History UsefulNotes / HidekiTojo

It was in 1940, however, that Tojo entered the domestic political scene in a major way, when then-Prime Minister Prince Konoe made him the head of the Army Ministry in his second cabinet. Tojo was a strong supporter of Japan’s alliance with the other Axis powers, and used his new position to further expand the war in China, while pushing Japan closer and closer to a confrontation with Great Britain and the United States of America. When Konoe resigned as Prime Minister in 1941, Tojo was appointed Prime Minister of Japan by Emperor Hirohito, [[ReluctantRuler much to his own surprise]]. Following the breakdown of negotiations with the USA, Tojo approved both Pearl Harbor, and the attempts by the IJA and IJN to seize the "Southern Resource Area" bringing Japan into WWII in a big way. In Allied propaganda, the bespectacled and moustachioed Tojo would quickly become a target of racist caricature, and was a favourite victim of mockery, being frequently represented as a [[ManiacMonkeys monkey]] or a [[EnfantTerrible small boy]].

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!!Tropes applying to Hideki Tojo include:

* ArmchairMilitary: Tojo was a staff officer and had only seen actual combat once in his entire life.
* BadassBaritone/EvilSoundsDeep: In more accurate portrayals and real life. He had a very deep, intimidating voice that actors have used to good effect.
* BaldOfEvil: Under that hat, Tojo is hairless.
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Advocated this sort of attitude as part of the IJA's twisted ''bushido'' code, and tried to live up to it during his failed suicide attempt.
* TheButcher: Nicknamed "The Razor" by those who had served under him. This should perhaps have been a warning sign that he was not a man who should be given power.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Upon becoming Japanese Prime Minister, Tojo had to try and manage a society that could best be described as "authoritarian factionalist". He had to negotiate the interests of the weak, but still present, civilian government, the imperial bureaucracy, the ''[[MegaCorp zaibatsu]]'', the Army and the Navy (and the various factions within each), and The Emperor. In the end it was far too much, and Tojo ultimately lost control of the very military forces that he had helped to unleash in the first place. And then they fired him just before they all lost the war.
* ChestOfMedals: Just take a look at the page picture. Given that Tojo saw combat only once, how he earned those medals is rather questionable.
* CommissarCap: One of his trademark items in fiction. Probably because he wore it during photos.
* ControlFreak: As evidenced by his increasing list of titles, Tojo did not trust others to do their jobs and tried to run every Ministry at once. Given the fractured, factional nature of both Japanese politics and the military this was understandable, but it didn't do anything for the war effort, as it left Tojo completely overworked and unable to focus on any one Ministry.
* DragonInChief: Many historians have him as one to [[NonActionBigBad Emperor Hirohito]] from 1941-1944.
* DrivenToSuicide: Tried to kill himself in the closing days of WWII to avoid the disgrace of being captured by the Americans. It didn't work out for him.
* DrugsAreBad: Under Tojo the IJA revived the Chinese opium trade and exported thousands of tonnes of morphine to addicts in Manchuoko and China proper, both as a means of demoralising the enemy, and funding the war effort.
* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: The world that Tojo and his compatriots in the IJA and IJN were trying to build was an ugly one, with the rest of Asia enslaved to Japan in the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." While on the surface this was supposed to benefit all Asians, in practice the rest of East Asia was completely under the Japanse bootheel, with all their natural resources going to the Japanese home islands, the kidnapping and forced prostitution of thousands of comfort women, and the butchering of any population that didn't feel like kowtowing to the Japanese MasterRace. About the only thing to recommend Tojo's world is that it isn't ''quite'' as Hellish as the one envisioned by his ally, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.
* TheEmpire: Tojo's actions throughout the thirties helped to further Japan's transformation into a repressive and expansionist militarist state with designs on most of East Asia, and hopes of rivalling Great Britain and the United States in the imperialism department. During his term as Prime Minister, the Empire of Japan would reach its greatest size, stretching from Manchuria to Indonesia and encompassing millions of miles of the Pacific Ocean, before its rapid decline and downfall.
* EnfantTerrible: Allied propaganda often portrayed him as a small boy
* EpicFail: His suicide attempt, in which he was revived by American doctors, only to be hanged three years later.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: There are no indications that Tojo was anything but a dutiful husband and father.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Continued the Imperial Japanese policy of allowing Jewish refugees to enter Japan and refusing to extradite them to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany.
* EvilChancellor: Tojo, and the rest of the Japanese military, are often viewed as this to [[PuppetKing the Emperor]], and get treated accordingly in a lot of media.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Tojo faced his execution calmly, read a statement in which he apologized for Japan's war crimes, and asked America to be lenient with the Japanese people.
* FaceOfTheBand: Tojo never held absolute power in Japan the way that Stalin, Hitler, or even Mussolini did in their respective countries. At the height of his power, he was only first among equals in the civilian/military junta ([[WeAreStrugglingTogether or anarchy]] )that ran the government, and it was a shaky position at best. However, due in part to his prominence, and in part to his unique (and stereotypical) appearance, Tojo became the face of UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan to most of the West, and was generally treated as though he were an Asian Hitler in most Western media.
* [[FakeUltimateHero Fake Ultimate Villain]]: Most traditionalist historians peg him as the ''de facto'' BigBad of [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], and he's often positioned as part of a BigBadDuumvirate with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler (Mussolini is a distant third) for UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo as a whole. In truth, Tojo was a respected hardliner with a talent for speaking, but he was just chosen to be a "spokesman" and mediator for a whole mess of often-competing Japanese militarists and their cliques. At least until he wasn't and he was dismissed by his rivals without really changing much. He had a lot of power at his height, but Japan didn't really have a standout leader, let alone BigBad, on Hitler or even Mussolini's level.
* FallGuy: It is hotly debated among historians whether he became a willing one of these.
* FamilyValuesVillain: Believed strongly in family and teamwork between the Japanese, as well as having six children.
* FascistButInefficient: Tojo was never able to fully control the Army or Navy, let alone the ''zaibatsu'' or the various other factions within the Imperial government, leaving the Japanese war machine floundering.
* TheFatalist: Felt that conflict with the United States was foreordained, which is one reason he did so little to try and avoid what he thought was the inevitable.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: Tojo's round glasses are the IconicItem associated with him, and he was, without a doubt, a ''very'' bad man.
* TheFundamentalist: Tojo seems to have been a true believer in the State Shinto/Zen Buddhism inspired Imperial Cult, which advocated the divinity of the emperor, the superiority of the Japanese race, and a deeply twisted warrior ethic.
* GeneralFailure: Tojo was not necessarily a bad officer, but a lifetime spent in the General Staff divorced him from the needs of the soldiers in the field. A man of limited strategic vision, who had never looked beyond the immediate needs of the Army Ministry, he was overwhelmed by the task of being Prime Minister, and was unable to control the Army, let alone the Navy Ministry, leading to further chaos and complications within the system, and an eventual breakdown in strategic planning. And that's without getting into the fact that IJA and IJN doctrine (which he fully endorsed) refused to accept the concept of a tactical withdrawal, resulting in countless soldiers being left to pointlessly fight to the death.
* GeneralRipper: With "Enemy X" being anyone who wasn't Japanese.
* TheGeneralissimo: As a five star general turned military dictator, Tojo is one of the iconic inspirations for the trope, with his CommissarCap, ChestOfMedals, and reliance on the IJA to maintain his position.
* GenerationXerox: His granddaughter Yuko was almost as radically militarist as he was. Fortunately she wasn't taken very seriously by the Diet.
* GovernmentConspiracy: Tojo was a member of a cabal of militarists and nationalists within the IJA and IJN who aimed to take power away from the civilian government and place it in the hands of the military. During the course of the 1930s and 40s, this junta succeeded in its goals, invading China without government consent and transforming Japan into a bureaucratic/military state, ruled by several different military and imperial factions, each with its own agenda, but all at least nominally answering to Tojo and the Emperor. We say nominally, because in practise neither Tojo nor Hirohito could gain control over the numerous political agendas and conspiracies within the IJA and IJN, to the severe detriment of the war effort.
* HeelRealization: If his FamousLastWords can be taken at face value, Tojo realized that Japan had committed some very serious wrongs shortly before his execution and accepted that he deserved to be punished for them.
* HenpeckedHusband: Believe it or not, Tojo was apparently driven to distraction by his domineering wife.
* InsaneAdmiral: Frequently played this way in Allied propaganda.
* InterruptedSuicide: Tojo's attempt at killing himself might not have worked immediately, but it would have killed him in the long run without the intervention of US medical personnel.
* InterserviceRivalry: A serious problem for the Japanese war effort in general, with the IJA and IJN viewing one another as the bitterest of rivals. It got so bad that the IJA was developing its own light carriers, while the IJN created its own ground forces that rivalled those of the Army in size; both had their own amphibious warfare units and subordinate air forces. When Tojo became Army Minister he landed right in the middle of this dispute, and found himself wrangling with the Navy Ministry for scarce resources. After becoming Prime Minister, Tojo discovered that even with his considerable powers he could not force the Army and Navy officers who made up the junta to cooperate with each other..
* JustTheFirstCitizen: Tojo never declared himself supreme generalissimo, gave himself a title like "Fuhrer" or "Duce" or anything of the sort. He was just Prime Minister to Emperor Hirohito, which was more than enough.
* UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun: Was a staff officer and secret policeman in the Imperial Japanese Army, before becoming first Army Minister and then Prime Minister, putting him in charge first of the IJA and then of all Imperial Japanese military forces.
* LaughablyEvil: Most depictions of Tojo in Allied media made him a figure of comedy, using racial stereotyping and a high, screechy voice to characterise him. In reality Tojo was known as a very serious, very dignified, and very severe figure by those who actually knew of him, earning the name [[RedBaron The Razor]] for his sharp mannerisms.
* UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar: Tojo never respected these--not when he served with the Kwangtung Army, not when he was in the Army Ministry, and not when he became Prime Minister. The result was a whole lot of dead civilians in China, the regular massacre, torture, and/or enslavement of [=POW=]s, and the gang rape of thousands, if not millions, of women by IJA soldiers. It got to the point where Americans refused to accept surrender from those Japanese troops who wanted to give up because the IJA had frequently used false surrenders as a way to kill more Americans.
* LeaveNoSurvivors: Japanese soldiers flagrantly disregarding UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar, killing prisoners, and generally acting like utter bastards was an established custom for some years by the time he came to power, but his instructions to the army to this effect resulted in a whole lot more RapePillageAndBurn in both the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo, with
* ManiacMonkeys: In many, ''many'' Allied political cartoons.
* MasterRace: Tojo believed--as did many of his fellow officers--that the Japanese were an inherently superior race, and therefore deserved to rule all of Asia in place of the British, French, Dutch, and American empires. It was this belief that fuelled Japan's abysmal treatment of the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Burmese, and Manchurian peoples they conquered, as well as their refusal treat Allied soldiers as human beings. Under Tojo's Prime Ministry this belief reached its xenith, as he promoted it to fuel the war.
* MilitaryBrat: Tojo's father was a lieutenant general in the IJA. Tojo grew up around the military and ultimately followed his father into it.
* MoralMyopia: The US sanctions against Japan? Cruel and unusual. Japan's inhumane treatment of China, Korea, and other subject nations? The cost of empire. It was only at his trial and execution that Tojo seemed to comprehend how other nations saw Japan, and that wrong was wrong, regardless of who did it.
* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Tojo was willing to cross any lines, so long as it resulted in UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan becoming the world's next superpower...
* MyMasterRightOrWrong: ...and Emperor Hirohito becoming the greatest ruler in Japanese history. Tojo's loyalty to the Emperor is the one thing about him that cannot be questioned. Whatever Hirohito ordered, Tojo would do.

* NonActionBigBad: He was a staff officer and only saw combat once.
* PatrioticFervor: Suffered from a virulent case of nationalism and promoted it throughout Japan.
* PoliceState: Not only ran Japan as one, but propped up similar puppet states in Manchuoko, Inner Mongolia, Wang Jingwei's Republic of China, and the Empire of Vietnam, among others.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: A xenophobic Japanese nationalist who saw the Japanese as the MasterRace and advocated enslaving or killing off other races.
* PragmaticVillainy: Avoided going to war with the Soviet Union (in spite of his rabid hatred of Communism) because he did not believe that Japan could fight both the USA and the USSR at the same time.
* PresidentEvil: Prime Minister of Japan, and a scary, scary guy. Made easier by the fact that he did not have to be elected, but was offered his position by Emperor Hirohito.
* RapePillageAndBurn: Tojo's influence, in both the Kwangtung Army, and in Japanese politics helped to transform the Imperial Japanese Army into a force that practised these sorts of tactics on a regular basis.

* ReluctantRuler: Tojo accepted the post of Prime Minister only reluctantly, and at the Emperor's urging. Once he had power, he went out of his way to consolidate it in his hands, controlling the Army Ministry, the Education Ministry, and numerous other posts, while also serving as Prime Minister and Chief of Staff of the Army.
* TheRival: Of Navy Ministers Admiral Yoshita Zengo and Admiral Okikawa Kushiro during his time as Army Minister. Even after becoming Prime Minister, Tojo discovered that the Navy could still frustrate his designs.
* SecretPolice: Headed them up in Manchuria prior to becoming Army Minister and then Prime Minister.
* TheSocialDarwinist: Like many of his contemporaries, Tojo held that nations had to grow or be contained and destroyed. This notion governed his actions as Army Minister and Prime Minister, eventually leading to confrontation with the USA.
* StayInTheKitchen: A strong promoter of traditional Japanese values, which held that women had to stay at home and out of the public view. This is particularly ironic in light of his own wife's apparently domineering personality.
* StrawHypocrite: Claimed to be acting on behalf of Pan-Asian unity, with the goal of liberating colonial nations from European oppression and leading them into a better future, but in reality was out to enslave the colonies to newer, and even more ruthless, masters in Tokyo. The fact that he [[GenreBlind may not have even realized there was any contradiction]] hammers it home.
** In addition, his advocation of suicidal attacks, militarism, and especially his twisted view of Bushido BIG time. Not only was he an armchair general who was out of shape even by reservist military standard, but his cowardly hiding and his pathetically failed attempt of committing suicide by use of pistol (despite the fact that traditional bushido doctrine stated painful suicide via disembowelment with a knife or sword) angered even hardcore conservatives who still wanted to continue the war and made him lose what credibility he had left in the eyes of the Japanese citizenry. For someone who tried to brainwash a generation of young men into thinking death in battle is glorious and boasted militarism, he didn't even take a single step in walking the talk.
* SuicideAttack: Encouraged the use of various suicidal methods of attacking the allies, including the infamous kamikazes, as well as various antitank weapons that were guaranteed to kill the user.
* TakeOverTheWorld: The meaning of the slogan "Hakko Ichiu", meaning- more or less- "All the Directions of the world under One Roof." More specifically to Tojo, he at least intended to take over a huge chunk of the world to carve out a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
* TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard: Tojo was Prime Minister, Army Minister, Education Minister, Home Minister, Foreign Minister, Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army by 1944.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: An interesting example. Tojo knew that Japan could not expect to win a long war with the United States. What he underestimated was not America's strength, but her willingness to stay in the fight and see things through to the end.
* UndyingLoyalty: More recent studies have demonstrated that Tojo, whatever his other flaws, was deeply loyal, both to Emperor Hirohito personally, and to the Japanese state as a whole.
* VillainousValour: Say what you will about Tojo, but his willingness to accept responsibility for all of Japan's war crimes and to take the rap was a brave thing to do. Though it is diminished by [[MortonsFork how he'd have been screwed anyway even if he did differently.]]
* WeCanRuleTogether: It was during Tojo's term as Prime Minister that the Japanese and German foreign ministries worked out their plan for the division of the world at the Urals, with Japan controlling Asia, Germany Europe, and Italy (by then Germany's junior partner) getting Africa.
* WeHaveReserves: Japan didn't have reserves, but Tojo fought as though they did, regularly denying the right to retreat to defeated units, ordering pointless offensives, investing in suicide weapons like the kamikazes, and forcing soldiers to survive on "spirit" rather than rations as shortages got worse and Japan's economy neared collapse. As one history of the IJA and IJN notes, Tojo and the other members of his clique should have been arrested for crimes against their own soldiers, if nothing else.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Subverted. Tojo claimed that he was acting to liberate Asia from white colonial oppression, but in practise he and his fellow Japanese soilders treated the local populations far more brutally than [[DynastiesFromShangToQing traditional Chinese hegemony]] had, let alone the British, French, Dutch, or Americans.
* YellowPeril: Regarded as the personification of it by the West, with most representations of him in Western media turning him into a caricature of the archetype.

!!Works featuring Hideki Tojo include:
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'''Film'''

'''Literature'''

'''Newspaper Comics'''

'''Western Animation'''

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* TakeOverTheWorld: The meaning of the slogan "Hakko Ichiu", meaning- more or less- "All the Directions of the world under One Roof." More specifically to Tojo, he at least intended to take over a huge chunk of the world to carve out a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere."

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: A common treatment by those works that actually deal with him or ImperialJapan in general, particularly those that do a PalatteSwap and leave it at that. In reality while both Nazism and Tojo's ideals were racist, murderous, imperious, and authoritarian-to-totalitarian there were a number of non-insignificant differences.

* In HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'' saga, Tojo survives The Race's nuclear bombing of Japan, and goes on to lead the Japanese war effort against the alien invaders, treating The Race as brutally as he had treated his American enemies. By the time of ''Colonization'', he is still Prime Minister, and attends the funeral of US President Earl Warren at the age of eighty-two.

* In ''TheWarThatCameEarly'', Tojo does not appear, but is mentioned frequently. He becomes Prime Minister a year early, in 1940, and leads the Japanese into war with America following the successful campaign against the Soviet Union.

It was in 1940, however, that Tojo entered the domestic political scene in a major way, when then-Prime Minister Prince Konoe made him the head of the Army Ministry in his second cabinet. Tojo was a strong supporter of Japan’s alliance with the other Axis powers, and used his new position to further expand the war in China, while pushing Japan closer and closer to a confrontation with Great Britain and the United States of America. When Konoe resigned as Prime Minister in 1941, Tojo was appointed Prime Minister of Japan by Emperor Hirohito, [[ReluctantRuler much to his own surprise]]. Following the breakdown of negotiations with the USA, Tojo approved both Pearl Harbour, and the attempts by the IJA and IJN to seize the "Southern Resource Area" bringing Japan into WWII in a big way. In Allied propaganda, the bespectacled and moustachioed Tojo would quickly become a target of racist caricature, and was a favourite victim of mockery, being frequently represented as a [[ManiacMonkeys monkey]] or a [[EnfantTerrible small boy]].

It was in 1940, however, that Tojo entered the domestic political scene in a major way, when then-Prime Minister Prince Konoe made him the head of the Army Ministry in his second cabinet. Tojo was a strong supporter of Japan’s alliance with the other Axis powers, and used his new position to further expand the war in China, while pushing Japan closer and closer to a confrontation with Great Britain and the United States of America. When Konoe resigned as Prime Minister in 1941, Tojo was appointed Prime Minister of Japan by Emperor Hirohito, [[ReluctantRuler much to his own surprise]]. Following the breakdown of negotiations with the USA, Tojo approved both Pearl Harbour, and the attempts by the IJA and IJN to seize the "Southern Resource Area" bringing Japan into WWII in a big way. In Allied propaganda, the bespectacled and moustachioed Tojo would quickly become a target of racist caricature, and was a favourite victim of mockery, being frequently represented as a [[ManiacMonkeys monkey]] or a [[EnfanteTerrible small boy]].

* EnfanteTerrible: Allied propaganda often portrayed him as a small boy

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Subverted. Tojo claimed that he was acting to liberate Asia from white colonial oppression, but in practise he and his fellow Japanese treated the local populations far more brutally than [[DynastiesFromShangToQing traditional Chinese hegemony]] had, let alone the British, French, Dutch, or Americans.

* GeneralFailure: Tojo was not necessarily a bad officer, but a lifetime spent in the General Staff divorced him from the needs of the soldiers in the field. A man of limited strategic vision, who had never looked beyond the immediate needs of the Army Ministry, he was overwhelmed by the task of being Prime Minister, and was unable to control the Army, let alone the Navy Ministry, leading to further chaos and complications within the system, and an eventual breakdown in strategic planning. And that's without getting into the fact that IJA and IJN doctrine (which he fully endorsed) refused to accept the concept of a tactical withdrawal, resulting in countless soldiers being left to fight to the death.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: A common treatment by those works that actually deal with him or ImperialJapan in general, particularly those that do a PalatteSwap and leave it at that. In reality there were a number of non-insignificant differences.

* [[OvershadowedByAwesome Overshadowed by Awful]]: The list of works where he gets [[BigBad top billing]] are slim. Wider war works demote him to Hitler's second fiddle, Pacific centric works usually put him in the background of whatever lower ranked villains there are.

* CommissarCap: Appears with one in most of his pictures.

* EvilSoundsDeep: Had a very deep, intimidating voice.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: A common treatment by those works that actually deal with him or ImperialJapan in general, particularly those that do a PalatteSwap and leave it at that. In reality while both Nazism and Tojo's ideals were racist, murderous, imperious, and authoritarian-to-totalitarian there were a number of non-insignificant differences.

See UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini for Tojo’s Axis partners. See UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill and UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt for his Allied enemies. UsefulNotes/JosefStalin technically wasn't his enemy because the Soviet Union did not declare war on Japan until after Tojo lost power, but he looms large in relation too those two as well. See UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun, The UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII proper for the nation and forces he commanded, and the wars that he waged.

* In HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'' saga, Tojo survives The Race's nuclear bombing of Japan, and goes onto lead the Japanese war effort against the alien invaders, treating The Race as brutally as he had treated his American enemies. By the time of ''Colonization'', he is still Prime Minister, and attends the funeral of US President Earl Warren at the age of eighty-two.

Perhaps one of the most feared and at the same time ridiculed men in history, General '''Hideki Tojo''' was the Army Minister, and subsequently Prime Minister, of Japan during most of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. A hardcore militaristic nationalist with fascist leanings, Tojo lead the Empire of Japan into war with the United States and Great Britain, leading to the eventual defeat and near total destruction of the nation he loved at the hands of the Allied forces.

* BigBad: Most traditionalist histories have him as this, especially as most Americans viewed Tojo as the ''de facto'' BigBad of [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], due to the Emperor's apparent status as a figurehead. Some revisionist historians have suggested that in truth, Tojo was just a loyal [[TheDragon Dragon]] to Hirohito, who wanted the war, but had to act through Tojo due to tradition.
** BigBadDuumvirate: He and UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler were this to UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo as a whole, at least according to the traditional interpretation. They were certainly the two at the top of the Allied hit parade (Mussolini would have come a ''very'' distant third).
*** This trope is probably also a more accurate description of his actual role in his own nation's government. Tojo was a respected hardliner with a talent for speaking, but he was just chosen to be a "spokesman" and mediator for a whole mess of often-competing Japanese militarists and their cliques. At least until he wasn't and he was dismissed by his rivals without really changing much. He had a lot of power at his height, but Japan didn't really have a standout BigBad on Hitler or even Mussolini's level.

* BigBad: Most Americans viewed Tojo as the ''de facto'' BigBad of [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], due to the Emperor's apparent status as a figurehead. Some revisionist historians have suggested that in truth, Tojo was just a loyal [[TheDragon Dragon]] to Hirohito, who wanted the war, but had to act through Tojo due to tradition.

* TheChainsOfCommanding: Upon becoming Japanese Prime Minister, Tojo had to try and manage a society that could best be described as "factionally authoritarian". He had to negotiate the interests of the weak, but still present, civilian government, the imperial bureaucracy, the ''[[MegaCorp zaibatsu]]'', the Army and the Navy (and the various factions within each), and The Emperor. In the end it was far too much, and Tojo ultimately lost control of the very military forces that he had helped to unleash in the first place.

* DragonInChief: Most traditional histories have him as one to [[NonActionBigBad Emperor Hirohito]] from 1941-1944.

* EvilChancellor: Tojo, and the rest of the Japanese military, are often viewed as this to the Emperor.

* EvilerThanThou: Neither ChiangKaiShek nor MaoZedong, Tojo's main foes in China, were going to win any humanitarian awards. The impressive part is that even with them for enemies, Tojo is still the clear villain of the piece.

* FaceOfTheBand: Tojo never held absolute power in Japan the way that Stalin, Hitler, or even Mussolini did in their respective countries. At the height of his power, he was only first among equals in the civilian/military junta that ran the government, and it was a shaky position at best. However, due in part to his prominence, and in part to his unique (and stereotypical) appearance, Tojo became the face of UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan to most of the West, and was generally treated as though he were an Asian Hitler in most Western media.

* InsaneAdmiral: Frequently played this way in Allied propaganda; in reality Tojo was evil, but sane.

* InterserviceRivalry: A serious problem for the Japanese war effort in general, with the IJA and IJN viewing one another as the bitterest of rivals. It got so bad that the IJA was developing its own light carriers, while the IJN created its own ground forces that rivalled those of the Army in size; both had their own amphibious warfare units and subordinate air forces. When Tojo became Army Minister he landed right in the middle of this dispute, and found himself wrangling with the Navy Ministry for scarce resources. After becoming Prime Minister, Tojo discovered that even with his considerable powers he could not force the Army and Navy officers who made up the junta to cooperate with each other.
* JerkassHasAPoint: The opinion of Tojo and the Japanese in general is that they deserve an Empire like the other major powers. Considering that Britain, France and America ruled over large parts of the world that the gained through conquest, they weren't [[WhatTheHellHero call them out]].

* LaughablyEvil: Most depictions of Tojo in Allied media made him a figure of comedy, using racial stereotyping and a high, screechy voice to characterise him. In reality Tojo was a very serious and very dignified monster--he was evil, but there was nothing laughable about it.

* LeaveNoSurvivors: Tojo's instructions to the army to this effect resulted in a whole lot of RapePillageAndBurn in both the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo, with Japanese soldiers flagrantly disregarding UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar, killing prisoners, and generally acting like utter bastards.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Averted. Tojo acquired his ultra right wing views, militaristic nationalism, and qausifascist ideology at the same time as, but independently from, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. Their views were strikingly similar, however, and the eventual meshing of German fascism with Japanese militarism proved a remarkably easy one.

* StrawHypocrite: Claimed to be acting on behalf of Pan-Asian unity, with the goal of liberating colonial nations from European oppression and leading them into a better future, but in reality was out to enslave the colonies to newer, and even more ruthless, masters in Tokyo.

* TakeOverTheWorld: Not quite. That said, Tojo certainly did intend to take over large parts of it. Under his Ministry Japan expanded into Malaysia, Burma, The Philippines, and Indonesia, and contemplated invading India and Australia. Japanese war plans called for the eventual subordination of all of China and Siberia as well, with Tojo and Hitler agreeing to divide Russia, and consequently the world, at the Ural Mountains.

* UndyingLoyalty: More recent studies have demonstrated that Tojo, whatever his other flaws, was deeply loyal, both to Emperor Hirohito personally, and to the Japanese state as a whole, ultimately taking the fall for the Emperor.
* VillainousValour: Say what you will about Tojo, but his willingness to accept responsibility for all of Japan's war crimes and to take the rap for Hirohito was a brave thing to do.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Subverted. Tojo claimed that he was acting to liberate Asia from white colonial oppression, but in practise he and his fellow Japanese treated the local populations far more brutally than the British, French, Dutch, or Americans had.

* NonActonBigBad: He was a staff officer and only saw combat once.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Continued the Imperial Japanese policy of allowing Jewish refugees to enter Japan and refusing to extradite them to NaziGermany.

* FaceOfTheBand: Tojo never held absolute power in Japan the way that Stalin, Hitler, or even Mussolini did in their respective countries. At the height of his power, he was only first among equals in the civilian/military junta that ran the government, and it was a shaky position at best. However, due in part to his prominence, and in part to his unique (and stereotypical) appearance, Tojo became the face of ImperialJapan to most of the West, and was generally treated as though he were an Asian Hitler in most Western media.

Following the recovery of his health, Tojo was put on trial for war crimes. During his time as Chief of Staff of the Kwangtung Army, and as Army Minister and Prime Minister, Japanese ground and naval forces had committed numerous flagrant violations of UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar. Somewhere between ten and thirty million Chinese civilians were murdered by Japanese troops, with some being subjected to grisly human experimentation by [[MadDoctor Ishii Shiro]]’s Unit 731. Japanese troops gang raped thousands of women, abducted still thousands more to serve as "comfort women", and regularly tortured and killed Allied prisoners of war. Tojo, both as leader of Japan’s armed forces, and as a shaper of military and foreign policy, not only refused to punish the perpetrators of such acts, but encouraged them, using MasterRace propaganda, and the [[GodEmperor Imperial]] {{Cult}} to justify the wholesale butchery of Japan’s enemies. With a death toll in the tens of millions, Tojo’s actions put him in the running, alongside the likes of MaoZedong, JosefStalin, and AdolfHitler, for the title of "the twentieth century’s worst human being." Tojo himself seemed to [[HeelRealization realize this]]; following his conviction for war crimes, Tojo accepted full responsibility for all of Japan’s atrocities, apologised to the victims, and asked that the United States not do unto Japan, as Japan had done unto others. He was hanged on December 23, 1948.

See AdolfHitler and BenitoMussolini for Tojo’s Axis partners. See UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill and FranklinDRoosevelt for his Allied enemies. JosefStalin technically wasn't his enemy because the Soviet Union did not declare war on Japan until after Tojo lost power, but he looms large in relation too those two as well. See UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun, The UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII proper for the nation and forces he commanded, and the wars that he waged.

** BigBadDuumvirate: He and AdolfHitler were this to UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo as a whole, at least according to the traditional interpretation. They were certainly the two at the top of the Allied hit parade (Mussolini would have come a ''very'' distant third).

* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: The world that Tojo and his compatriots in the IJA and IJN were trying to build was an ugly one, with the rest of Asia enslaved to Japan in the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." While on the surface this was supposed to benefit all Asians, in practice the rest of East Asia was completely under the Japanse bootheel, with all their natural resources going to the Japanese home islands, the kidnapping and forced prostitution of thousands of comfort women, and the butchering of any population that didn't feel like kowtowing to the Japanese MasterRace. About the only thing to recommend Tojo's world is that it isn't ''quite'' as Hellish as the one envisioned by his ally, AdolfHitler.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Averted. Tojo acquired his ultra right wing views, militaristic nationalism, and qausifascist ideology at the same time as, but independently from, AdolfHitler. Their views were strikingly similar, however, and the eventual meshing of German fascism with Japanese militarism proved a remarkably easy one.

Following the recovery of his health, Tojo was put on trial for war crimes. During his time as Chief of Staff of the Kwangtung Army, and as Army Minister and Prime Minister, Japanese ground and naval forces had committed numerous flagrant violations of UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar. Somewhere between ten and thirty million Chinese civilians were murdered by Japanese troops, with some being subjected to grisly human experimentation by [[MadDoctor Ishii Shiro]]’s Unit 731. Japanese troops gang raped thousands of women, abducted still thousands more to serve as "comfort women", and regularly tortured and killed Allied prisoners of war. Tojo, both as leader of Japan’s armed forces, and as a shaper of military and foreign policy, not only refused to punish the perpetrators of such acts, but encouraged them, using MasterRace propaganda, and the [[GodEmperor Imperial]] {{Cult}} to justify the wholesale butchery of Japan’s enemies. With a death toll in the tens of millions, Tojo’s actions put him in the running, alongside the likes of JosefStalin and AdolfHitler, for the title of "the twentieth century’s worst human being." Tojo himself seemed to [[HeelRealization realize this]]; following his conviction for war crimes, Tojo accepted full responsibility for all of Japan’s atrocities, apologised to the victims, and asked that the United States not do unto Japan, as Japan had done unto others. He was hanged on December 23, 1948.

See AdolfHitler and BenitoMussolini for Tojo’s Axis partners. See UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill and FranklinDRoosevelt for his Allied enemies. See UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun, The UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific The Pacific War]], and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII proper for the nation and forces he commanded, and the wars that he waged.

A hardline nationalist with a strong xenophobic streak, Tojo was one of a clique of officers within the IJA and IJN who sought to make Japan a great power, with or without the support of the civilian government. After being promoted to Chief of Staff of the Kwangtung Army in 1937, Tojo increased Japanese penetration into Inner Mongolia, and following the [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar Marco Polo Bridge Incident]] he ordered his forces into northern China. He was eventually recalled to Japan where he became first Vice-Minister of War, and then Inspector-General of Army Aviation.

It was in 1940, however, that Tojo first entered the domestic political scene, when Prince Konoe made him the head of the Army Ministry in his second cabinet. Tojo was a strong supporter of Japan’s alliance with the other Axis powers, and used his new position to further expand the war in China, while pushing Japan closer and closer to a confrontation with Great Britain and the United States of America. When Konoe resigned as Prime Minister in 1941, Tojo was appointed Prime Minister of Japan by Emperor Hirohito, [[ReluctantRuler much to his own surprise]]. Following the breakdown of negotiations with the USA, Tojo approved both Pearl Harbour, and the attempts by the IJA and IJN to seize the "Southern Resource Area" bringing Japan into WWII in a big way. In Allied propaganda, the bespectacled and moustachioed Tojo would quickly become a target of racist caricature, and was a favourite victim of mockery, being frequently represented as a [[ManiacMonkeys monkey]] or a [[EnfanteTerrible small boy]].

Perhaps one of the most feared and at the same time ridiculed men in history, General Hideki Tojo was the Army Minister, and subsequently Prime Minister, of Japan during most of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. A hardcore militaristic nationalist with fascist leanings, Tojo lead the Empire of Japan into war with the United States and Great Britain, leading to the eventual defeat and near total destruction of the nation he loved at the hands of the Allied forces.

Perhaps one of the most feared and at the same time ridiculed men in history, General Hideki Tojo (Tojo Hideki in the Japanese) was the Army Minister, and subsequently Prime Minister, of Japan during most of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. A hardcore militaristic nationalist with fascist leanings, Tojo lead the Empire of Japan into war with the United States and Great Britain, leading to the eventual defeat and near total destruction of the nation he loved at the hands of the Allied forces.