Word: kuni
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Emperor summoned his kinsman, pug-chinned Prince Naruhiko Higashi-Kuni, 57, to form a new Government. The appointment was doubly notable: it was made without the customary consultation between throne and elder statesmen; it was the first time ever that a member of the royal house had become Premier of Japan...
...Higashi-Kuni went through Tokyo's Military Academy. In the early '20s he served as military attaché in Paris, where he studied French tactics, acquired a taste for French cooking and a French mistress (rumor said she bore him four children and kept him abroad until His Majesty's Government threatened to cut off his funds). Back in Tokyo, he lived fast. He gambled-not for money but for whiskey (i.e., he paid off by taking two drinks every time he lost). He patronized geisha houses. He liked to drive at top speed in his maroon...
...Government needed a heavyhanded, blue-blooded officer to rope in some of its maverick commanders in China. It chose Prince Higashi-Kuni. He dressed down his notorious relative, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, who stood by at the rape of Nanking and subsequently at the "Death March" from Bataan. In 1941, Higashi-Kuni was put in charge of the important home defense command. In that post he is said to have threatened the execution of U.S. airmen after the famed Doolittle raid on Tokyo...
...Program. Next day Premier Prince Higashi-Kuni broadcast to the soldiers of Japan: "The decision has been taken to cease fire and return to peace." For all the nation he outlined a new "policy." High points...
...Prince Naruhiko Higashi Kuni, distant cousin of Emperor Hirohito, commander of Japanese forces which raped Nanking, Home Defense Chief who in 1942 threatened to execute captured U.S. airmen "if guilty of inhumanities." But no imperial prince has ever headed a Japanese Government. If Higashi Kuni broke the precedent, it might still all opposition, since no voice would dare cry out against an imperial prince. Such a move would also make it impossible for the imperial family to evade responsibility for ultimate defeat. Or the last-minute choice might be someone else. Japan was going through the political wringer-probably...