Naoki Hoshino

Hoshino Naoki at time of Tokyo Tribunal

Naoki Hoshino (星野 直樹, Hoshino Naoki^?, 10 April 1892 – 26 January 1978) was a bureaucrat and politician who served in the Taishō and early Shōwa period Japanese government, and as an official in the Empire of Manchukuo.

Biography

Hoshino was born in Yokohama, where his father was involved in the textile industry. His paternal aunt was principal of the Tsuda College, a noted women's university.

Hoshino was a graduate of the law school of Tokyo Imperial University, and on graduation was employed by the Ministry of Finance. He rose through the ranks in various capacities, ranging from bank regulation to taxation, and in 1932, became vice minister of industrial development.

After the establishment of Manchukuo in March 1932, Hoshino was invited by the Kwantung Army to lead a team of bureaucrats from the Ministry of Finance to establish a bureaucratic infrastructure to place the finances of the new territory on a sound footing. After 1937, he served as Vice Minister of Financial Affairs in the cabinet of the government of Manchukuo.

Hoshino in 1941

On his return to Japan, Hoshino was selected to serve as chief "Project Department" inside the Finance Ministry to implement the economic reorganization of Japan under the Taisei Yokusankai in the second Konoe Cabinet. In 1941, he became a member of the House of Peers and in the same year was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Tōjō administration, and continued his efforts to remold the Japanese economy onto a war economy footing with a state socialist basis.

After the surrender of Japan, he was arrested by the American occupation authorities and tried before the International Military Tribunal of the Far East as a Class A war criminal on counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. He was released in 1958.

Subsequently, Hoshino served as president or chairman of a number of companies, including the Tokyu Corporation. He published his memoirs in 1963, which created somewhat of a sensation for his undiminished admiration of Japanese accomplishments in Manchukuo, and his unexpected lack of respect for wartime leader Hideki Tōjō. He died in Tokyo in 1978.

References

• Browne, Courtney (2001). Tojo, the Last Banzai. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. ASIN: B000K5TTV6. 
• Maga, Timothy P. (2001). Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2177-9. 
• Sherman, Christine (2001). War Crimes: International Military Tribunal. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 1-56311-728-2. 
• Sims, Richard (2001). Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-2000. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23915-7. 
• Toland, John (1970). The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945. Random House. ISBN 0-8129-6858-1.