Toshio Shiratori

Japanese politician, war criminal 1887-1949

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (January 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,691 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:白鳥敏夫]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|白鳥敏夫}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Toshio Shiratori 白鳥敏夫
Toshio Shiratori
Born	(1887-06-08)8 June 1887 Chiba Prefecture, Empire of Japan
Died	3 June 1949(1949-06-03) (aged 61) Sugamo Prison, Tokyo, Occupied Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation(s)	Ambassador, Adviser to foreign minister
Criminal status	Deceased

Conviction(s)	Crimes against peace
Trial	International Military Tribunal for the Far East
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment

Toshio Shiratori (白鳥敏夫, Shiratori Toshio, 8 June 1887 – 3 June 1949) was the Japanese ambassador to Italy from 1938 to 1940, adviser to the Japanese foreign minister in 1940, and one of the 14 Class-A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.

Shiratori served as Director of Information Bureau under the Foreign Ministry from 1929 to 1933. He served as Ambassador to Sweden and non-resident Ambassador to Finland from 1933 to 1936, the Grand Cross of the Royal Swedish Order of the Polar Star granted to him in 1939. He was appointed ambassador to Italy, serving from 1938 to 1940, and became adviser to foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka in 1940. He was an advocate of military expansionism, counseling an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan to facilitate world domination. On 23 May 1942, the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano wrote in his diary that Shiratori had said that the 'dominion of the world belongs to Japan, the Mikado is the only god on earth, and that both Hitler and Mussolini must become resigned to this reality.'

Shiratori was found guilty of conspiring to wage aggressive war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in November 1948 and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[1] He died in prison of laryngeal cancer in 1949.

On 7 October 1978, Shiratori was one of fourteen Class-A war criminals controversially enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.^[2] A memo from Emperor Shōwa, disclosed in 2006, revealed that he stopped visiting Yasukuni Shrine from 1978 until his death in 1989, because "they even enshrined Matsuoka and Shiratori."^[3]

References

^ "IMTFE Judgement". Retrieved 23 January 2012.
^ "The 14 Class-A War Criminals Enshrined at Yasukuni". 19 July 2005. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
^ "When Emperor Showa spoke from the heart in his memo". 24 July 2006. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 23 January 2012.