Izumiyama Sanroku
If your boss suddenly throws his arms around some woman
Politician | 30 March 1896 – 7 July 1981
In all my time of drinking, while I am ashamed to admit I have been known to regularly drink myself into states of unconsciousness, I am also proud to say that I have done so without ever dabbling in harassment—neither the “power” nor the “sexual” variety. Although, come to think of it, I’m not even part of any organization where I had power to abuse or subordinates to harass.
At any rate, while I enjoy getting swacked with the help of booze, I have never been known to swack others with my fists. Furthermore, I do not drunkenly whisper dirty jokes into the ears of random women.
“Of course you don’t,” I hear the salarymen scolding me. “Why are you stating the obvious?” But in the world of politics, there has never been any shortage of shameless speech or behavior. Members of parliament regularly make headlines with their statements about women’s issues, and important cabinet ministers often face allegations of sexual harassment. This is something we have all become accustomed to.
However, surely the only politician to have been drunk at the National Diet—where he was then responsible for sexual harassment on a level that would go down in history books—was former Minister of Finance Izumiyama Sanroku.
Izumiyama, born in 1896, graduated from Tokyo Imperial University (now: University of Tokyo) and then joined Mitsui Bank (now: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation). Finding favor in the eyes of Ikeda Shigeaki, head of Mitsui Zaibatsu and also one-time Governor of the Bank of Japan, Izumiyama became a politician after the end of the war. He was 52 years old at the time.
Elected to the House of Representatives in his first go through Yamagata 2nd District, Izumiyama became the Minister of Finance. He was elected for that position entirely thanks to Ikeda asking them to find some use for Izumiyama. Being chosen as the Minister of Finance while never having even met then Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, it just goes to show how “making it” in society is—and has always been—all about having connections and good luck.
But there is more to this story than meets the eye. When Ikeda asked them to “find some use” for Izumiyama, he had only meant it in the sense of, “I don’t know, make the guy like a deputy minister or something.” But Prime Minister Yoshida saw Ikeda as his economic advisor; as someone who’d played a big part in the peace initiative during the war. So now, when that same Ikeda was seemingly endorsing someone, he was a little too eager in pushing Izumiyama.
(Incidentally, Sato Eisaku, the Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time, endorsed Ikeda Hayato—who had just quit his post as Vice Minister of Finance—to become the new Minister of Finance. Yoshida ignored this endorsement, and appointed Izumiyama instead. Society really is all about connections and good luck. This, of course, did end up becoming a case of miscasting on Yoshida’s part. By the way, there was no blood relation between Ikeda Shigeaki and Ikeda Hayato.)
Izumiyama thus had a smooth start as a member of parliament. He would later go down in history by causing one of its biggest scandals of all time.
Thankfully, he writes about said scandal in his autobiography. What with said autobiography being entitled Becoming the Drunkard Minister: Memoirs of Half a Lifetime, we can deduct that him getting plastered was in fact the very climax of his career in the parliament. What a refreshingly easy-to-understand life this man led!
But we live in different times today. While reading through Izumiyama’s autobiography will initially make you appalled by the sheer outrageousness of his drunken debauchery, it is possible to get past all that. In a way, it’s actually kind of heartwarming. So please do bear with me as we go through it.
One day in 1948, as a parliamentary session was drawing to a close, Izumiyama—feeling relaxed perhaps?—decided to get smashed during their evening dinner break.
The break soon ended, and he made his way back to the cabinet ministers’ office. He remembers:
I sat down in my chair, but I was in such a daze that I have no recollection as to what happened after that.
Uh-oh. He even says how “the people around me tried to shake me awake, but they just couldn’t get me to snap out of it.” (Although, I must say, it’s a bit of a mystery how he was able to write all this in his autobiography if he had “no recollection” of the event…)
The plenary session began, and he was escorted out of the room by his henchmen. As they headed for the assembly hall, Izumiyama was not in a state of mere haziness—he was fully and totally out of it. He says he “began to feel unwell, so I sprawled myself out on the sofa in the corridor beside the assembly hall.” Questionable behavior from a grown adult, let alone from a cabinet minister.
Naturally, he was discovered by people from the opposition party. They went on an all-out attack. “This damn no-good drunk minister! Get him!” They’d discovered that earlier he had thrown his arms around, held hands with, kissed, and bitten female members of other parties in the dining hall, as well as in the corridors.
In his autobiography, Izumiyama says he remembers nothing. Here’s what actually happened.
Members of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Finance had been invited to the dining room. Everyone was enjoying dinner together. Suddenly, Izumiyama, deeply intoxicated, dragged the Democratic Party’s Yamashita Harue with him, threw his arms around her, and tried to kiss her. When she refused, he bit her on the left side of her jaw.
Furthermore, as Socialist Party member Matsuo Toshiko happened to be walking past, Izumiyama repeatedly grabbed her hand and displayed other disgraceful behavior before finally ending up falling asleep on the corridor sofa. The more we hear of his antics, the worse it becomes.
What’s more is that afterwards in the assembly hall, Yamashita took to the podium and revealed everything. “Moments ago, Minister of Finance Izumiyama violently took me to the corridor where he committed insulting acts towards me. Moreover, the Minister of Finance said to me, “I like you. To hell with the Salary Bill!” I ask you now: must I truly be humiliated to this extent?!”
It was absolute pandemonium. Izumiyama, while being pursued by the opposition party, was put in a car and hidden away. He says, “We drove around the moat three times, fled to the Prime Minister’s office, and then I hid at my house.”
The old saying about not letting the crazies among your group out into the public eye is something that holds true even today.
But what’s really funny is how while he was in the car, Izumiyama—despite having no recollection of his actions just moments ago—suddenly became enraged, demanding that he be immediately taken back to the National Diet.
His entourage reluctantly agreed, and they returned. But since Izumiyama was obviously in no condition to be seen by the public, they instead drove him straight to the doctor’s office where he was given an injection. But the doctor then made a shocking discovery.
He said my pupils were dilated, implying I had been poisoned. This became a point of major controversy, and the judicial authorities would later reach out to me about this very thing.
Sheesh. Even the sexual harassment begins to get overshadowed in this drunken drama.
He should have just quietly lied in bed at the doctor’s office. But then I suppose even drunks can have a sense of pride. “I don’t know if I had a guilty conscience or what, but I then shouted in anger how I couldn’t just lay there doing nothing, and I busted out of the doctor’s office.” He was photographed doing just that. “The next day it made a big splash in the newspapers. I was exposed to the whole country.” It’s quite rare for everything one does to backfire so terribly.
According to a subsequent police investigation, the total amount of alcohol consumed at the evening meal among 20 people had been two dozen beers. That’s only 24 bottles between 20 people—it sure doesn’t seem like an amount that would get anyone that trolleyed. Indeed, even Izumiyama himself recalls:
I laughed about it, thinking it was an amount I could well have drank all by myself!
It’s almost as if he fails to understand that this catastrophe happened exactly because he couldn’t hold his drink as well as he thought he could. We can see here how the man could make some rather unfortunate statements even when he wasn’t drunk.
In any case, either they miscalculated, or Izumiyama just drank the majority of those 24 beers by himself.
Ultimately, a disciplinary motion submitted by all the opposition parties was approved, and the following day Izumiyama submitted his letter of resignation to the then Prime Minister, Yoshida Shigeru. Izumiyama had lost his seat as the Minister of Finance after having held it for only 55 days.
But this was only the beginning of Act Two of “Izumiyama Theater.”
After declining to run in the general election of January the following year, Izumiyama—not knowing what to do with all his newly-found free time—decided to devote himself to writing calligraphy at home. To quote him: “I was writing with my eyes blurred from all the drinking.” (Was he actually sorry about what he’d done or not?)
But just when you thought his political life had been permanently cut short, he then for some reason began to receive recognition for the “determination” he’d shown in resigning so promptly. His popularity grew, and he resolved to make a comeback by running again in 1950, saying, “I’m putting my faith in the people.” In the following election of the House of Councillors, which was then a national constituency, he was elected 7th out of 370 candidates.
During his roadside speeches he would advise people in the audience to “not drink too much,” making him all the rage. Once, when he was visiting the city of Takamatsu, they jokingly cheered him on by saying, “We don’t have any great men the likes of you around these parts. Big shots who would try to kiss other members of the National Diet—no sir, no one of quite that magnitude!”
After being re-elected, he proudly stated: “Sure, of course I drink. A good old drunkard is what I am—with the backing of my good old lady!” (Again: was he actually sorry about what he’d done or not?)
We might attempt concluding this story by saying something along the lines of how “you just never know how life is going to turn out.” But then this really was a different time altogether—one in which society was much more tolerant of alcohol, and in which the term “sexual harassment” did not yet exist. As such, there may not be many lessons here for the average salaryman.
However, even back in those days, Izumiyama’s drunken sexual harassment was something rather exceptional.
The world of politics is a crude one, rife with scandals. And yet, after this National Diet Kiss Incident, there wasn’t another “sexual harassment resignation” for 48 years until the resignation of the Communist Party’s Policy Committee Chairman Fudesaka Hideyo (Acting Secretary-General) in 2003. That should give you some idea as to just how rare scandals like that have been.
In 1981, when Izumiyama passed away at the age of 85, he was memorialized in the newspapers as the “Drunkard Minister.” For better or worse, his one night of barbarism became the thing that he would be forever remembered by. But I suppose the proverb “notoriety beats obscurity” is something that holds true in all circles.
As a side note, actress Asaka Mitsuyo—who was in her twenties at the time of the incident—became close friends with Izumiyama after she spoke out in his defense, saying, “So what if a man kissed somebody? What’s the big deal?” It was through him that Asaka was then introduced to another influential politician, and she would end up becoming pregnant with his child.
Life sure is strange.
