Prince Fumimaro Konoe (1891-1945) was a Japanese aristocrat and politician who served as premier in the crucial years during which war broke out with China and Japan was preparing to make war on the United States.

Fumimaro Konoe was born in Tokyo on Oct. 12, 1891, into a noble family bearing one of the proudest lineages in Japan. Konoe was a branch of the Fujiwara family, which had held sway in Kyoto for several centuries in the early history of Japan. Prince Konoe's father, Atsumaro Konoe, was president of the House of Peers.

A strain of radicalism ran through Prince Konoe's early days. After graduating from Kyoto Imperial University in 1917, where he was a student of the Marxist Hajime Kawakami, he became a protégé of the elder statesman Kimmochi Saionji, also an aristocrat whose early career manifested a streak of radicalism. In 1919 Konoe accompanied Saionji to Paris...