Mizuno Rentarō (水野錬太郎, 3 February 1868 – 25 November 1949) was a statesman, politician and cabinet minister in Taishō and early Shōwa periodJapan.
Biography
Mizuno was the son of a samurai in the service of Akita Domain, and was born at the Akita Domain’s Edo residence in what is now the Asakusa area of Tokyo. He was a graduate of the law school of Tokyo Imperial University in 1892, where one of his classmates was future Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō. Hozumi Nobushige introduced Mizuno to Shibusawa Eiichi, who offered him a position at his bank: however, Mizuno accepted Ume Kenjirō’s offer of an introduction to the Minister of Agriculture & Commerce and opted for a career as a government bureaucrat instead. In 1894, he changed to the Home Ministry, working initially for the Bureau of Mines, and subsequently serving in numerous other roles.
From 1919 to 1922, Mizuno served as Parliamentary Commissioner of the Governor-General of Korea, a post which was effectively the head of the civilian administration of Korea under Japanese rule. Mizuno was regarded as particularly suited for this role, as he was familiar with the security apparatus for monitoring Korean residents in Japan and had experience in the suppression of civil disturbance due to his term as Home Minister during the Rice Riots of 1918.[1] During his tenure in Korea, he greatly expanded the telephone infrastructure of the country, which had economic as well as security benefits,[2] On December 25, 1920 Mizuno was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.
Mizuno returned to the Cabinet as Home Minister again under the Katō administration from 1922 to 1923, turning the post over to Gotō Shinpei the day after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.
Mizuno is infamous for his role in the 1923 Kantō Massacre. He stoked rumors that Koreans were committing crimes or taking revenge on the Japanese. An indiscriminate massacre of anyone suspected to be Korean followed. Over 6,000 Koreans were killed by Japanese civil militias.[3]
At the end of 1923, after the Toranomon Incident, he was requested to return to the Cabinet as Home Minister for a third time, under the Keigo administration.
From 1927 to 1928, Mizuno served as Minister of Education. As Education Minister, he took steps to purge leftist professors from Japan's imperial universities and to ban radical leftist student groups.[4]
In 1928, Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi attempted to appoint his close friend Fusanosuke Kuhara, a businessman noted for his radical right-wing politics and first-year member of the Diet to the post of Home Minister. Mizuno resigned in protest, which should have brought down Tanaka’s Cabinet. However, Tanaka brought Mizuno a message from Emperor Hirohito asking Mizuno to withdraw his resignation. The incident caused an uproar in the House of Peers and threatened to precipitate a constitutional crisis, as this would mean that the Emperor was violating a long-standing rule of not interfering directly in politics and the action was perceived to be favorable to the Rikken Seiyūkai over their rivals, the Rikken Minseitō. Mizuno was forced to resign once again, and Tanaka fell increasingly out of favor with the Emperor; the incident was a major force in driving Tanaka from office in 1929.[5]
Yang, Daqing. Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945. Harvard University Asia Center (2011) ISBN0674010914
Marshall, Bryan. Academic Freedom and the Japanese Imperial University, 1868-1939. University of California Press (1992) ISBN0585102953
Weiner, Michael. Race and Migration in Japan. Routledge
Yamagami Kazuo. Konoe Fumimaro And the Failure of Peace in Japan, 1937-1941: A Critical Appraisal Of The Three-time Prime Minister. Mcfarland & Co Inc (2006). ISBN0786422424. Page 22