Kingoro Hashimoto

Kingoro Hashimoto (橋本 欣五郎, Hashimoto Kingorō^?, February 19, 1890 - June 29, 1957) was a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army and politician.

Early career

Hashimoto was born in Okayama City, and a graduate of the 23rd class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1911. He subsequently graduated from the Army Staff College in 1920. In April 1922, he was assigned to the Kwangtung Army in Manchuria and was stationed at Harbin. In 1923, he was sent on special assignment to Manzhouli, near the border with the Soviet Union. From September 1927 through June 1930, he was reassigned as military attaché to Turkey. On his return to Japan, he was posted to the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, and headed a Russian studies department. He was promoted to colonel in August, 1930 and became an instructor at the Army Staff College in October.

Political involvement

From the middle of 1930, Hashimoto became increasingly involved in right-wing politics within the military, with active participation in various attempts at coups d'état. He was also a founder of radical secret societies within the Army.

Hashimoto actively participated in the March incident of 1931. The Sakura Kai (Cherry Blossom Society) was formed secretly by him and Captain Isamu Chō. The Sakura Kai group sought political reform: the elimination of party government by a coup d'état 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 Chō and Shūmei Ōkawa, organized a further coup, the Imperial Colors Incident, also known as the October 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.

Despite these failures, Hashimoto continued as an active radical thinker during World War II. 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 Hiranuma Kiichirō another right-wing politician with Japanese Navy links in the official establishment.

Hashimoto later was elected to the House of Representatives, and became vice-president of the Diet of Japan. The Imperial Youth 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 youth political organization in wartime.

He was involved in the Panay incident of December 12, 1937 in which Japanese bombers attacked and sank, without provocation, the USS Panay on the Yangzi River in China. Hashimoto was the senior Japanese officer in the region, and a few days after the sinking was quoted in US newspapers as saying "I had orders to fire."

Hashimoto 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.