Ichirō Hatoyama

Pre-war political career

After his father died in 1911, Hatoyama was elected in the 1912 by-election for his father's seat in the Tokyo City Council. In the 1915 House of Representatives election, Hatoyama was elected from Tokyo district and belonged to the Rikken Seiyukai. A rival in the same constituency was Bukichi Miki, who later became a close friend and ally.

Property inherited from his father in Otowa, Bunkyō, Tokyo, was destroyed in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Hatoyama solicited his friend Shinichirō Okada to design a western-style residence in its stead. It was finished the following year and was called the Otowa Palace, and later Hatoyama Hall.

When Keigo Kiyoura became prime minister in January 1924 the Rikken Seiyukai split over whether or not to support him. Kisaburo Suzuki, the husband of Hatoyama's elder sister Kazuko, served as Minister of Justice in the new cabinet. Hatoyama participated in the Seiyūhontō organised by pro-Kiyoura forces led by Takejirō Tokonami. In June Kiyoura had to resign in favour of Takaaki Kato, who had formed a coalition of his own Kenseikai, the Seiyukai and the Kakushin Club. Seiyūhontō became the main opposition.

The Seiyukai withdrew from the coalition in July 1925. The Seiyūhontō moved towards coalition with the Kenseikai, but Hatoyama opposed this and left the party with about twenty Diet members in December. They returned to the Seiyukai in February the following year. Hatoyama was close to the new party president Giichi Tanaka who made him Secretary-General in March. Hatoyama's brother-in-law Kisaburo Suzuki joined the party around this time.

Tanaka was appointed prime minister in April 1927 and Hatoyama became his Chief Cabinet Secretary. Hatoyama befriended Shigeru Yoshida, who served as vice minister for foreign affairs at the same time. After the cabinet fell in July 1929 Minseito president Osachi Hamaguchi became prime minister and the Seiyukai fell to the opposition. Tanaka died in September. Kisaburo Suzuki, with the support of Hatoyama, had become the most influential factional leader in the party at this time, but Takejirō Tokonami had rejoined the party to contest the presidency. In order to prevent a split the respected elder Tsuyoshi Inukai was selected instead. During his time in the opposition Hatoyama criticised the London Naval Treaty.

Cabinet minister and party leader

When Inukai was made prime minister in December 1931, Hatoyama became Minister of Education. Inukai was assassinated in the May 15 incident and Suzuki was elected to succeed him as Seiyukai president, but he didn't become prime minister, as the genrō Prince Saionji preferred to nominate Admiral Makoto Saito. Hatoyama continued in his post and became involved in a controversy in March 1933 when he had a professor at Kyoto Imperial University dismissed for leftist views. In March 1934 he was forced to resign due to alleged corruption in the Teijin Incident, which eventually led to the downfall of the Saito cabinet.

When Suzuki was once again passed over as prime minister, this time in favour of Admiral Keisuke Okada, the Seiyukai moved into the opposition, even expelling members who accepted positions in the new cabinet. By this time Hatoyama had become one of the most powerful men in the Seiyukai as the right-hand man of his brother-in-law.

The Seiyukai took major losses in the 1936 general election and this led Suzuki to resign the following year. Hatoyama and Chikuhei Nakajima were the leading candidates for the presidency, but to prevent schism a "Presidential Proxy Committee" was formed consisting of Hatoyama, Nakajima, Yonezō Maeda and Toshio Shimada. As there was too much antipathy against himself, Hatoyama decided to support Fusanosuke Kuhara as president. But in March 1939 the opponents of Kuhara and Hatoyama had Nakajima declared president in contravention to party rules. As a result, the party was split between a "reformist faction" led Nakajima and an "orthodox faction" led by Kuhara.

Wartime period

Hatoyama opposed the trend towards military government. He led his faction to absent itself in protest against the expulsion of Takao Saitō for an anti-militarist speech. He resisted the dissolution of political parties and the formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA) in 1940.

Hatoyama ran in the 1942 general election as a "non-endorsed" candidate, meaning he was not endorsed by the IRAA, but won his election anyway. Shared opposition to the Tojo cabinet brought him together with his old rival Bukichi Miki, who also ran and won as a non-endorsed candidate. Like most non-endorsed candidates elected, they were compelled to join the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association when all other parliamentary caucuses were suppressed shortly after the election, but continued to resist from within. In November 1942, Hatoyama's son Iichirō married Yasuko Ishibashi, the daughter of Bridgestone founder Shojiro Ishibashi. Ishibashi became an important financial backer for Hatoyama.

As time went on, the prospects for resisting the cabinet seemed more and more futile. When fellow Diet member Bin Akao was expelled from the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association for publicly rebuking Tojo in June 1943, Hatoyama and others decided to leave in solidarity. This practically made further political activities impossible, so Hatoyama decided to retire to his summer house in Karuizawa. Before leaving Tokyo he made a pledge with Miki that they would cooperate to rebuild Japan after the war. In Karuizawa he devoted himself to farming and study, but he also took part in plans surrounding Shigeru Yoshida and Fumimaro Konoe for an early peace with Britain and the United States.

Post-war political career

Immediately after the Japanese surrender was announced on 15 August 1945 Hatoyama's old associates, in particular Hitoshi Ashida, began work for the creation a new political party for the post-war era. They convinced Hatoyama to return to Tokyo and become their leader. The Hatoyama Hall was damaged from air raids and Hatoyama lodged at Shojiro Ishibashi's Tokyo residence. Besides his old comrades from the Seiyukai he brought Bukichi Miki into the party. He also recruited liberal figures who had been aloof from party politics such as the journalist Tanzan Ishibashi.

Shojiro Ishibashi was a significant sponsor for the new party and his house would serve as a de facto office in the early days. Another substantial part of the funds came from Yoshio Kodama, who was then a cabinet advisor.

The Liberal Party was officially launched in November 1945 with Hatoyama as its president. Ashida was expected to become secretary-general, but he had been appointed health minister in the Shidehara cabinet formed the previous month. The post instead went to Ichirō Kōno. Miki became chairman of the General Council.

Purge from public office

In the first post-war election in April 1946, the Liberal Party became the largest party with 141 out of 468 seats. Hatoyama was expected to become prime minister, but while in the middle of putting together his cabinet, he was purged from public office by the occupation authority on 4 May. The purge order branded him a "ultranationalist and militarist" for his participation in pre-war cabinets.

Hatoyama was dumbfounded by the event, but he soon approached his old friend Shigeru Yoshida, who was foreign minister at the time, to take his place as prime minister and president of the Liberal Party. Yoshida initially demurred and Kazuo Kojima and Tsuneo Matsudaira were also considered as candidates, but Yoshida was ultimately persuaded to accept.

Yoshida was appointed prime minister on 22 May, and he would formally be elected party president at the convention in August. Hatoyama once again retired to Karuizawa. Another round of purges in June removed both Kōno and Miki from office.

As part of the so-called "Reverse Course," in American policy towards Japan, brought about by the increasing confrontation between the United States and the Communist bloc, many people were released from the purge, including Miki and Kono. Hatoyama himself was depurged in August 1951.

Conflict with Yoshida

At that time of Hatoyama's depurging his relationship with Yoshida had soured. Hatoyama believed Yoshida was involved in delaying his depurging. Furthermore, Yoshida had become a well established politician in his own right, and had no intention to step down in favour in Hatoyama as some people expected. In June, before his depurging, Hatoyama and Miki had considered creating a new party to challenge Yoshida, but the plan was scrapped after Hatoyama suffered a stroke. Hatoyama and his faction ultimately joined Yoshida's Liberal Party.

In November 1954, Hatoyama formed the Japan Democratic Party by merging the non-mainstream factions of the Liberal Party with the Kaishintō under Mamoru Shigemitsu, with Hatoyama as president, Shigemitsu as vice president, Nobusuke Kishi as secretary general and Miki as general council chairman. Hatoyama cooperated with the socialists to oust Yoshida the following month, and Hatoyama was nominated to succeed him.

Premiership

Hatoyama was appointed prime minister in December 1954. His cabinet included Shigemitsu as deputy prime minister and foreign minister; Hisato Ichimada as finance minister; Tanzan Ishibashi as trade minister; and Ichiro Kono as agriculture minister.

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 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), an attempt to replace Japan's SNTV multi-member constituencies with American-style first-past-the-post 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.

In October 1956, he restored diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, which had been severed since the Soviet declaration of war in 1945, through the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956. After that he announced his resignation as prime minister and stepped down in December 1956.

Ichirō Hatoyama died in his Hatoyama Hall house, in Tokyo's Bunkyō ward, on 7 March 1959. He was buried in the Yanaka Cemetery, in nearby Taitō ward.

Family and beliefs

Ichirō was a Protestant Christian. He was Japan's third postwar Christian Prime Minister.

Iichirō Hatoyama, 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.

One of Ichirō's grandsons, Yukio Hatoyama, became prime minister in 2009 as a member of the Democratic Party of Japan. Another grandson Kunio Hatoyama was a prominent politician in the LDP.

During the purge against Ichirō (1946–1951), he received an English book The Totalitarian State against Man originally written in German by the half-Japanese Austrian Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi from a professor of Waseda University 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.

Hatoyama founded the Yūai Kyōkai (or Yūai Association) in 1953 to promote his idea of fraternity. His widow and many of his descendants has served as officers in the association.

On 29 March 1951, he was initiated as a first degree Freemason, and on 26 March 1955, passed as second degree mason, and raised to Master Mason.

Political philosophy, ideology and views

Ichiro was critical of communism and of military planned economy as his grandson Yukio Hatoyama wrote for an article.

Honours

From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (1959; posthumous)