Fumimaro Konoe
Prince Fumimaro Konoe (Japanese: 近衞 文麿, Hepburn: Konoe Fumimaro, 12 October 1891 – 16 December 1945) was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1937 to 1939 and from 1940 to 1941. He presided over the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and the breakdown in relations with the United States, which ultimately culminated in Japan's entry into World War II. He also played a central role in transforming his country into a totalitarian state by passing the State General Mobilization Law and founding the Imperial Rule Assistance Association by dissolving all other political parties.
For the 76th Emperor also known as Emperor Konoe, see Emperor Konoe.
Fumimaro Konoe
Hirohito
12 October 1891
Tokyo, Empire of Japan
16 December 1945 (aged 54)
Tekigai-sō, Tokyo, Allied-occupied Japan
Suicide by cyanide
Imperial Rule Assistance Association (1940–1945)
Independent (Before 1940)
Konoe Chiyoko (1896–1980)
Konoe Atsumaro
Maeda Sawako
近衞 文麿
Konoe Fumimaro
Konoe Fumimaro
Born in Tokyo to a prominent aristocratic family, Konoe took up his father's seat in the House of Peers of the Imperial Diet in 1916. He was a member of the Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. In 1933, Konoe assumed the presidency of the House of Peers. In 1937, on the recommendation of his mentor Saionji Kinmochi, Konoe was appointed prime minister by Emperor Hirohito. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place a month after his appointment and escalated into full-scale warfare. Konoe oversaw Japanese victories during the early phase of the Second Sino-Japanese War and pushed through the State General Mobilization Law, placing the country on war-time footing. Konoe resigned as prime minister in 1939 as Chinese resistance continued and the war dragged on.
Konoe served as chairman of the Privy Council until 1940 when he was again appointed prime minister. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association was founded later that year, while Japan concluded the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, launched an invasion of French Indochina and formally recognized Wang Jingwei's government in Nanjing. In 1941, Japan concluded the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. Despite Konoe's attempts to resolve tensions with the United States, the rigid timetable imposed on negotiations by the military and his own administration's inflexibility set Japan on the path to war. Politically isolated, Konoe resigned as prime minister in October 1941 and was replaced by Hideki Tojo. Six weeks later the Pacific War broke out following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Konoe remained a close advisor to Hirohito until the end of World War II and played a role in the fall of Tojo cabinet in 1944. At the start of the Allied occupation of Japan, he served in the cabinet of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni. After coming under suspicion of war crimes, Konoe committed suicide in December 1945, aged 54, by ingesting cyanide.
Alliance with Home Ministry[edit]
The Japanese home ministry was extremely powerful, in charge of the police, elections, public works, Shinto shrines, and land development. The home ministry was also abused to influence elections in favour of the ruling party.[26] Despite having once believed it to be beneath the dignity of a nobleman, Konoe entered into an alliance with important home ministry officials. The most important among these officials was Yoshiharu Tazawa, whom he met after he became the managing director of the Japan Youth Hall (Nippon Seinenkan) in 1921. Konoe and his allies saw the influence of local meiboka political bosses as a threat to Japan's political stability. Universal suffrage had opened the vote to the undereducated peasantry, but local bosses, using pork-barrel politics, manipulated their influence on the government. These officials also shared Konoe's concern about party influence within the home ministry, which had seen great turnover mirroring the political upheaval occurring in the Diet.[27] Konoe's association with the youth hall began two months after the publication of an article in July 1921, where he stressed education of the electorate's political wisdom and morality, and lamented that education only taught youth to accept ideas passively from their superiors. The Youth Corps (Seinendan) was thereafter created to foster a moral sense of civic duty among the people, with the overall purpose of destroying the meiboka system.[28]
In 1925, Konoe and these officials formed the Alliance for a New Japan (Shin Nippon Domei), which endorsed the concept of representative government but rejected the value of party and local village bosses, instead advocating that new candidates from outside the parties should run for office.[29] The Association for Election Purification (Senkyo Shukusei Dōmeikai) was also created, an organization whose purpose was to circumvent and weaken pork-barrel local politics by supporting candidates that were not beholden to meiboka bosses. The alliance formed a political party (meiseikai) but was unable to secure popular support and dissolved within two years of formation (in 1928).[30]
Road to First Premiership[edit]
In the 1920s Japanese foreign policy was largely in line with Anglo-American policy, the Treaty of Versailles, and the Washington Naval Conference treaty, and there was agreement between the great powers over the establishment of an independent Chinese state. A flourishing party system controlled the cabinet in alliance with industry.[31] The Great Depression of the 1930s, the rise of Soviet military power in the east, further insistence on limitations to Japanese naval power, and increased Chinese resistance to Japanese aggression in Asia marked the abandonment of Japanese cooperation with the Anglo-American powers. The Japanese government began to seek autonomy in foreign policy, and — as the sense of crisis deepened — unity and mobilization became overarching imperatives.[32]
Konoe assumed the vice presidency of the House of Peers in 1931.[33] In 1932, political parties lost control of the cabinet. Thenceforth, cabinets were formed by alliances of political elites and military factions. As Japan mobilized its resources for war, the government increased suppression of political parties and what remained of the left wing.[32] Konoe ascended to the presidency of the House of Peers in 1933 and spent the next few years mediating between elite political factions, elite policy consensus, and national unity.[34]
Meanwhile, Fumimaro sent his eldest son Fumitaka to study in the U.S., at Princeton, wishing to prepare him for politics and make him an able proponent of Japan in America. Unlike most of his elite contemporaries, Fumimaro had not been educated abroad due to his father's poor finances.[35] Fumimaro visited Fumitaka in 1934 and he was shocked by rising anti-Japanese sentiment. This experience deepened his resentment of the U.S., which he perceived as selfish and racist, and which he blamed for its failure to avert economic disaster. In a speech in 1935, Konoe said that the "monopolization" of resources by the Anglo-American alliance must end and be replaced by an "international new deal" to help countries like Japan take care of their growing populations.[36]
Konoe's views were thus a recapitulation of those he had expressed at Versailles almost 20 years earlier. He still believed that Japan was the equal and the rival of the western powers, that Japan had a right to expansion in China, that such expansion was survival, and that the "Anglo-American powers were hypocrites seeking to enforce their economic dominance of the world."[37][38]