Hachirō Arita

Hachirō Arita
有田 八郎
Arita in 1936
Minister for Foreign Affairs
In office
16 January 1940  22 July 1940
Prime MinisterMitsumasa Yonai
Preceded byKichisaburō Nomura
Succeeded byYōsuke Matsuoka
In office
29 October 1938  30 August 1939
Prime MinisterFumimaro Konoe
Kiichirō Hiranuma
Preceded byKazushige Ugaki
Succeeded byNobuyuki Abe
In office
2 April 1936  2 February 1937
Prime MinisterKōki Hirota
Preceded byKōki Hirota
Succeeded bySenjūrō Hayashi
Member of the House of Representatives
In office
13 April 1953  27 February 1955
ConstituencyNiigata 1st
Member of the House of Peers
In office
10 February 1938  16 February 1946
Nominated by the Emperor
Personal details
Born(1884-09-21)21 September 1884
Sado, Niigata, Japan
Died4 March 1965(1965-03-04) (aged 80)
Tokyo, Japan
Political partySocialist (1955–1965)
Alma materTokyo Imperial University

Hachirō Arita (有田 八郎, Arita Hachirō; 21 September 1884 4 March 1965) was a Japanese politician and diplomat who served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs for three terms. He coined the term Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which provided an official agenda for Imperial Japan's expansionism.

After the war, Arita was active as a leftist politician. The circumstances surrounding his second marriage and his unsuccessful 1959 run for Governor of Tokyo served as the model for the novel After the Banquet by Yukio Mishima. This led to a famous court case in which Arita successfully sued for invasion of privacy.