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

MATSUOKA, YO – SUKE • 177
of the New Life in upstate New York for one year. He was allowed
to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1869 and graduated
from its regular course in 1873. During his lengthy career as a Japanese
naval officer, ultimately reaching the rank of vice-admiral, Matsumura
played a key role in expanding the Imperial Japanese Navy.
MATSUOKA, YŌSUKE (1880–1946). As foreign minister from July
1940 until July 1941, Yōsuke Matsuoka exerted a profound effect
over Japan’s road to war with the United States. Garrulous and abrasive,
Matsuoka was regarded by Secretary of State Cordell Hull as
being “as crooked as a basket of fish hooks.” Several of his contemporaries—both
Japanese and American—went so far as to question
the foreign minister’s mental health.
Born into an impoverished merchant family in March 1880, Matsuoka
in 1893 entered the United States as an itinerant. He remained
on the West Coast of the United States until 1902, by which time he
had graduated second in his class from the University of Oregon
School of Law. After his return to Japan, he entered the Foreign Ministry
and served in posts in China, Russia, and the United States. Following
World War I, he served as a member of Japan’s delegation to
the Paris Peace Conference, and soon after left the Foreign Ministry.
He was subsequently appointed to the board of the South
Manchurian Railway Company, a quasi-governmental body that
spearheaded Japan’s aggressive policies toward northern China. In
February 1930, Matsuoka was elected to the House of Representatives
only to resign his seat in December 1933. In the meantime, he
negotiated an end to the Shanghai Incident and led Japan out of the
League of Nations to protest that body’s criticism of Japan’s 1931 invasion
of Manchuria.
Appointed foreign minister in July 1940, Matsuoka worked with
the army and navy leaders and Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe to
set a foreign policy agenda that included an alliance with Germany
and Italy, and an opportunistic policy of expansion into the colonial
regions of Southeast Asia. He also sought an adjustment of diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union and the United States, believing
that a German alliance would empower Japan to the extent that
rapprochement with Moscow and Washington would come largely on
Tokyo’s terms.