Prime Minister
Inukai became the 29th Prime Minister of Japan in 1931. At the time, Japan was in a serious economic situation due to the effects of the Great Depression of 1929, and its untimely return to the gold standard. Inukai's government immediately took steps to inflate the economy and to place an embargo on gold exports. However, Inukai was unable to impose fiscal restraint on the military, nor was he able to control the military’s designs on China after the Manchurian Incident. Inukai's struggle against the military led to his assassination during the May 15 Incident of 1932, which effectively marked the end of civilian political control over government decisions until after World War II.
Inukai's third son was writer, politician and post-war Minister of Justice Inukai Takeru. His great-granddaughter is Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991 until 2001.
Read more about this topic: Inukai Tsuyoshi
Famous quotes related to prime minister:
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)