Hideki Tojo

Hideki Tojo is the Prime Minister of the Empire of Japan since 1926 when he and Tōgō Heihachirō both ousted the loyalist Prime Minister of Yoshito, Inukai Tsuyoshi who did not do much in handling the Second Boxer Rebellion and they put it down with force.

## History

### Early Life

Hideki Tojo was born in the Kōjimachi district of Tokyo on December 30, 1884, as the third son of Hidenori Tojo, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. Under the *bakufu*, Japanese society was divided rigidly into four castes; the merchants, artisans, peasants and the samurai. After the Meiji Restoration, the caste system was abolished in 1871, but the former caste distinctions in many ways persisted afterwards, ensuring that those from the former samurai caste continued to enjoy their traditional prestige. The Tojo family came from the samurai caste, though the Tojos were relatively lowly warrior retainers for the great *daimyōs* (lords) that they had served for generations. Tojo's father was a samurai turned Army officer and his mother was the daughter of a Buddhist priest, making his family very respectable, but poor.

Hideki had an education typical of Japanese youth in the Meiji era.  The purpose of the Meiji educational system was to train the boys to be soldiers as adults, and the message was relentlessly drilled into Japanese students that war was the most beautiful thing in the entire world, that the Emperor was a living god and that the greatest honor for a Japanese man was to die for the Emperor. Japanese girls were taught that the highest honor for a woman was to have as many sons as possible who could die for the Emperor in war. As a boy, Tojo was known for his stubbornness, lack of a sense of humor, for being an opinionated and combative youth fond of getting into fights with the other boys and for his tenacious way of pursuing what he wanted. Japanese schools in the Meiji era were very competitive, and there was no tradition of sympathy for failure; those who did so were often bullied by the teachers. Those who knew him during his formative years deemed him to be of only average intelligence. However, he was known to compensate for his observed lack of intellect with a willingness to work extremely hard. Tojo's boyhood hero was the 17th-century shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu who issued the injunction: "Avoid the things you like, turn your attention to unpleasant duties". Tojo liked to say: "I am just an ordinary man possessing no shining talents. Anything I have achieved I owe to my capacity for hard work and never giving up". In 1899, Tojo enrolled in the Army Cadet School.

In 1905, Tojo shared in the general outrage in Japan at the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the war with Russia, and which the Japanese people saw as a betrayal as the war did not end with Japan annexing Siberia as popular opinion had demanded. The Treaty of Portsmouth was so unpopular that it set off anti-American riots known as the Hibiya incendiary incident as many Japanese were enraged at the way the Americans had apparently cheated Japan as the Japanese gains in the treaty were far less than what public opinion had expected. Very few Japanese at the time had understood that the war with Russia had pushed their nation to the verge of bankruptcy, and most people in Japan believed that the American president Theodore Roosevelt who had mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth had cheated Japan out of its rightful gains. Tojo's anger at the Treaty of Portsmouth left him with an abiding dislike of Americans.

### Military Career

Upon graduating from the Japanese Military Academy (ranked 10th of 363 cadets) in March 1905, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry of the IJA. In 1918–19, Tojo briefly served in Siberia as part of the Japanese expeditionary force sent to intervene in the Russian Civil War. He was also a leader of the Manchuckuo Royal Army under Japanese control during the Invasion of China.

### Second Boxer Rebellion

Japan had overstretched it's Empire after winning World War I which caused trouble for the Empire as it suffered disasters including the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and rebellions by angry natives. Some of the Natives in China created their own nations that were in opposition to Japan as they with the European Christians led rebellions against the Japanese Government. Inukai Tsuyoshi who was Prime Minister of Japan since Yoshito appointed him as Prime Minister before he died in 1926 tried to peacefully stop the problems, but his handling of the situation did not appease Admiral of the Marquis Tōgō Heihachirō and Tojo himself who then rebelled and overthrew Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1930 and decided to handle the problem their own way.

## Personal Life

In 1909, Hideki married Katsuko Ito, with whom he had three sons (Hidetake, Teruo, and Toshio) and four daughters (Mitsue, Makie, Sachie and Kimie).