Hajime Sugiyama (杉山 元, Sugiyama Hajime / Sugiyama Gen; 1 January 1880 – 12 September 1945) was a Japanese field marshal and one of Japan's military leaders for most of the Second World War. As Army Minister, Sugiyama was a driving force behind Japan's 1937 invasion of China in retaliation for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. After being named the Japanese Army's Chief of Staff in 1940, he became a leading advocate for expansion into Southeast Asia and preventive war against the United States. Upon the outbreak of hostilities in the Asia-Pacific theater of World War II, Sugiyama served as the army's commander-in-chief until his removal by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in February 1944. Following Tojo's ouster in July 1944, he once again held the post of Army Minister in Kuniaki Koiso's cabinet until its dissolution in April 1945. Ten days after Japan's surrender on 2 September 1945, he committed suicide.
Source: “Hajime Sugiyama”, English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), excerpt