Kōichirō Asakai

Kōichirō Asakai joined the Foreign Ministry in 1929 after graduating from Tokyo University of Commerce, now Hitotsubashi University, and continued his studies at Edinburgh. After Japan's surrender he worked in the Central Liaison Office, recording information from contacts with occupation authorities in accounts known as the Asakai Reports. He later represented Japan in Britain and the Philippines before becoming ambassador to the United States in 1957. ¹

Asakai took part in negotiating the revised U.S.–Japan security relationship and signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in Washington on January 19, 1960, alongside Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and other Japanese plenipotentiaries. The treaty required consultation on security threats and committed each country to act against an armed attack in territories under Japanese administration according to its constitutional processes. ^{1, 2}

After leaving the ambassadorship in 1963, Asakai remained an adviser to the Foreign Ministry until January 1982. He died in 1995. ¹