Takahashi Korekiyo Memorial Park

Takahashi Korekiyo Memorial Park (高橋是清翁記念公園) is a public park located at 7-3-39 Akasaka, Minato Ward, Tokyo, on the grounds of the former residence of Korekiyo Takahashi (高橋是清, 1854-1936), one of the most important financial statesmen of modern Japan.

Takahashi served as the 20th Prime Minister of Japan (1921-1922) and held the post of Finance Minister seven times across multiple cabinets. Born in Edo as the son of a shogunate painter and adopted as an infant into the family of a foot soldier (ashigaru) of the Sendai domain, he rose through remarkable determination — studying English in America as a teenager, surviving a period of indentured servitude, and eventually becoming president of the Bank of Japan. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), he successfully raised foreign loans in London and New York to finance the war effort. In the early 1930s, as Finance Minister under Prime Ministers Inukai and Saito, he implemented Keynesian-style fiscal policies that helped Japan recover from the Great Depression faster than most Western nations.

On the morning of February 26, 1936, rebel soldiers of the 7th Company, 3rd Imperial Guards Infantry Regiment, led by Lieutenant Motoaki Nakahashi (中橋基明), broke into Takahashi's residence at this location. The 81-year-old Finance Minister was sleeping in his bedroom when the soldiers burst in. Despite his advanced age, Takahashi reportedly confronted the intruders and demanded to know what they wanted. He was shot and slashed with swords, dying almost instantly. The rebels targeted Takahashi because his fiscal austerity policies had reduced the military budget, earning him the enmity of radical ultranationalist officers.

The Takahashi Korekiyo Memorial Association donated the site to Tokyo City in 1938, two years after the assassination, and it opened as a memorial park in 1941. The house was relocated — it is now preserved at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei Park — and the grounds were converted into a public park featuring traditional Japanese landscaping with a pond, stone lanterns, and mature trees. A bronze statue of Takahashi and an explanatory stone monument stand within the park. The park covers roughly 4,650 square meters according to Minato Ward (other listings give about 5,300) and remains a quiet oasis in the busy Akasaka district.

The site is significant not only as the place where one of Japan's greatest financial minds was murdered, but also as a physical reminder of the political violence that plagued Japan in the 1930s and contributed to the nation's slide toward militarism and war.