Tetsuzō Watanabe

**Tetsuzō Watanabe** (渡辺銕蔵, *Watanabe Tetsuzō*, October 14, 1885; Osaka - April 5, 1980; Nagano {age 95} ) is a Japanese businessman, professor, member of the House of Representatives and president of Toho Motion Picture Company.

## Life & Career

Watanabe was born in Osaka in 1885. From the age of 9, he grew up as a child of the bookstore owner at the Hondōri Station in Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture.

After attending at Hiroshima Kokutaiji  and Kanto Daiichi high schools, Watanabe graduated in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tokyo in 1910 at the age of 25. At that same year, he began studied traveled in the UK, Germany, and Belgium as a special overseas student of the Ministry of Education from 1910-1913.

He returned to Japan in 1913 and became an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo Law University. In the same year, he married to Yuriko Kitasato (1892-1982), the eldest daughter of physician Kitasato Shibasaburō. In 1916, Watanabe became the professor and latter doctor of law in 1917. In 1919, he was involved in the establishment of the Faculty of Economics and became the head professor, which would latter formed one of the sources of business administration today. The effects of the Russian Revolution in 1917 immediately appeared in Japan with activist groups formed their own communist parties in order to break the tradition of imperialism. In 1920, the Peter Kropotkin's dissertation idea was published in the journal by economist Tatsuo Morito, an assistant professor of the same department known as the Morito Case (森戸事件, *Morito Jiken*).

Watanabe criticized this publication as having neither logic nor academic value, but the Todai Rookie Association defended Morito in trial, which spurred students' thoughts on reddening. This was an incident in which Watanabe gave unrelenting courage in the later Toho Studio Dispute of 1947, but he also supported the fact that the unity of assistant professors in the Faculty of Economics with Marxism ideas began to appear and that national university professors opposed the adoption of the suspension system. In 1927, he resigned from his job due to the lack of his teaching after that he was transferred to the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was strongly requested, and became the general secretary. In 1928, he became the managing director of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry under the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Act.

In addition with the establishment of The Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he also served as the managing director, and under the leadership of Seinosuke Go, he became a the head of talent management. Watanabe attended the International Labor Conference in Geneva in 1933 as a representative of Japanese employers. From the same year, he was forced to resign as a director in 1934 because he took the opposite position when the government and the military take charge of the economies.

In 1936, he ran for the 1936 general election of members of the House of Representatives from the Constitutional Democratic Party in the 1st ward of the Tokyo Prefecture and was elected. He then serves as the vice chairman of the Political Survey Committee, but was rejected in the general election of members of the Japanese House of Representatives in 1937. From 1938 to 1942, Watanabe successfully became Chairman of the National Inexhaustible Meeting House (National Mutual Banking Association).In addition, he has held posts such as a member of the Central Committee for Urban Planning, a member of the Council for the Reconstruction of the Imperial City, a member of the Tokyo Special City Planning Committee, and a vice chairman of the Japan Rice Association. In the same year, "Watanabe Economic Research Institute" was opened.

Watanabe then published many essays and books based on research on finances, economics, national defense resources, and others. from around the world. He criticized the opposition to the Tripartite Pact of Japan, Nazi Germany and Italy and the war against the United States. After the war in 1947, he was appointed as president of Toho Studio. on November 17, because he was expected to have anti-communist beliefs as a director and had a strong labor organization for union workers. In April 1948, 270 employees, mainly union activists, were dismissed from the Japanese Communist Party, which is said to be about half of the Hibiki studio, in order to rebuild the business. However, the dispute became swamped by the strong opposition of the labor union.

In August 1948, when the Tokyo District Court executed a provisional disposition to release the occupancy of the dispute group's muffled studio, he requested the cooperation of the GHQ and resolved it with skill. In addition to the 1,800 members of the Tokyo Police's reserve team, US military tanks, armored vehicles, and planes were also dispatched to forcibly eliminate union members during the Toho dispute strike, which was said to be "only warships did not come." In the wake of this strike, famous big stars and film crew established their own film studio called Shintoho, and all the famous directors also transferred, so Toho is in an unprecedented crisis that it is said that there is no choice but to stop production and make it a company specializing in distribution. Watanabe inaugurated became Chairman of Toho in 1949.

In 1950, he resigned as chairman and ran for the Upper House election with the official approval of the Liberal Party, but was rejected due to his involvement in the 1947 union strike. After that, he focused on anti-communism works, re-arming development, and constitutional amendment with Hitoshi Ashida, and in 1952 he formed the "Armed Promotion Federation" and started a bipartisan national movement. In addition, he became chairman of the Film Industry Promotion Council and resigned from Toho on January 16, 1950. In 1955, Watanabe founded and became chairman of the International Anti-Communist Union General Assembly Free Asian Association. In 1956, as a representative of Japan of the Asian People's of the Anti-Communist Union (APACL), he had a close relationship with the Korean and Taiwanese movements. By thay same year, as chairman of the Eirin committee, Watanabe stopped the production of Nikkatsu's film "Season of the Sun", due to film to realistic (the movie would latter become one of Japan's most successful cinema based on Shintarō Ishihara's novel of the same name).

In addition, he served as the principal of Nippon Sport Science University (currently Nittaidai), the vice chairman of the GHQ Closing Organization Examination Committee, the vice chairman of the National Park Council, the chairman of the Education Renewal Investigation Committee, and a member of the Public Employment Qualification Examination Committee. Watanabe died on April 5, 1980 from heart faliure at the age of 94.