ORIGINS AND UPBRINGING

FUJIYAMA NARAICHI WAS born in Shibuya, Tokyo in 1915. His father Fujiyama Takeichi (1885–1930) came from a samurai family in Saga prefecture, Kyushu. Takeichi was a brilliant boy who graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and joined the ministry of home affairs in 1910. He served as governor of Oita and Tochigi prefectures. Tochigi was an important post because one of the Imperial villas was in the Nasu highlands, which were part of the prefecture. There he had the opportunity to form a close relationship with the Showa Emperor who invited him to rounds of golf followed by dinner.

Fujiyama Naraichi recalled his boyhood in Shibuya, Tokyo in his memoir ‘One Junior Diplomat and the Pacific War’. He had to live with his grandfather because his father had died when he was a 15-year-old schoolboy. Shibuya in those days was a village between Tokyo and its western suburbs. From the window of his house he could enjoy a magnificent view of Mt. Fuji. His grandfather had spent many years as a military attaché in Europe; so he grew up learning a lot about Europe. His grandfather who was interested in fashion and who paid great attention to what he wore, often took him to western restaurants where he exposed to European culture and mores at an early age.

In 1935 he entered Tokyo Imperial University where he was able to enjoy life as a university student and did not have to attend any lectures, which did not interest him. He attended classes by distinguished professors such as Dr. Miyazawa Toshiyoshi on constitutional law as well as Dr. Wagatsuma Sakae on civil law. He was greatly impressed by the courage of Yokota Kizaburō, Professor of international law, who did not hesitate to criticize openly the behaviour of the Japanese Army in front of an officer who happened to be in his lecture hall on secondment from the Army.

Fujiyama was a firm believer in democratic institutions and individual liberty. He was a progressive keenly aware that Japan lagged far behind America and Britain especially in matters such as civil liberty, human rights and the social status of women. As a pacifist student he was much concerned about the increasingly pronounced encroachment of the army and the nationalists into politics following the Manchurian incident of 1931.