Toshikazu Kase

was a Japanese civil servant and career diplomat. During World War II he was a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official. Hideaki Kase (1936–2022) was his son and Yoko Ono is his niece. The Japanese representatives on board during the surrender ceremonies on September 2, 1945. Kase on right, wearing top hat.

Biography Kase was born in Chiba, Japan, from a family of upper-class landowners. After passing his Foreign Service Examination in 1925 he left Tokyo Higher Commercial College (later Hitotsubashi University) and attended Amherst College and Harvard as a Research Fellow, graduating in 1927.

He had a son, Hideaki Kase (19362022), who became a diplomatic critic in promoting Japanese WWII historical revisionism books and films.

He took up diplomatic posts in both Berlin and London before returning to Tokyo where he was posted to the North America desk of the Japanese Foreign Office. He was on duty on the weekend of the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941. Acting as secretary to Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Kase had assisted in the preparation of the document formally terminating negotiations with the United States. In an interview after retirement, he blamed Japanese diplomats in Washington for delays in decoding and delivering the cabled text of the statement, which he claimed should have been delivered an hour prior to the beginning of the attack.

Resuming his diplomatic career in 1954, Kase took up an appointment as chief advisor to the same foreign minister whom he had assisted at the surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri. In 1955 he became Japan's first ambassador to the United Nations. His final diplomatic posting, before retiring in 1960, was as ambassador to Belgrade.