Ishii Kikujirō

Ishii Kikujirō (born March 10, 1866, Awa province, Japan—died May 25, 1945, Tokyo) was a Japanese statesman and diplomat who effectively championed a cautious expansion of Japan and cooperation with the West in the decades immediately before and after World War I. In 1907 he was sent to investigate rising anti-Japanese sentiment in San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia. He helped negotiate the “gentlemen’s agreement” between Japan and the United States, by which the Japanese...