was a Japanese politician. He was a close friend and ally of Ichiro Hatoyama, and was the key figure in carrying out the "conservative merger" that resulted in the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Despite being a powerful conservative politician in the Taishō and Shōwa eras, Miki remarkably never held any cabinet post. He still has a high reputation as the archetype of a behind-the-scenes power broker, and at the zenith of their power there were times when both Kanemaru Shin and Hiromu Nonaka were openly complimented by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone for having "surpassed Bukichi Miki."
Miki's nicknames included "the heckling general," "the wily schemer," and "the great tanuki of Japanese politics."
Early life Miki was born in Takamatsu, then in Ehime Prefecture but now in Kagawa Prefecture, as the first son of Komon Miki, an antiques dealer. His family was not related to that of Takeo Miki.
In his second year at Takamatsu Secondary, now Kagawa Prefectural Takamatsu High School, he walked out on his bill at an udon restaurant and encouraged others to do the same, and thus was expelled from school. He transferred to Doshisha Secondary in Kyoto, now Doshisha Junior and Senior High School, but was expelled again for getting into a fight. He went to Tokyo with the help of the politician Tooru Hoshi but on 21 June 1901, the day on which Miki would go to work as a live-in student at his law office, Hoshi was assassinated.
Miki was admitted into Tokyo Vocational School, called Waseda University from 1902 and on, where he counted among his classmates future politicians Ryutaro Nagai and Ikuo Oyama and baseball player Shin Hashido. While spending much of his time chasing women in Shinjuku, he earnestly studied law and practiced baseball. Although he even joined the Waseda Baseball Club at its inception, it was said that he exhibited little talent.Shogaku Yudate, スポーツ人国記 (Tokyo: Popura Shobo, 1934), 117-118. However, his name does not appear in Bushi, the official records of the club, and he was also not a member of the Tomon Club, composed of the Waseda Baseball Club's alumni. This was also the time of his budding romance with Kaneko Amano, a woman known as "the beauty of Waseda" who was popular among the students and would go on to become Miki's wife. He graduated in 1904.
Miki worked for a brief time as a scribe at Waseda University Library.Hideyuki Fujiwara, "知られざる図書館員 三木武吉 ," Waseda Daigaku Toshokan Ho, March 15, 2010, 30-31. The next year, in 1905, he went to work with the Bank of Japan at their Moji branch. However, he participated in an open-house anti-government meeting in opposition to the Treaty of Portsmouth and after giving a speech demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Taro Katsura he was charged with violating the code of conduct for civil servants and was discharged. In 1907, he passed the Higher Civil Service Examination for the judiciary and was appointed as an assistant judicial officer in the Tokyo District Court, but life as a civil servant did not suit his personality, and after seven months he instead became a lawyer. The same year, he married Kaneko Amano.
Political career Pre-war In 1913, Miki was elected to the Ushigome ward assembly. Soon after, he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives but was defeated. In 1916, he joined the Kenseikai and in 1917, he won a seat in that year's general elections to the House.
Miki distinguished himself in his new role as a member of the House. Above all, he more than earned his nickname, "the heckling general", through his trenchant criticisms of the government. He also caught the eye of Osachi Hamaguchi following his spirited debate with Home Minister Takejiro Tokonami in defense of universal suffrage. After that Hamaguchi became his political mentor.
In 1920, Miki toured Siberia for one month as a member of a committee of inquiry for the Imperial Diet concerning the Siberian expedition. The tour led Miki to the conclusion that the expedition was interference in the internal affairs of another nation, inspired by the militaristic ambitions of the army which were steeped in the traditions of the Meiji oligarchy. Therefore, he wrote up an open letter and a speech for question period that held the militarists, oligarchs, and bureaucrats accountable for the war and sought to link the neutralization of these forces to the establishment of true parliamentary democracy. With a view to also using it to force the resignation of incumbent Prime Minister Takashi Hara, Miki handed in the completed manuscript to Takaaki Kato, president of the Kenseikai, through Hamaguchi. However, Miki was disheartened when the manuscript was rejected by Kato and Hamaguchi who advised him to focus on internal matters for fear his revelations about the origins of the war would damage Japan's international reputation. Even so, they were both deeply impressed by the depth and detail of his work.Isamu Togawa, 小説三木武吉 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1983), 71-75.
In June 1922, Miki was also elected to the Tokyo City Council. He formed the Shisei Kakushin Domei which emphasized cleaning up city politics and clashed with the Rikken Seiyukai-aligned Shinkokai. At that time, one of his political foes in Tokyo City politics was Shinkokai member Ichiro Hatoyama, who would later become a close friend.
In January 1924, at the young age of 39 and after having served only two terms in the House, Miki was promoted to the post of Kenseikai Secretary General and led the party in the general election of May 1924. The Kenseikai won a plurality of the seats, and Takaaki Kato set up his first cabinet with the support of the so-called "three groups protecting the constitution", the Kenseikai, the Rikken Seiyukai, and the Kakushin Club.
When Hamaguchi Osachi, who Miki had looked up to for a long time, took office as Finance Minister, Miki was appointed the Ministry's parliamentary councillor under Hamaguchi's tutelage. In 1927 he joined the Rikken Minseito under Hamaguchi's leadership and, at the same time, went on a tour of Europe. Thus, Miki had reached the pinnacle of his pre-war political career when a disaster befell him. In 1928, he was implicated in a case of bribery by Keisei Railway of the Tokyo municipal government, was convicted in court, and, for the time being, ended up leaving politics.
World War II In 1939, he became president of the newspaper firm Hochi Shimbun. He returned to politics in 1942, winning election as an independent candidate in that year's general election. In the election, Ichiro Hatoyama also won office as an unaligned candidate. Before the war Miki and Hatoyama had been leading members of rival parties, the Rikken Minseito and the Rikken Seiyukai. However, in wartime, they were both defenders of liberalism who together resisted the military authorities, even if in the end they were both compelled to affiliate with the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association. At that time, Hatoyama and Miki made a pact to form a government one day, with Hatoyama as prime minister and Miki as Speaker of the House of Representatives. In August 1942, Hochi Shimbun was bought out by Yomiuri Shimbun.
After the war, he took part in planning the establishment of the Liberal Party. In the elections of April 1946 the Liberal Party won a plurality, and it seemed like a real possibility that Hatoyama would become prime minister, but the formation of the cabinet fell through at the last minute when Hatoyama was purged by the US occupation authorities. Shigeru Yoshida became President of the Liberal Party in Hatoyama's stead.
Because Yoshida still disliked the pre-war politicians for having been deferent to the military, he selected his cabinet in private consultation with his close advisor, Joji Hayashi without discussing the matter with senior members of the Liberal Party, including Miki, who was Chairman of the Executive Council, and Secretary General Ichiro Kono. The party leadership was furious, some even demanding Yoshida's removal from the party presidency, but Miki managed to calm them down by pointing out that if they withdrew their support from Yoshida, then power would likely pass to the Socialist Party.Isamu Togawa, 小説三木武吉 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1983), 209-219.
Then, on 24 May 1946, two days after the formation of Yoshida's first cabinet, Miki was also purged.
The fall of Yoshida and ascension of Hatoyama On 24 June 1951, when the ban on holding office was lifted for those purged, Miki began seeking to have Prime Minister Yoshida removed in cooperation with Ichiro Kono and Hatoyama. The three were reinstated in the Liberal Party, but by now the party was completely controlled by the "Yoshida school," which was directly allied with the Prime Minister, and a promise Yoshida had made to hand back power to Hatoyama after his return had been effectively annulled.
Miki, Hatoyama, and Kono thus moved towards founding a new political party. However, Hatoyama suffered a stroke, and the plan fell through. Miki changed course in favor of undermining Yoshida from within the Liberal Party. Operating behind the scenes, Miki devoted himself to all manner of schemes and became the leader of the anti-Yoshida movement. To combat this, Yoshida took the advice of his political adviser, Tsuruhei Matsuno, and jolted the pro-Hatoyama faction by calling a snap election in August 1952. On the recommendation of Kozen Hirokawa, Yoshida also expelled both Ichiro Kono and Tanzan Ishibashi from the Liberal Party on the basis of their opposition to his leadership. The fact that Miki Bukichi, the central dissident, was not expelled was said to be due to the debt of gratitude Yoshida felt to him for saving his first cabinet in 1946.
The Liberal Party won a majority government in the elections, and Yoshida formed his fourth cabinet. The remainder of the pro-Hatoyama faction constituted the "Democratization League", essentially an opposition party operating within the ruling party. The Democratization League absented itself from the Diet when a motion of censure was tabled by the opposition parties against Minister of International Trade and Industry Hayato Ikeda for his gaffe, "The bankruptcy and suicide of one or two small businessmen can't be avoided." The motion passed, and Ikeda resigned.
In December 1952, the Democratization League ratcheted up the pressure on Yoshida against the backdrop of the passage of the revised draft budget. Next year, at the same time as the League arranged for Kono and Ishibashi to re-join the party, it forced the resignations of Secretary General Joji Hayashi and Chairman of the Executive Council Shuji Masutani, who were key allies of Prime Minister Yoshida. Miki was appointed Masutani's successor in the party's Executive Council. Seeking to throw the Liberal Party establishment into disarray, Miki drove a wedge between Yoshida and his ally Kozen Hirokawa by putting the idea into his head that Yoshida intended to make Taketora Ogata his successor. Then Miki slyly proposed to the Yoshida camp that Hirokawa be elevated to the position of Secretary General, presenting Yoshida with a no-win scenario in which he could either accede to the request and allow Miki to manipulate the party through Hirokawa, or refuse the request and further alienate him.Isamu Togawa, 小説吉田学校 (Tokyo: Ryudo Shuppan, 1971), 255-257. In the end, Hirokawa was not made Secretary General, and his behind-the-scenes split with Yoshida became definitive.