Kingoro Hashimoto
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Kingoro Hashimoto (橋本欣五郎 Hashimoto Kingorō, 1890-1957) was a Japanese soldier and politician. He was born in Okayama City.
Military career
2nd Lt (Artillery), 1911; graduated from War College, 1920; military assignments included attaché duty at the Japanese Embassy in Turkey, and Chief, Special Service Agency, at Hailar in Manchukuo; Colonel, 1933; active in extremist secret societies, and notorious for his actions during the Panay incident, 1937.Subsequent political activities included the organization and presidency of the Dai Nippon Seinen-to (Great Japan Youth Party), subsequently renamed Dai Nippon Sekisei-kai (Great Japan Sincerity Association); elected Member, House of Representatives, 1944; became vice-president of Diet Members' Society of Yokusan Seiji-kai (Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association).
Political involvement
He was a right-wing and military politician, with active participation in various attempts at coup d'états. He was a founder of radical secret societies.Hashimoto actively participated in the March incident of 1931. The Sakurai Kai (Cherry Society) was formed secretly by him and Captain Isamu Cho. The Sakurai Kai group sought political reform: the elimination of party government by a coup d'etat and the establishment of a new cabinet based upon state socialism, in order to stamp out Japan's allegedly corrupt politics, economy, and thought. The attempt failed, but Hashimoto, along with Isamu Cho and Shumei Okawa, organized a further coup, the Imperial Colors Incident, with Sadao Araki. All the conspirators were arrested and transferred to other posts. There were also suspicions of the instigation of himself and Araki in the final attempt, the Military Academy Incident.
Hashimoto continued, despite failures, as an active radical thinker into the war times. He was involved in the Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association). He proposed a nationalist single party dictatorship, based on socialism. The militarists had strong industrial support, but also socialist-nationalist sentiments on the part of radical officers, aware of poor farmers and workers who wanted social justice. He represented the extreme left-wing of the militarists. Supporters of Fumimaro Konoye's "Right-Socialist" revolution (socialist and populist ideas, rooted in the poorest farmers, fishermen, and industrial workers), opposed the "right-wing" militarists represented by Senjuro Hayashi, in the same "revolutionary grouping". Later receiving political patronage by Kiichiro Hiranuma another right-wing politician with Japanese Navy links in the official establisment.
Hashimoto later was elected to the House of Representatives, and became vice-president of the Diet of Japan. The Imperial Young Federation under his leadership had a mission of guiding the nationalist and militarist indoctrination of young people during war time, in a similar post to Baldur von Schirach and Arthur Axmann, leaders in the Hitler Youth German young political organization in wartime.
He had some participation in the Panay incident and was a fervent supporter of aggressive policies during the Second Chinese-Japanese War period. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
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