Marquis (July 18, 1889 – April 6, 1977) was a Japanese statesman who served as

Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan The was an administrative post not of Cabinet rank in the government of the Empire of Japan, responsible for keeping the Privy Seal of Japan and State Seal of Japan. The modern office of the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal was identical with the o ...

from 1940 to 1945, and was the closest advisor to Emperor Hirohito throughout

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 ...

. He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he served 6 years before being released in 1953.

Biography

Early years

Kōichi Kido was born on July 18, 1889 in Akasaka,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

to Marquis Takamasa Kido and Sueko Yamao. He was the grand-nephew of Kido Takayoshi, one of the leaders of the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

. After graduating from the Gakushuin Peer's School in Tokyo, he went to the law school of Kyoto University, where Marxist economist Hajime Kawakami was one of his professors. After graduation in 1915, he held numerous minor bureaucratic posts in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, followed by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Together with Shinji Yoshino and Nobusuke Kishi, he was one of the architects of the Strategic Industries Control Act on 1931, which set the stage for state control of numerous industries during the increasing militarization of Japan in the 1930s. Kido became chief secretary of the

Home Ministry An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministr ...

in 1930.Bix, '' Hirohito'' pages 177-178.

Political career

When his long-time friend Fumimaro Konoe became

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 ...

in 1937, Kido was named Minister of Education. From January 1938, he concurrently held the post of Minister of Health and Welfare. In January 1939, Kido was appointed

Home Minister The Minister of Home Affairs (or simply, the Home Minister, short-form HM) is the head of the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India. One of the senior-most officers in the Union Cabinet, the chief responsibility of the Home Minist ...

in the Hiranuma Cabinet. As

from 1940, Kido became one of the most influential advisors to

Emperor Hirohito Emperor , commonly known in English-speaking countries by his personal name , was the 124th emperor of Japan, ruling from 25 December 1926 until his death in 1989. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kōjun, had two sons and five daughters; he was ...

following the death of

Saionji Kinmochi Prince was a Japanese politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1906 to 1908 and from 1911 to 1912. He was elevated from marquis to prince in 1920. As the last surviving member of Japan's ''genrō,'' he was the most i ...

. He recommended to Hirohito that Konoe succeed

Mitsumasa Yonai was a Japanese general and politician. He served as admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Minister of the Navy, and Prime Minister of Japan in 1940. Early life and career Yonai was born on 2 March 1880, in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, the firs ...

for a second term as Prime Minister of Japan and was active with Konoe in the movement to replace the existing political parties with the ''

Taisei Yokusankai The , or Imperial Aid Association, was the Empire of Japan's ruling organization during much of World War II. It was created by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe on 12 October 1940, to promote the goals of his ("New Order") movement. It evolved i ...

'' (Imperial Rule Assistance Association) to form a single party state. In 1941, Kido recommended that

Hideki Tōjō Hideki Tojo (, ', December 30, 1884 – December 23, 1948) was a Japanese politician, general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and convicted war criminal who served as prime minister of Japan and president of the Imperial Rule Assista ...

become Prime Minister after Konoe's third term in office, as being one of the few people eligible who might be able to maintain control over more radical elements within the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

. However, Kido remained one of the more cautious advisors to Hirohito at the beginning of

, and is known to have advised the emperor against attacking the Dutch East Indies in 1941, explaining that such an attack might provoke the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

into war, and that any oil obtained by taking the East Indies would still have to be transported, and would be subject to blockades and attacks by plane and submarine. Kido also claimed after the war that Hirohito was never aware of the plans to attack

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...

until after the attack occurred. As the war situation deteriorated for Japan, Kido was one of the chief advocates of a negotiated peace, and Kido is generally credited with convincing the government to accept the

Potsdam Declaration The Potsdam Declaration, or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, was a statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, Uni ...

and surrender. He also convinced the emperor that it would be necessary to deliver a personal speech in order to ensure that all civilians and soldiers would cease fighting. He was one of the principal targets for assassination during the

Kyūjō Incident The was an attempted military coup d'état in the Empire of Japan at the end of the Second World War. It happened on the night of 14–15 August 1945, just before the announcement of Japan's surrender to the Allies. The coup was attempted by th ...

in the final days of the war.

Post-war period

Kido was not only the chief advisor to the emperor; he was a major liaison between the emperor and the government, and a representative of the Japanese government to the Allied Occupation Forces. He advised General MacArthur on many aspects of the logistics surrounding the surrender, the end of the war, and the Occupation of Japan. One of his chief motives was consistently to protect the honor of the emperor. In the International Military Tribunal for the Far East held in Tokyo after the war, Kido was charged as a Class A War Criminal. He initially attempted to plead guilty in order to protect the emperor by taking all responsibility for imperial decisions advocating war unto himself. His personal diary, kept in detail since 1930, was voluntarily turned over to the prosecution, and became an important document in determining the internal workings of the Japanese government during the war and was often cited by the prosecution as evidence against the defendants, including Kido himself. Kido was found guilty of Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, and 32, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sugamo Prison, Tokyo. In 1951, as the Occupation of Japan was ending, Kido sent a message to the emperor, advising him as he had advised three years earlier, to accept responsibility for the defeat and abdicate, at the end of the American Occupation. In addition, Kido opposed the idea of continuing to punish war criminals under Japanese law after the end of the American Occupation. According to his diary, "those called war criminals by the enemy's standards, especially those in responsible positions, were all performing loyal duties, and to punish them in the name of the emperor would be unbearable".Dower. ''Embracing Defeat''. page 477 In 1953, due to health problems, Kido was released from prison. He lived the rest of his life in Oiso,

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanag ...

and had a flat in Tokyo's Aoyama. He died at age 87 of

cirrhosis Cirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease, is the impaired liver function caused by the formation of scar tissue known as fibrosis due to damage caused by liver disease. Damage causes tissue rep ...

of the liver at the Imperial Household Agency hospital in Tokyo in 1977. His grave is at the

Tama Cemetery in Tokyo is the largest municipal cemetery in Japan. It is split between the cities of Fuchu and Koganei within the Tokyo Metropolis. First established in April 1923 as , it was redesignated Tama Cemetery in 1935. It is one of the largest green ...

in Tokyo. Kido was married to Kodama Tsuruko, the daughter of General Kodama Gentaro. He had two sons and one daughter.

Cabinet Positions

, - , -

References

* Bix, Herbert P. ''

Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan ''Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan'' is a book by Herbert P. Bix covering the reign of Emperor Hirohito of Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989. It won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for General N ...

''. Harper Perennial (2001). *Dower, John W. '' Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II''. New York: W.W. Norton & Company (1999). *Yagami, Kazuo. ''Konoe Fumimaro and the Failure of Peace in Japan'', 1937–1941. McFarland (2006) *Wetzler. Peter. ''Hirohito and War: Imperial Tradition and Military Decision Making in Prewar Japan''. University of Hawaii Press. (1998) *Finn,Richard B. ''Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan''. University of California Press (1992)

External links

Annotated bibliography for Koichi Kido from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kido, Koichi 1889 births 1977 deaths People from Tokyo Education ministers of Japan Ministers of Home Affairs of Japan Kazoku Kyoto University alumni Japanese people convicted of war crimes Japanese people convicted of the international crime of aggression Japanese prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by international courts and tribunals People convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East Ministers of Health and Welfare of Japan Japanese politicians convicted of crimes Japanese diarists