Mitsujirō Ishii

Mitsujirō Ishii (石井 光次郎, ''Ishii Mitsujirō'', 18 August 1889 – 20 September 1981) was a Japanese politician, cabinet minister, and Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1946 to 1947 and from 1952 to 1972. In 1955, he played a major role in the merger of Japan’s conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and, in 1956, led a delegation to meet Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek. Ishii served as cabinet minister at numerous times, beginning with a stint as Minister of Commerce and Industry in 1947. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1958 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1967 to 1969.

Early life

Mitsujiro Ishii was born on August 18, 1889, in Kurume, Fukuoka. Ishii was childhood friends with Shojiro Ishibashi, the founder of Bridgestone, and the two men remained close all their lives. Ishii went on to study at Kobe Commercial High School and afterwards at Tokyo Higher Commercial School, where he graduated in 1914.

After graduating, Ishii was employed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and served as chief of the Traffic and Public Peace sections. Later he was assigned as chief of the Secretariat and Foreign Affairs sections to the Governor-General of Taiwan. In 1922, he joined the Asahi Shimbun and worked on the business side, rising to become senior mangaging director. He was a close associate of Taketora Ogata, who served as editor-in-chief and later as vice president. Ishii had married a daughter of the politician and industrialist Fusanosuke Kuhara.

Ishii became a disciple of Morihei Ueshiba in 1928 and was an early supporter of Aikido. He was also an avid golfer. Golf was nearly suppressed in Japan during the war, but Ishii, who represented the golf association, convinced the authorities that golf was resurrected form of the ancient game of Dakyu.

Political career

After the war, Ishii was elected to the House of Representatives for the Liberal Party in the 1946 general election. In January 1947, Ishii joined the cabinet of Shigeru Yoshida as Minister of Commerce and Industry, but in May he was purged from public office by the GHQ.
Ishii became president of the Japan Golf Association when it was re-founded in 1949. He served briefly as the first president of the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation from 1951 to 1952, but when the purge had been lifted, he returned to political life in the 1952 general election. Ishii then served as minister of transport under Yoshida from 1952 to 1954.

When Yoshida resigned in 1954, Ichirō Hatoyama of the Japan Democratic Party became prime minister and Taketora Ogata became president of the Liberal Party. Ogata appointed Ishii as secretary-general. As such, he played a large part in the merger of the two parties which founded the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. Ishii became the first chairman of the General Council for the new party.

Ogata died unexpectedly in January 1956 and Ishii inherited his faction in the LDP. In April of the same year, Ishii led a delegation friendship delegation to Taiwan and met with Chiang Kai-shek. Ishii came to be a notable pro-Taiwanese figure in Japanese politics.

In December, Ishii became a candidate in the LDP leadership election to succeed Hatoyama. He placed third after Nobusuke Kishi and Tanzan Ishibashi. The Ishii camp preferred Ishibashi in the runoff vote, narrowly electing him over Kishi. However, Ishibashi resigned due to poor health a few months later and Kishi became prime minister.

Ishii became deputy prime minister when Kishi reshuffled the cabinet in May 1957. Initially he was without portfolio, but in July he was made director general of the Administrative Management Agency and the Hokkaido Development Agency. He served in these roles until June 1958. In 1959 he again became chairman of the General Council.

In May 1960, at the height of the massive Anpo protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty, Ishii banded together with fellow faction leaders Ichirō Kōno, Kenzō Matsumura, Takeo Miki, and Ishibashi Tanzan to try to bring down the Kishi cabinet in response to Kishi's mishandling of the protests and especially his unpopular way of ramming the treaty through the Diet in the " May 19 Incident". When Kishi finally resigned in disgrace in July 1960, Ishii ran in the leadership election to replace him. Hayato Ikeda was the favorite, but still had a public image as a haughty bureaucrat. Many felt that Ishii would have a better chance of reconciling the nation following the protests. Most of the faction heads who did not support Ikeda came to rally behind Ishii, including Banboku Ōno, Ichirō Kōno, Kenzō Matsumura, and Takeo Miki. However, Kishi could not forgive Ishii for having plotted against him, and thus threw the support of his still-powerful faction behind Ikeda, as did Kishi's brother Eisaku Satō. Thus, Ikeda prevailed in the end, but he still made Ishii Minister of International Trade and Industry in his first cabinet as a gesture of reconciliation. However, Ishii soon left the cabinet due to a reshuffle in December.

Ishii returned to the cabinet under Ikeda's successor Eisaku Satō as minister of justice from 1965 to 1966. After the 1967 general election he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He resigned two years later. As an elder statesman, he tended to support Takeo Fukuda, who shared his pro-Taiwanese leanings. Ishii declined to run in the 1972 general election, retiring from politics.

Ishii had served as president of the Japan Golf Association from its foundation in 1949 until 1971. He was president of the Japan Sport Association from 1962 to 1975. He was also Chairman of the Yokozuna Deliberation Council from 1976 until his death.

Ishii died of heart failure on September 20, 1981, at the age of 92.

Personal life

Ishii and his wife had two sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Kōichirō, was employed at the Bridgestone Corporation founded by his father's friend Shojiro Ishibashi. Kōichirō married Ishibashi's fourth daughter Tamako. After holding several executive positions, he became president of the subsidiary Bridgestone Cycle. He was also a vice president of Nippon Kaigi.

Their second daughter Yoshiko was a prominent ''chanson'' singer, pioneering the style in Japan.

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Deputy prime ministers of Japan
1889 births
1981 deaths