Final Years of The War and Suicide
Konoe played a role in the fall of the Tōjō government in 1944. In February 1945, during the first private audience he had been allowed in three years he advised the Emperor to begin negotiations to end World War II. According to Grand Chamberlain Hisanori Fujita, Hirohito, still looking for a tennozan (a great victory), firmly rejected Konoe's recommendation.
After the beginning of the American occupation, Konoe served in the cabinet of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, the first post-war government. Having refused to collaborate with Bonner Fellers in "Operation Blacklist" to exonerate Hirohito and the imperial family of criminal responsibility, he came under suspicion of war crimes. In December 1945, during the last call by the Americans for alleged war criminals to report to the Americans, he took potassium cyanide poison and committed suicide. It was 1945, exactly 1300 years after his ancestor, Fujiwara no Kamatari, led a coup d'état at court during the Soga clan. So symbolically ended the era of the Fujiwara regents. His grave is at the Konoe clan cemetery at the temple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto.
His grandson, Morihiro Hosokawa, became prime minister fifty years later.
Read more about this topic: Fumimaro Konoe
Famous quotes containing the words final, years, war and/or suicide:
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.
Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm LV (l. LV, 21–22)
“They can rule the world while they can persuade us
our pain belongs in some order.
Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
than a life of famine and suicide ... ?”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)