Tōjō Hideki, General

Tōjō Hideki, General (1884–1948),Japan's political and military leader during the greater part of the Second World War in the east, as prime minister from 1941 to 1944 and as army minister from 1940 to 1944. Born in Tokyo, the son of an army general, he graduated from the military academy ( 1905) and the army staff college ( 1915). Hard-working but not particularly bright, he distinguished himself as an administrator rather than as a field commander. After serving as a military attaché in Switzerland and Germany (1919–22), he taught at the army staff college (1922–6), was attached to the army ministry (1926–9), commanded the First Infantry Regiment (1929–31), served with the army General Staff (1931–4), and commanded the 24th Infantry Brigade (1934–5). It was at this period that he gained the nickname ‘Razor’ (Kamisori) Tōjō for his strictness and adherence to details.

In the factional struggles within the army in the 1930s Tojo was one of the leaders of the control faction (tōseiha), which favoured stronger discipline in the ranks, an enhanced role for the army in the state, and expansion in China. In 1935 he was appointed commander of the Kempei (military police) of the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo, where he suppressed the more radical elements of the imperial way faction (kōdōha). In March 1937 he became chief of staff of the Kwantung Army and in that position played a major role in the Japanese attack on China in July of that year (see China incident). The war with China provided Tōjō with his only combat experience when, in late 1937, he led two brigades to conquer Chahar (Inner Mongolia). Tōjō's position on China was that only a show of force, in the form of an occupation of Chinese territory, would persuade the Chinese to collaborate with Japan. In this stand he clashed with General Ishiwara Kanji, who cautioned against a full-scale war with China. Ishiwara's removal from the General Staff in September 1937 marked the victory of the hardliners, of whom Tōjō was one of the leading figures.

In May 1938 Tōjō was appointed army vice-minister under General Itagaki, in the first cabinet of Prince Konoe. In that cabinet Itagaki and Tōjō represented the position of the army, which opposed any compromise or accommodation with the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. After the fall of the Konoe cabinet in January 1939, Tōjō became inspector-general of army aviation. When Konoe formed his second cabinet in July 1940, Tōjō was appointed army minister and he remained in that post in Konoe's third cabinet, which was formed in July 1941. As army minister he wielded a strong influence over the cabinet, pressing for a hardline policy towards the western powers and China and for a controlled economy at home.

In 1940, with the blessing of Tōjō and the army, the political parties dissolved and set up the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (see Japan, 3). Following Hitler's military victories in Europe, Tōjō pushed for the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy which was formed in September of that year. In July 1941 he induced the cabinet to dispatch troops to southern Indo-China, a move which made the Americans impose a total trade embargo on Japan. As relations with the western powers deteriorated, the Imperial Conference, upon Tōjō's recommendation, decided on 6 September 1941 that Japan would go to war with the UK and USA if a solution was not found by early October.

Prince Konoe, having failed to accommodate the Americans as well as his own military leaders, resigned on 16 October and Emperor Hirohito, upon the recommendation of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kido Kōichi, asked Tōjō to form a cabinet. Kido hoped that Tōjō's appointment would serve a warning to the USA and restrain the army at home, but the results were the reverse. On 26 November 1941, Washington notified Japan that it must withdraw from China as a precondition for the resumption of trade (the ‘Hull Note’), and the Tōjō cabinet, viewing this as a hostile move, decided to go to war. Tōjō justified this decision by saying that in the life of every nation, as in the life of every individual, there is a moment when a momentous risk has to be taken, and one must be ready ‘to jump with closed eyes from the veranda of the Kiyomizu Temple’. Under his direction, Japan launched the attack on Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, conquered most of East and South-East Asia, and set up the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

Tōjō was the first prime minister of Japan to hold concurrently the posts of army minister and general on the active list. During the first four months of his cabinet, which coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War in the east, he was also home minister and in that capacity directed the arrests of leftists and liberals. These powers made him the strongest prime minister in modern Japanese history, and he used them to harass his opponents and establish the supremacy of the military. The Tōjō cabinet imposed strict controls on the economy, the press, and all political and public organizations. In April 1942 Tōjō called a general election, in which the government helped ‘recommended’ candidates to be elected to the Diet. He also tried to enhance his public image by addressing rallies, reviewing troops, and riding in open cars.

But unlike his allies Hitler and Mussolini, Tōjō was not a dictator. He assumed office in the traditional way through being recommended to the Emperor, and his rise to power was not accompanied by constitutional changes. There was no mass movement behind him and no ideology attributed to him. Despite all his posts, he had to contend with other centres of power such as the civil bureaucracy, the navy, the industrial conglomerates (zaibatsu), senior statesmen, and the imperial court, all of which protected their autonomy. His ability to dictate to other ministers, or to the Imperial Headquarters conducting the military and naval operations, was also limited. One of his major problems was how to increase war production in view of the great losses which had to be made up and the competition between the army and the navy over raw materials. To solve this problem, in November 1943 he established the ministry of munitions with himself as minister, but it was only a partial solution.

The weakness of Tōjō's position became evident when Japan began to suffer serious military setbacks in 1944. In February of that year he also assumed the office of army chief of staff, in order to direct the campaigns personally, but this infuriated his critics. After the fall of the strategic island of Saipan in June, a coalition of his opponents, made up of senior statesmen, naval officers, and court officials, pressed for his resignation. Tōjō tried to placate and intimidate them, but failed. In July 1944, bowing to pressure to assume responsibility for operational losses, he resigned all his positions. This was done without any putsch and he stepped down in the same constitutional way in which he rose to power. After his resignation he was neither arrested nor denounced, but withdrew to the obscurity of a former prime minister, leaving the stage to his successors, Lt-General Koiso Kuniaki (until April 1945) and Admiral Suzuki Kantarō. Japan was thus the only major belligerent which changed its leaders peacefully twice during the Second World War.

When Japan surrendered, Tōjō did not commit suicide as some other military officers did. Only when American military policemen arrived to arrest him did he shoot himself in the chest, but he missed vital organs and recovered from the wound. He was put on trial as a war criminal (see Far East war crimes trials) and the court found him guilty of conspiracy, waging an aggressive war, and ordering, authorizing, and permitting atrocities. In December 1948 he was hanged, together with six other convicted wartime leaders, at the Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.

There was little public sympathy for Tōjō in Japan in the post-war period. His responsibility for the war, his oppressive regime, and his failure to commit suicide turned him into a notorious figure. Later revelations about his personal integrity, impeccable family life, devotion to duty, and loyalty to the emperor somewhat improved his image. In 1978 Tōjō's name, together with those of thirteen other ‘class A’ war criminals, was commemorated in the Yasukuni shrine, Japan's foremost memorial for its fallen soldiers. There was a wave of protests, mainly from Christian and pacifist groups, but as the shrine was then a private institution the government could not interfere. In 1980, when the site of Sugamo prison was converted into a residential and shopping complex, a monument was erected at the place where Tōjō and the other war criminals had been executed. This act too elicited many protests. See also Japan, 3.

Ben-Ami Shillony

Bibliography

Bix, H. P. , Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (London, 2000).
Butow, R. J. C. , Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton, 1961).
Shillony, B.- A. , Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Oxford, 1981).