Shigeru Yoshida

Shigeru Yoshida (1878-1967) was a Japanese diplomat before and after World War Two in the Pacific, who became a postwar Prime Minister of Japan. He was related, by marriage, to the Imperial Family through a daughter of Prince Asahiko; he himself married a daughter of Count Nobuaki Makino.

In his early diplomatic career, he was First Secretary of the London Embassy in 1921, and welcomed Prince Hirohito to Gibraltar. He was consul general in Tientsin and Mukden during the 1920s, and dealt with Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.

He advocated seizing Manchuria in 1928 and was an advocate of the Strike-South Faction in 1933.

Before the war, he was considered for the Foreign Minister post in the cabinet of Koki Hirota, but the military objected to him as too pro-American. Yoshida was close to American Ambassador Joseph Grew.

Transitional and postwar

His arrest by the kempetai in 1945 kept him out of war crimes trials, and became foreign minister between September 1945 to May 1947, adding the Prime Ministership in May 1946. In October 1948, he again became Prime Minister, serving until December 1954.