Word: matsuoka
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...that most dingy of Japanese official buildings called the Gaimusho, a flimsy affair of wood and beaverboard, whose shabbiness is accentuated by the grandiose Navy Office across the way, Japan's new Foreign Minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, introduced himself to his staff one day last week. His was a critical audience-blunt Yoshizawa of the American Division, cross-eyed Spokesman Suma, dyspeptic middle-aged clerks and angry youngsters who think Japan should expand all the way to the Suez Canal-who had seen Foreign Ministers come & go like rainstorms. They expected thunder in this maiden speech...
...Yosuke Matsuoka smiled his confidential smile and ran his hand over his bristling army-cropped head. He knew, and he knew his audience knew, that his job would be the most difficult in Japan. He knew that in acquitting it he should never try to dominate these demagogues; he should use them. Quickly he came to the point: ". . . Though I am an older man than most here, I will not shrink from exchanging verbal blows with...
...short time before Yosuke Matsuoka's boss, Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye, had talked a little with newsmen about the Foreign Minister and his terrifying job. A reporter asked what Mr. Matsuoka's policy would be. "Japan's foreign policy," said the Premier after thinking for a long time, "will be renovated." Everyone knew what he meant. Other less discreet Cabinet Ministers had indulged in a chorus of blatantly tough speeches. Japan, like Italy, was aboard the bandwagon of triumph, and for the first time Japanese statesmen openly aired their fantastic ambitions. Kobayashi (Commerce) declared: "A high degree...
Renovation fell upon Yosuke Matsuoka like a lash across the shoulder blades, unexpectedly, unpleasantly, from behind. He had tossed verbal blows with his staff for only 72 hours when it came. It came not from his own ambitious mind, not from the Emperor or Prince Konoye or the Army-but from a fountain pen in a hand which wrote the words Franklin D. Roosevelt. The signature was set under an executive order which amounted to an embargo on oil and scrap iron. Japan had been getting an average of 70% and 90% respectively of her supply of these vital...
...Yosuke Matsuoka, who was brought up in the U. S. by a hardy Oregon woman, who had talked more with U. S. correspondents than any other Tokyo leader, knew pretty well the U. S. state of mind. He knew that Americans considered the China war a nuisance (since it kept the U. S. Fleet tied down in the wrong ocean), a tragedy (because the weaker and righter side seemed to U. S. citizens to be the same), a reproach (because self-righteous Americans thought the U. S. should have been able to end the war long ago). But hfc also...