Okazaki Katsuo

Okazaki Katsuo (冈崎胜男, Gāngqí Shèngnán) was the Japanese diplomat whose Shanghai postings framed the 1930s and the early war years. He entered the foreign service in 1922, and the gazetteer records two stretches in the city: from December 1928 as vice-consul and then consul, and from September 1937 as consul-general, just after fighting began in the city.

Between those posts he served in the United States and, briefly in 1937, at Xiamen, where he supervised the closing of the consulate. In December 1941, as the Pacific War opened, he returned to Shanghai as counsellor at the Japanese embassy in China and took over the presidency of the Shanghai Municipal Research Society from Okamoto Issaku (冈本一策). He left in September 1943.

Back in Tokyo he headed the Foreign Ministry’s research bureau in 1945, handled liaison with the Allied command after surrender, and later entered national politics as a Diet member and chief cabinet secretary. He died in 1965.