replaced by the first cabinet of
Fumimaro Konoe in June 1937. Hirota was appointed foreign minister.
Within a month, fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces
broke out outside Peking near the Marco Polo Bridge. By August, the
fighting had spread to Shanghai. Hirota did nothing to slow—much
less prevent—the slide into all-out war. To the contrary, he favored its
extension. He resigned as foreign minister in May 1938.