Fumimaro Konoe

Biography

Fumimaro Konoe was born in Tokyo in 1891 as heir to the Konoe family, the highest-ranking noble house in Japan, and inherited his father's title in 1912. He attended the First Higher School, studied philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University and then law at Kyoto Imperial University, where he became a protégé of the elder statesman Saionji Kinmochi. In 1916 he took his father's seat in the House of Peers, and in 1919 he went with Saionji to the Paris Peace Conference, where he was among the Japanese diplomats who pressed for a racial equality clause.

Konoe became vice-president of the House of Peers in 1931 and its president in 1933. In June 1937 he was appointed prime minister. A month later the Marco Polo Bridge incident escalated under his government into full-scale war with China, and in 1938 he pushed through the National Mobilization Law, which gave the state sweeping control over labour and materials. He resigned in January 1939 and chaired the Privy Council until mid-1940.

Returning as prime minister in July 1940, he founded the Imperial Rule Assistance Association as a single national organisation and led it, oversaw the signing of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, and presided over the move into French Indochina and the neutrality pact with the Soviet Union. His attempts to arrange a summit with Franklin Roosevelt came to nothing, and he resigned in October 1941, handing power to Hideki Tojo.

Konoe remained an adviser to the emperor, and in February 1945 he urged him in a written memorial to seek surrender. He briefly joined Prince Higashikuni's cabinet after Japan's defeat, but he came under suspicion of war crimes, and on 16 December 1945 he killed himself with cyanide rather than submit to arrest.