Koto Matsudaira | |
---|---|
Born | Tokyo, Japan | 5 February 1903
Died | 4 May 1994 91) | (aged
Resting place | Myōkei-ji, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 36°33′25.9″N136°38′59.9″E / 36.557194°N 136.649972°E |
Nationality | Japanese |
Alma mater | Tokyo Imperial University |
Occupation | Diplomat |
Spouse(s) |
|
Children | 1 |
Parents |
|
Koto Matsudaira (松平 康東, Matsudaira Kōtō, 5 February 1903 – 4 May 1994) was a Japanese diplomat who served as an ambassador to the United Nations from 1957 to 1961.
Matsudaira was born in Tokyo on 5 February 1903, the eldest son of Ichisaburō Matsudaira, a shipowner, and Tami Yamamura. [2] He attended high school in Tokyo and then studied law at Tokyo Imperial University. Although he entered foreign service in 1926, he attained an academic degree in 1927. He then went to Paris where he received a Juris Doctor in 1931. That same year, he also obtained a diploma from the École Libre des Sciences Politiques.
Matsudaira first joined the League of Nations as a Japanese delegate to Geneva in 1932. Two years later, he was sent to the contract department of the Japanese Foreign Office until early 1941. Matsudaira then served as the first secretary at the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. where his uncle Saburō Kurusu also worked. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was interned there along with Kurusu until being repatriated to Japan. In 1944, he went to the Embassy of Japan in Moscow to serve as the first secretary. [3] He helped negotiate a draft of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951.
He was appointed as the ambassador to Canada in March 1954, serving in that capacity until May 1957. [4] He was then appointed as a Permanent Representative to the United Nations in May 1957 until May 1961. [5]
When asked about the offensiveness of the term "Jap" on a television program by John Wingate on 7 June 1957, Matsudaira reportedly replied, "Oh, I don't care. It's a[sic?] English word. It's maybe American slang. I don't know. If you care, you are free to use it." [6] Upon receiving a letter from Shosuke Sasaki about the topic on 5 July, Matsudaira asked one of his secretaries to write a reply. [7] He apologized for his earlier remarks upon being interviewed by reporters from Honolulu and San Francisco on 5 August. [8] He then pledged cooperation with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) to help eliminate the term "Jap" from daily use. [9]
In 1958, when the United States sent its forces to Lebanon during the 1958 Lebanon crisis, Matsudaira considered the move debatable. Although he was prepared to support the resolution, Gunnar Jarring, upon being instructed by Östen Undén, declared that the move by the United States changed the fulfillment conditions for the resolution. Following Jarring's calls for suspending the activities of the UN in Lebanon, the Security Council held the debate until adjourning upon Matsudaira's suggestion. [10] Later that year, Matsudaira served as President of the United Nations Security Council in October. He served in that position again in October 1959. [11]
In 1960, Matsudaira attended a pioneer banquet hosted by the JACL, where he gave an address to several JACL members and Issei urging cooperation between nations for world peace. [12]
In early 1961, in reference to Japan refusing a request by Dag Hammarskjöld to send Japan Self-Defense Forces officers to Lebanon in 1958, Matsudaira reportedly stated, "it is not consistent for Japan to preach UN cooperation on the one hand and to refuse all participation in UN forces." He later withdrew that statement after calls for resignation from opposition parties. [13] Later that same year, he began serving as an ambassador to India. [14]
In 1962, regarding the Sino-Indian War, Matsudaira insisted on Japanese support for India while warning against Chinese expansionism. On 9 November, when Matsudaira asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give aid to India, Torao Ushiroku , who directed the Asian Bureau at the time, gave a brief response, saying that "Indians inherently expect others to assist them, but they never show any appreciation." [15]
Matsudaira died on 4 May 1994. His resting place is at Myōkei-ji in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. [16]
Matsudaira was married to Ai Yuhara. [17] In 1951, Matsudaira sent his daughter, Tokiko, to live with the family of Murray Sprung in New York City while attending school. Sprung met Matsudaira while helping prosecute Japanese war criminals. [18] Sometime during his tenure in India, he remarried to his Chilean wife, Marita Matsudaira. [19] [20]
Ancestors of Koto Matsudaira | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
The foreign relations of Japan are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". Today, it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur among Japanese minority populations in other countries, although English-speaking countries differ in the degree to which they consider the term offensive. In the United States, Japanese Americans have come to find the term very controversial or extremely offensive, even when used as an abbreviation, after the events of the internment of Japanese Americans. In the past, Jap was not considered primarily offensive; however, following the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese declaration of war on the United States, the term became derogatory. Nisei veterans who served in World War II were shunned with signs that read "No Japs Allowed" and "No Japs Wanted", denied service in shops and restaurants, and had their homes and property vandalized.
Mamoru Shigemitsu was a Japanese diplomat and politician in the Empire of Japan, who served as the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs at the end of World War II and later, as the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan.
Aizu (会津) is the westernmost of the three regions of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, the other two regions being Nakadōri in the central area of the prefecture and Hamadōri in the east. As of October 1, 2010, it had a population of 291,838. The principal city of the area is Aizuwakamatsu.
Katsuo Okazaki was a Japanese sportsman, diplomat and political figure. He served as the Japanese foreign minister in the 1950s. He was also the final – and only Japanese – chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council.
The Japanese American Citizens League is an Asian American civil rights charity, headquartered in San Francisco, with regional offices across the United States.
Saburō Kurusu was a Japanese career diplomat. He is remembered now as an envoy who tried to negotiate peace and understanding with the United States while the Japanese government under Hideki Tojo was secretly preparing the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The following article focuses on the movement to obtain redress for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and significant court cases that have shaped civil and human rights for Japanese Americans and other minorities. These cases have been the cause and/or catalyst to many changes in United States law. But mainly, they have resulted in adjusting the perception of Asian immigrants in the eyes of the American government.
Murakami Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Echigo Province, Japan. It was centered on Murakami Castle in what is now the city of Murakami, Niigata.
Ojima Domain, also known as Kojima Domain, was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was located in Suruga Province in what is now part of modern-day Shimizu Ward of the city of Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefecture.
The Pacific Citizen (P.C.) is a national, award-winning semi-monthly newspaper based in Los Angeles, California, United States. The P.C. has been providing the leading Asian Pacific American (APA) news to the community since its inception in 1929. The newspaper is published by the Japanese American Citizens League, JACL, which is the nation’s oldest and largest APA civil rights organization.
In 2002, there were 6,413 people of Japanese origin, including Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans, in the Wayne-Oakland-Macomb tri-county area in Metro Detroit, making them the fifth-largest Asian ethnic group there. In that year, within an area stretching from Sterling Heights to Canton Township in the shape of a crescent, most of the ethnic Japanese lived in the center. In 2002, the largest populations of ethnic Japanese people were located in Novi and West Bloomfield Township. In April 2013, the largest Japanese national population in the State of Michigan was in Novi, with 2,666 Japanese residents. West Bloomfield had the third-largest Japanese population and Farmington Hills had the fourth largest Japanese population.
Kazutami Watanabe was a Japanese scholar and translator of French literature.
The Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee was a group organized in 1943 to protest the draft of Nisei, from Japanese American concentration camps during World War II. Kiyoshi Okamoto formed a "Fair Play Committee of One" in response to the War Relocation Authority's controversial loyalty questionnaire in 1943, and was later joined by Frank Emi and other inmates of the Heart Mountain camp. With seven older leaders at its core, the Committee's membership grew as draft notices began to arrive in camp. To challenge their forced "evacuation" by the government, they refused to volunteer or participate in the draft, but the Committee required its members to be citizens loyal to the United States willing to serve if their rights were restored. By June 1944, several dozen young men had been arrested and charged by the U.S. government with felony draft evasion. While the camp at Poston, Arizona produced the largest group of draft resisters, at 106, the Fair Play Committee was the most prominent inmate organization to protest the draft, and the rate of draft resistance at Heart Mountain was the highest of any camp. The number of resisters eventually numbered nearly 300 from all ten camps.
Hibi Kimei was Governor of Okinawa Prefecture (1908–1913).
Kono Oto Tomare! Sounds of Life is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Amyu. The series began publication in Shueisha's Jump Square magazine in August 2012, and has been compiled into 23 tankōbon volumes as of October 2, 2020. It has been reported that over 2.3 million copies of the manga have been sold. An anime television series adaptation by Platinum Vision aired from April to December 2019.
Marquis Yasumasa Matsudaira was a Japanese imperial bureaucrat and university professor.
Tomio Moriguchi is an American businessman and civil rights activist who served as CEO of the Uwajimaya supermarket chain in Seattle, Washington, from 1965 to 2007.
Martin Mitsuyuki "Mich" Matsudaira, also known as Mitch Matsudaira, was an American businessman and civil rights activist.
Diplomatic posts | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by Sadao Iguchi | Japanese Ambassador to Canada 1954–1957 | Succeeded by Toru Hagiwara |
Preceded by Toshikazu Kase | Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations 1957–1961 | Succeeded by Katsuo Okazaki |
Preceded by Hashim Jawad | President of the United Nations Security Council 1958 | Succeeded by Jorge Illueca |
Preceded by Egidio Ortona | President of the United Nations Security Council 1959 | Succeeded by Jorge Illueca |
Preceded by Shiroshi Nasu | Japanese Ambassador to India 1961–1965 | Succeeded by Osamu Itagaki |