As Prime Minister
Kiyoura accepted a second imperial order in 1924 following the Toranomon Incident, and become 23rd Prime Minister of Japan. However, his cabinet was formed at a time when non-partisan, aristocratic cabinets were falling out of favor, and the Diet's lower house held up most of his initiatives for all six months of his administration.
Perhaps the most important event during his term as prime minister was the royal wedding of Crown Prince Hirohito (the future Emperor Shōwa) with Nagako Kuniyoshi (the future Empress Kōjun) on 26 January 1924.
In 1924, he dissolved the Lower House of the Diet of Japan when faced with the three party coalition of the Kenseikai, Rikken Seiyukai and Kakushin Kurabu which had formed a majority in Diet of more than 150 seats. As a result of his massive rout in the subsequent general election, his cabinet resigned en masse.
In November 1928, Kiyoura was elevated to the title of Count (hakushaku). He was posthumously awarded the Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum in 1942.
Read more about this topic: Kiyoura Keigo
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, prime and/or minister:
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Being prime minister is a lonely job.... you cannot lead from the crowd.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it’s power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of their virtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)