Tōkichi Tanaka

Tokichi Tanaka was born in Miyazu in 1877. He graduated from Tokyo Higher Commercial School and entered the consular service in 1898. His later career combined diplomacy, senior ministry administration, and newspaper management. ¹

Tanaka’s work as chargé in Washington included public clarification of Japan’s position on immigration. In September 1916 he issued an embassy statement rejecting reports that Tokyo had decided to reopen the California alien land dispute after the European war. The statement said the controversy remained unsettled but that the embassy had no instructions about renewed protests; it also distinguished unofficial comments from government policy. In January 1918, another signed note notified the State Department that Japanese warships were being sent to Vladivostok to protect Japanese and other Allied nationals. ^{2, 3}

After returning to senior ministry work, Tanaka became vice foreign minister in 1923 and briefly headed The Japan Times. In 1925 he was appointed Japan’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, serving until 1930. He later led the Chūgai Shōgyō Shimbun and the Japan Newspaper Association and sat in the House of Peers. He was removed from public life during the occupation purge and died in 1961. ¹