January 7th is a big day for anniversaries in Japanese history.

Two Prime Ministers assumed their posts on this day - Prince Kimmochi Saionji in 1906 and Count Keigo Kiyoura in 1924.

Prince Kimmochi Saionji was in the midst of an interesting succession of Prime Ministers - he was Prime Minister twice, the 12th and 14th, and was both preceded and succeeded both times by Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Taro Katsura, the 11th, 13th, and 15th Prime Minister.

Saionji, not yet a prince, but still a marquis in 1906, took over the Prime Ministership from Katsura for the first time on January 7, 1906 when Katsura resigned due to controversy surrounding the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War.

The controversy was primarily the disappointment of the Japanese public at the relatively modest rewards secured by Japan despite a decisive, resounding victory over Russia - the young modern Japanese state’s most significant military victory to that date and a major step towards getting the respect from the West that Japan sought. During the war, American visitors to Japan commented on the remarkable public enthusiasm for the war - women wore hair ornaments shaped like little battleships and kimono printed with patriotic and martial patterns, significant triumphs were met with exuberant public celebrations, and more.

The Russo-Japanese War was to that date the largest-ever clash between states (in terms of troop and ship numbers) and saw the first use of the telegraph, telephone, machine guns, barbed wire, illuminating star shells, mine fields, advanced torpedoes, and armored battleships in war.

As the aggrieved party and the victor, it was expected that Japan would present demands during the negotiations at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which they did on August 10, 1905. Twelve of them.

Demand I - Russia acknowledging that Japan possesses in Korea paramount political, military and economical interests, to engage not to obstruct or interfere with any measures of guidance, protection and control which Japan finds it necessary to take in Korea. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Demand II - Engagement on the part of Russia to completely evacuate Manchuria within a period to be specified and to relinquish all territorial advantages and all preferential and exclusive concessions and franchises in that region in impairment of Chinese sovereignty or inconsistent with the principle of equal opportunity. Russia agrees.

Demand III - Japan to engage to restore to China, subject to the guarantee of reform and improved administration, all those portions of Manchuria which are in her occupation, saving only the regions affected by the lease of the Liaotung Peninsula. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Demand IV - Japan and Russia reciprocally to engage not to obstruct any general measures common to all countries, which China may take for the development of the commerce and industries in Manchuria. Russia agrees.

Demand V - Sakhalin and all islands appertaining thereto and all public works and properties to be ceded to Japan. Russia strongly disagrees.

Demand VI - The lease of Port Arthur, Talien, and adjacent territory and territorial waters together with all rights, privileges, concessions and franchises acquired by Russia from China, in connection with or as a part of such lease and all public works and properties to be transferred and assigned to Japan. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Demand VII - Russia to assign and transfer to Japan free of all claims and encumbrances, the railway between Harbin and Port Arthur and all its branches together with all rights, privileges and properties appertaining thereto, and all coal mines belonging to or worked for the benefit of the railway. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Demand VIII - Russia to retain and work the trans-Manchurian railway, subject to the terms and conditions of the concession under which it was constructed, and subject also to the condition that it is to be employed exclusively for commercial and industrial purposes. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Demand IX - Russia to reimburse to Japan the actual expenses of the war. The amount as well as the time and manner of such reimbursement to be agreed upon. Russia strongly disagrees.

Demand X - All Russian ships-of-war, which, in consequence of damage received in battle, sought asylum in neutral ports and were there interned, to be surrendered to Japan as lawful prizes. Russia strongly disagrees.

Demand XI - Russia to engage to limit her naval strength in the waters of the Extreme East. Russia strongly disagrees.

Demand XII - Russia to grant to Japanese subjects full fishery rights along the coasts and in the bays, harbors, inlets and rivers of her possessions in the Japan, Okhotsk and Bering Seas. Russia agrees to negotiate.

Apparently, opinion among those Japanese following the events of the day was that Japan deserved all it demanded and more; that Japan’s victory would lead to respect, prestige, empire, putting Japan on an equal footing to the powers of Europe. Most of all, Japan, in financial straits due to the war, sought and needed an indemnity from Russia, reparations to cover the great expense of the war.

When the treaty was signed, Japan got neither the indemnity nor as much territory as the public had been led to believe it would. This resulted in the Hibiya Riots of September 5, 1905.

Not knowing that Japan simply could not continue the war, that Tsar Nicholas, upset by Japanese demands during peace negotiations, wanted to, or how broke Japan was, activist groups held a rally in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park to display their anger over the Treaty of Portsmouth. The riots went on for two days, caused great damage, 17 deaths, and sparked similar demonstrations in Kobe and Yokohama. The violence was followed by months of protests, smaller demonstrations, and, on January 7, 1906, the fall of Prime Minister Katsura and the ascension of Marquis Saionji to the Prime Ministership.

On this day in 1924, at age 74, Count Keigo Kiyoura accepted a second Imperial appointment as Prime Minister, having turned down an appointment in 1914, due to the ongoing Siemens scandal, in which Naval officials got a 15% kickback from Siemens in exchange for a monopoly on contracts. (The more things change. . .)
Kiyoura was an aristocrat Prime Minister at a time when the practice of non-partisan aristocrats trading the Prime Ministership and Cabinet appointments back and forth among themselves was going out of style. Except for active duty generals during World War II, he was the last non-partisan Prime Minister and was in office for six months, dogged by fervent opposition to almost all of his initiatives in the Diet, and left office when his Cabinet resigned en masse on June 11, 1924, following a trouncing in the general election.

Kiyoura had served in a number of posts during his long career, including Chairman of the Privy Council, a Diet member in the House of Councilors, and in the Cabinets of Prime Ministers Yamagata, Matsukata, and Taro Katsura.

During the Kiyoura administration, Crown Prince Hirohito got married. Nineteen days shy of 65 years later, the Showa Emperor, as he became, died of internal bleeding due to duodenal cancer. A year and a few months earlier, on September 22, 1987, he had become the first Japanese emperor known to have had surgery when he underwent pancreatic surgery.

The Showa Emperor was succeeded on the same day by his son Akihito, the Heisei Emperor, who reigns to this day.

January 7th also marks two important events in the postwar history of Okinawa.
In his 1954 State of the Union Address, President Dwight Eisenhower pledged, “We shall maintain indefinitely our bases in Okinawa.”
In 1972, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato met with President Richard Nixon at the “Western White House” in San Clemente, California to decide on a date for Okinawa’s return to Japanese sovereignty, which was set for May 15, 1972.