was a Japanese

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

who was

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Sta ...

from 1954 to 1956. A conservative, Hatoyama helped oversee the 1955 merger of the

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

and the Democratic Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), of which Hatoyama was the first party president and first prime minister, and which would go on to rule Japan for most of the next seven decades. As prime minister, Hatoyama's signature achievement was restoring official diplomatic relations with the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, which had been in abeyance since

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Personal life

Ichirō Hatoyama was, as his name indicates, the first born boy. He was born into a wealthy cosmopolitan family in Tokyo. His father Kazuo Hatoyama (1856–1911) was a

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

graduate (and Speaker of the House of Representatives) and his mother

Haruko Hatoyama was a Japanese educator of the Meiji, Taishō and Shōwa periods, and the matriarchal head of the prominent Japanese Hatoyama political family which has been called "Japan's Kennedy family." She was a co-founder of what is today Kyoritsu Wome ...

(1863–1938) was a famous author and the founder of Kyoritsu Women's University. His brother Hideo Hatoyama was a noted jurist. Ichirō was a

Master Mason Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

and a Protestant Christian ( Baptist). He was Japan's third postwar Christian

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

Iichirō Hatoyama was a Japanese politician and diplomat. Between 1976 and 1977, he served as Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda. He was the son and father of two former Prime Ministers, Ichirō At end of the war, Iichirō was one of 6.6 million ...

, Ichirō's only son, made a career for himself as a civil servant in the Budget Bureau of the Finance Ministry. Iichirō retired after having achieved the rank of administrative Vice Minister. In his second career in politics, he rose to become Foreign Minister of Japan in 1976–1977. "Iichiro Hatoyama; Ex-Foreign Minister, 75" (obituary)
''The New York Times.'' 20 December 1993. One of Ichirō's grandsons, Yukio Hatoyama, became prime minister in 2009 as a member of the

Democratic Party of Japan The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic ...

. Ichirō Hatoyama died in his Hatoyama Hall house, in Tokyo's

Bunkyō is a special ward located in Tokyo, Japan. Situated in the middle of the ward area, Bunkyō is a residential and educational center. Beginning in the Meiji period, literati like Natsume Sōseki, as well as scholars and politicians have lived th ...

district, on 7 March 1959. He was buried in the Yanaka Cemetery, in nearby Taitō district.

Political career

Ichirō was first elected to the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

as a Rikken Seiyūkai member in 1915, and served continuously until his death in 1959. He was about to become prime minister in 1946, but was barred from politics for five years by

Supreme Commander Allied Powers was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States-led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "milit ...

because they thought he had co-operated with the authoritarian government in the 1930s and 1940s. As part of the Occupation's "

Reverse Course The is the name commonly given to a shift in the policies of the U.S. government and the U.S.-led Allied occupation of Japan as they sought to reform and rebuild Japan after World War II. The Reverse Course began in 1947, at a time of rising Co ...

," Hatoyama was de-purged and allowed to return to politics in 1951. Kodama Hatoyama Miki

CIA files that were declassified in 2005 and then publicized in January 2007 by the

U.S. National Archives The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

detail a plot by ultranationalists to assassinate prime minister

Shigeru Yoshida (22 September 1878 – 20 October 1967) was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954. Yoshida was one of the longest-serving Japanese prime ministers, and is the third-long ...

and install a more hawkish government led by Ichirō Hatoyama in 1952. The plot was never carried out. As prime minister in 1955, he restored diplomatic ties with the

. A staunch conservative, Hatoyama favored pardons for some of the Class A war criminals who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Tokyo Trial. He hoped to revise the

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

to remove Article 9 and eventually remilitarize Japan. To this end, in 1956 he established a "Constitutional Research Commission" to prepare for the process of constitutional revision. That same year, Hatoyama attempted to implement his infamous " Hatomander" (ハトマンダー, ''hatomandā'', a portmanteau of Hatoyama and

Gerrymander In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...

), an attempt to replace Japan's

SNTV SNTV may refer to: *Single non-transferable vote, an electoral system in multi-member constituency elections *Sistema Nacional de Televisión (Nicaragua), the Nicaraguan state broadcaster from 1990–1997 *Sistema Nacional de Televisión (Paraguay) ...

multi-member constituencies with American-style

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

single-member districts, which would have made it easier for the LDP to secure the two-thirds of seats in the Lower House of the National Diet needed to revise the Constitution. The plan passed the Lower House of the Diet, but was shelved in the face of intense popular opposition before it could pass the Upper House.

Hatoyama family and freemasonry

Ichirō and some members of Hatoyama family are known as advocates of fraternity. During the

purge In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...

against Ichirō (1946–1951), he received an English book ''The Totalitarian State against Man'' originally written in German by an Austrian freemason

Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi (16 November 1894 – 27 July 1972) was an Austrian-Japanese politician, philosopher and Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi. A pioneer of European integration, he served as the founding president of ...

from a professor of

Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...

Kesazō Ichimura (1898–1950) who wanted Ichirō to translate the English book into Japanese. The English book struck a sympathetic chord in Ichirō, and he began to advocate fraternity, also known as yūai (友愛) in Japanese. On 29 March 1951, he was initiated as 1st degree of freemason, and on 26 March 1955, passed as 2nd degree mason, and raised as 3rd degree mason. His grandsons are advocates of fraternity. However, when a Japanese press asked Yukio Hatoyama's office and the masonic grand lodge of Japan whether Yukio Hatoyama was a freemason, his office denied it and the grand lodge of Japan didn't answer it. At least, on his grandson

Kunio Hatoyama was a Japanese politician who served as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications under Prime Ministers Shinzō Abe and Yasuo Fukuda until 12 June 2009. Biography Kunio Hatoyama was born in Tokyo in 1948. He was a son of Yasuko Hato ...

, the brother of Yukio, on a Japanese TV program ''Takajin no Money'' on 25 August 2012, his partner Emily's Australian father was a member of freemasonry. He said so, and said he had swum in a masonic pool with her at Tokyo when he had started to going steady with her. Although he didn't say he himself was a mason or not, he insisted that he had not been invited to freemasonry, and he guessed his brother Yukio as a freemason. Yukio and Kunio became the officers of a fraternal organization named ''Yūai Kyōkai'' (or ''Yūai Association'') with their sister Kazuko, founded by their grandfather Ichirō who became the first president of the former organization in 1953. And also Ichirō's son Iichirō became the third president of the same former organization. The granddaughter and two grandsons of Ichiro's founded a fraternal school ''Hatoyama Yuai-Jyuku'' at Hatoyama Hall (Hatoyama kaikan) in April 2008.hatoyama-yuai-jyuku.com
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Honours

''From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia'' *Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (1959; posthumous)

References

External links

* * ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' cover portrait of Ichirō Hatoyama
14 March 1955
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatoyama, Ichiro 1883 births 1959 deaths 20th-century prime ministers of Japan Government ministers of Japan Education ministers of Japan Ichiro Democratic Party (Japan, 1954) politicians Japanese Baptists Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Democratic Liberal Party (Japan) politicians Liberal Party (Japan, 1945) politicians Prime Ministers of Japan Rikken Seiyūkai politicians 20th-century Japanese politicians Japanese Freemasons 20th-century Baptists Politicians from Tokyo