1884-1948
Japanese politician
1. Introduction
Tojo was prime minister of Japan from 1941 to 1944, serving under Emperor Hirohito. He was known as ‘Razor’ (Kamisori) for his quick decisions and sharp gestures. He became a major-general and chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, the largest group in the Imperial Japanese Army. As prime minister, he ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, bringing the USA into World War II. After various military defeats, he was obliged by the emperor to resign in 1944. He tried to commit suicide before arrest by the Allies in 1946. Two years later, he was convicted of war crimes and hanged.
2. Stories
- Tojo’s military career included senior command in Manchuria before becoming Japanese prime minister in October 1941.
- Within two months of becoming prime minister, Tojo authorised the attacks on Pearl Harbor and other locations.
- Tojo shot himself just before he was arrested in 1945 but survived.
- Tojo was one of seven to be hanged after sentencing by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
- During the first day of his trial, Tojo was slapped on his head on two occasions by another defendant, causing considerable distraction.
- Tojo’s acceptance of full responsibility for the war exonerated Emperor Hirohito, at the insistence of the USA to help post-war recovery.
- Churchill never met Tojo but was on good terms with his successor Shigeru Yoshida.
Tojo’s military career included senior command in Manchuria before becoming Japanese prime minister in October 1941.
Tojo came from lower nobility and followed his lieutenant general father into the Imperial Japanese Army. After a brief posting in Siberia in 1918 to 1919 during the Russian Civil War, he became a military attaché in Germany, with which the Japanese military had close ties. He was promoted rapidly, becoming a colonel in 1928 and a major general in 1934. He had little involvement in the upbringing of his seven children, focussing instead on army life.
He became head of the feared military police of the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo (Manchuria), then chief of staff, supporting the de facto Japanese colonisation of north-east China. After an attempted coup in Tokyo by a faction of the Japanese army in 1936, Tojo helped to root out any coup sympathisers in the Kwantung Army.
After a year of seeking to expand Japanese territorial gains in China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, he returned to Japan in 1938 to be vice-minister of war. He advocated war with Russia to take control of Siberia and Mongolia (the ‘strike north’ policy) until military defeats resulted in the 1941 Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact. He then turned to a ‘strike south’ policy, a push into resource-rich southeast Asia.
Tojo’s strong nationalist and expansionist views found favour with Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, who appointed him army minister, then minister of war. Also to Tojo’s advantage were his respectful approach to the emperor’s authority and his support for the Tripartite Pact (or Berlin Pact) of 1940, which provided for military cooperation between Germany, Italy and Japan.
Konoe introduced authoritarian rule in Japan through a major increase of government control in 1938 and the replacement of all political parties by the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940. The following year, he sent troops into French Indochina to cut off supply lines to China. Concerned about Japanese expansionism, the USA imposed increasing levels of sanctions on Japan, including an embargo on oil. As tensions rose, Konoe came under pressure and resigned. After some discussion between Emperor Hirohito and his advisors, Tojo was appointed prime minister in October 1941, inheriting considerable powers.
Within two months of becoming prime minister, Tojo authorised the attacks on Pearl Harbor and other locations.
Tojo sent negotiators to the USA to engage with Secretary of State Cordell Hull but talks ended in a stalemate. The ‘Hull note’ of 26 November 1941 was described by Tojo to his cabinet as an American ultimatum for Japanese withdrawal from occupied territories. At 7.48 a.m. Hawaiian time on Sunday 7 December, around 350 aircraft from six aircraft carriers attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Other coordinated attacks took place in Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.
Churchill had been struggling unsuccessfully to persuade the US to drop its officially neutral status and side with the Allies. When news of a Japanese attack on the US reached him, without details of casualties, he is said to have done a little jig (see Averell Harriman). He called Roosevelt immediately who confirmed that the US would declare war on Japan after approval by Congress. Churchill declared war nine hours ahead of the USA on the basis of Japan’s attacks on British territories.
The lack of a formal Japanese declaration of war before the Hawaii attack remains controversial, with some saying that the Hull note was a casus belli (an act or situation that provokes or justifies a war), regardless of it being a draft document with no deadline for action. Due to a Japanese administrative blunder, notice of termination of negotiations was not delivered to the USA until over an hour after the attack started. After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East decided that no declaration had been given and therefore the attack was a war crime.
The primary reason for the attack has also been contested. Some see a trend of Japanese expansionism; others continue to argue that it was a pre-emptive strike in self-defence against harsh sanctions and US military expansion in the Pacific, still a popular view in Japan.
Churchill’s first term as prime minister ended in July 1945, three weeks before the end of World War II in the Pacific. Attlee was prime minister when atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it was Churchill who gave prior British approval to the USA (see Truman).
Tojo shot himself just before he was arrested in 1945 but survived.
Losses in the naval Battle of Midway in June 1942 and the six-month Guadalcanal campaign in 1942 and 1943 were major setbacks for Tojo. Although he never had the same powers as Hitler or Mussolini, he became increasingly autocratic, adding the role of chief of army staff and various other positions to himself. The Battle of Saipan in 1944 gave the US a bomber base within range of Japan and, despite long-standing earlier support from Emperor Hirohito, Tojo was obliged to resign in July 1944.
There was some speculation about whether Tojo might commit suicide at this point due to dishonour but he remained active in the military reserve. After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, General Douglas MacArthur ordered his arrest, together with that of around 40 others. When American soldiers arrived at Tojo’s house, he shot himself in the chest but missed his heart, despite having its location marked with charcoal on his skin by his doctor. It is not clear whether the miss was due to an erroneous charcoal mark or an inaccurate shot.
As he lay sprawled in his chair, he said, ‘I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die. […] I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails.’1 His Japanese house staff and a Japanese doctor wanted to let him die, but an American medic team was summoned which kept him alive. He received domestic criticism for using the foreign method of a gun rather than a samurai sword.
While being held in prison, he received a new upper denture from an American dentist called Jack Mallory. Given Tojo’s reputation as an aggressor amongst the Allies, Mallory was shocked to find a ‘grandfatherly looking older man […] He was very humble and just a meek, little guy.’2 Normally name, rank and number were inscribed on military dentures but Mallory’s colleagues persuaded him to add ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’, which he drilled in Morse Code, without telling Tojo. However, word leaked and Mallory hastily arranged to remove the message. The story was denied until Mallory’s son disclosed it during his father’s retirement.
Tojo was one of seven to be hanged after sentencing by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
The Tribunal sat in Tokyo for over two and a half years from 1946 to 1948, presided over by eleven justices from eleven Allied countries, including China and the Soviet Union. Twenty-eight defendants were charged: seven were executed; two died of natural causes during the trial; one was found unfit for trial; and the others were jailed with sentences of seven years to life. All but one of the defendants were former military officials and government ministers.
The Tribunal’s prosecutions were only against the most senior leaders suspected of ‘Class A’ crimes (the most serious). Forty-two less senior Class A suspects were soon released, including industrial and financial magnates. Numerous other court cases were held in various jurisdictions for ‘Class B’ crimes, resulting in nearly 1000 death sentences and many more jail sentences.
Tojo pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ on the basis of self-defence in order to preserve Japan’s national existence, saying that the war was caused by American and British pressure and that conflict was necessary to combat communism. The only ‘crime’ that he acknowledged was to lose the war.
The judgement against Tojo and the other defendants was by majority, with three justices dissenting, from British India, France and the Netherlands. Tojo and six others were hanged on 23 December 1948 in a prison near Tokyo, now demolished. General MacArthur forbade photographs, to avoid Japanese offence, against President Truman’s instructions. Those executed were cremated and their ashes were intermingled and scattered at sea. However, a portion was stolen from the crematorium and given to families.
Tojo has a memorial in Zoshigaya Cemetery in Tokyo and is enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, which remains controversial as it contains over 1000 convicted war criminals, including 14 of the ‘Class A’ category. The ‘Class A’ individuals were entombed in a secret ceremony in 1978 by the shrine’s head priest who disagreed with the Tribunal’s verdict, after which Emperor Hirohito declined to visit (his final attendance in 1975 was the last by an emperor). Subsequent visits to the shrine by senior Japanese officials have caused objections from other countries, particularly China and South Korea.
During the first day of his trial, Tojo was slapped on his head on two occasions by another defendant, causing considerable distraction.
A newsreel from 1946 captures the moment when Tojo is sitting in a large courtroom and a wizened-looking man behind him leans forward and gives Tojo’s bald head a moderate slap.[1] Tojo is somewhat surprised but appears slightly amused. After a second slap shortly afterwards, the man was temporarily removed from the court. On other occasions during the trial, he sometimes appeared barefooted, shouted random phrases, mumbled incoherently, and wept dramatically.
He was Shumei Okawa, a political philosopher, nationalist and the only non-military, non-government individual to be indicted. He said later that the slap was a way to shatter the ridiculous solemnity of a show trial. He demonstrated his technique to reporters and for a while the incident overshadowed the main event, with wide coverage by international news outlets.
Okawa was regarded in some circles as having provided the intellectual foundation for imperialist Japan’s ambitions. He was known as ‘Japan’s Goebbels’ in some of the western press, although he was more akin to German theorist Alfred Rosenberg. Despite not being as race-oriented as Nazi ideology, Okawa’s thinking promoted Japanese domination in Asia and predicted a clash of civilisations between East and West.
He was a leader in an attempted coup in 1932 involving the murder of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi at his home, to try and bring about direct rule by the emperor. The coup also targeted Inukai’s guest Charlie Chaplin, to foment discord with the USA, but Chaplin was at a sumo competition with Inukai’s son at the time of the attack. Okawa was sentenced to nine years in prison and was released after five.
After his 1946 antics in court, Okawa was examined by Dr Daniel Jaffe, an American army psychiatrist, who determined that he was not capable of testifying in his own defence. Although suspected by many (including the CIA) of feigning his condition, Okawa was committed to a mental institution and escaped trial. He was released in 1948, the only one of the original 28 Tribunal defendants to walk free. His full faculties recovered remarkably and he died nine years later, aged 71.
Tojo’s acceptance of full responsibility for the war exonerated Emperor Hirohito, at the insistence of the USA to help post-war recovery.
Although Tojo pleaded ‘Not Guilty’, he took responsibility for the war and in his trial affidavit stated that the emperor took no part in decision-making. The role of the emperor, he said, was to receive consultation but not to guide the course of events. At one point in the trial, Tojo appeared to diverge from this line and was hurriedly interrupted, resuming afterwards with the official line.
General MacArthur, overseeing the occupation after the surrender, was concerned that convicting the emperor or forcing his abdication would result in an ungovernable nation. He told General Dwight Eisenhower, chief of staff of the army, that he would need at least a million more troops to deal with guerrilla warfare. Part of the difficulty was that Allied propaganda during the war had depicted the emperor as an innocent victim of the military leaders. In return for his continued position, however, the emperor had to disclaim being divine, which had been a commonly accepted status until then but which would have challenged the authority of the occupiers.
Emperor Hirohito was a quiet person with a love of haiku poetry and marine biology. His role as a peaceful contributor to a renewed Japan suited him in many ways. However, his escape from any accountability for the war did not sit well with many others, including his own uncle Prince Higashikuni and brother Prince Mikasa.
Hirohito is known posthumously as ‘Showa’, also the name given to his era of rule. He was the author of various publications on hydroids, tiny animals related to coral and jellyfish. He lived until 1989, aged 87, and was buried with some of his publications, an old German microscope, a list of sumo champions and a Mickey Mouse watch that he was given in the USA in 1975.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, Akihito, who was emperor until he abdicated in 2019, the first to do so since 1817, citing old age and declining health. The current emperor is his son, Naruhito, the 126th emperor since Jimmu whose reign began, according to tradition, in 660 BCE.
Churchill never met Tojo but was on good terms with his successor Shigeru Yoshida.
Yoshida was sometimes described as ‘Japan’s Churchill’ for his Anglophilia, cigar habit, good living, wit and brash attitude. A UK Foreign Office note described him as being ‘shrewd and jolly with aristocratic connexions and appropriate tastes’.3 The Japanese called him ‘Old White Spats’ for his slightly eccentric dress sense which included a cape in winter.
He served as Japanese prime minister for five terms from 1946 to 1954, with a brief interruption, overlapping with Churchill’s premiership in the 1950s. He had been a career diplomat with postings to China, Korea, the USA, Italy and the UK, including ambassadorships in the latter two countries. He was opposed to war with the USA and Britain and held no official government positions during World War II. Tojo imprisoned him briefly for arguing for an early end to the war. His pro-western orientation and experience led to pressure from the Americans for him to be appointed prime minister after the war.
He supported the introduction of Japan’s new constitution in 1946 and signed the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, ending Allied occupation of Japan the following year. The Treaty accepted the judgements of the Tribunal and other war-related cases. The ‘Yoshida doctrine’ focussed on economic growth and relied on the US military for national security.
In his autobiography, Yoshida remembers a dinner hosted in 1954 by Churchill in London and was struck by Churchill’s willingness to air opinions on sensitive topics, doing so in a kind manner. He was also impressed by Churchill introducing him to Attlee, leader of the opposition, noting the conviviality between political rivals.
Yoshida describes Churchill recalling his mother’s description of the beauty of Japan, particularly Mount Fuji, after her visit there. Yoshida commissioned a painting of the mountain by renowned artist Yasuda and sent it to him. It was hung in his Hyde Park Gate apartment and shown to Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi in 1958, with Churchill saying tearfully that he had longed to see Mount Fuji but it would now be difficult for him to do so. For Churchill’s ninetieth birthday in 1964, Yoshida sent him a lacquered box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, on display in the dining room at Chartwell.
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Army officer, politician |
| Country | Japan |
| Career | Military attaché to Germany (1919-1922). Major General (1933). Chief of Staff, Kwantung Army, Manchuria (1937-38). Vice-Minister of War (1938). Inspector-General of Army Aviation (1938-40). Army Minister (1940). Minister of War (1940-44). Prime Minister (1941-44). Home Minister (1941-42). Foreign Minister (1942). Education Minister (1943). Minister of Commerce and Industry (1943-44). Chief of Army General Staff (1944). Indicted by International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946). |
| Born | 1884 in Tokyo, Empire of Japan (10 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | Hidenori Tojo (1855-1913), a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army |
| Mother | Chitose Tokunaga, daughter of a Buddhist priest |
| Siblings | Third son among 10 children: seven boys and three girls |
| Education | Army Cadet School; Imperial Japanese Army Academy; Army War College |
| Spouse | Katsuko Ito (1890-1982); m. 1909 until Tojo’s death |
| Relationships | |
| Children | Three sons (Hidetake, Teruo, Toshio) and four daughters (Mitsue, Makie, Sachie and Kimie) |
| Died | 1948 in Sugamo prison, Tokyo, Occupied Japan (17 years before Churchill), aged 63; hanged |
| Buried | Commemoration tomb in Nishio, Aichi. Ashes: 1) at sea; 2) at Yasukuni shrine, Tokyo; 3) at Zōshigaya cemetery, Tokyo; 4) at Koa Kannon temple, Mount Izu; 5) at the Tomb of the Seven Warriors Who Died for their Country, Mount Sangane |
| Nickname | ‘Razor’ (Kamisori) due to his quick decision-making and sharp movements |
| Height | 5’6” est. |
| Time magazine | Front cover: 1941 |
4. See also
Asian army leaders
- Aung San (Burma)
- Bose, Subhas Chandra (Indian National Army, a Japanese ally)
- Mao, Zedong (China)
- Yamashita, Tomoyuki (Japan)
Axis leaders
- Hitler, Adolf (Germany)
- Mussolini, Benito (Italy)
Japanese invasion of Burma and India
- Aung San (Burma)
- Bose, Subhas Chandra (India)
US and UK nuclear programmes
- Roosevelt, Franklin D.
- Soviet spies
- Truman, Harry
- Wells, H.G.
Churchill controversies
- Bombing (nuclear)
5. Further reading
Tojo
- Browne, Courtney, Tojo: The Last Banzai (Da Capo Press, 1998)
- Hoyt, Edwin Palmer, Warlord: Tojo Against the World (Cooper Square Press, 2001)
Other Japanese leaders
- Bix, Herbert P., Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins e-books, 2009)
- National Trust, ‘Mount Fujiyama: Yasuda’, National Trust Collections (gift from Yoshida to Churchill)
- National Trust, ‘Casket’, National Trust Collections (gift from Yoshida to Churchill)
- Yoshida, Shigeru, Yoshida Shigeru: Last Meiji Man, ed. by Hiroshi Nara, trans. by Ken’ichi Yoshida (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
Shumei Okawa
- British Pathé, ‘Tojo On Trial’, British Pathé, 1946 (including Okawa slapping Tojo)
- Jaffe, Eric, A Curious Madness: An American Combat Psychiatrist, a Japanese War Crimes Suspect, and an Unsolved Mystery from World War II (Scribner, 2014)
Japan and World War II
- Bayly, Christopher, and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan (Penguin Adult, 2005)
- Pike, Francis, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941-1945 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
- Toland, John, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Random House Publishing Group, 2014)
Churchill and nuclear weapons
- Farmelo, Graham, Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race (Faber & Faber, 2013)
- Ruane, Kevin, Churchill and the Bomb in War and Cold War (Bloomsbury, 2016)
6. References
1. John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Random House Publishing Group, 2014), pp. 871–72.
2. Sierra Countis, ‘The Message on Tojo’s Teeth’, Chico News & Review, 2002.
3. Hugh Cortazzi, Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VI (Brill, 2007), p. 16.