Baron Tanaka Giichi (田中 義一, 22 June 1864 – 29 September 1929) was a Japanese general and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1927 to 1929.

Tanaka was born as the third son of a low-ranking samurai family in the service of Chōshū Domain in Hagi, Nagato Province (modern day Yamaguchi Prefecture), Japan.

After the end of the war, he was sent as a military attaché to Moscow and Petrograd, and was in Russia at the same time as Takeo Hirose of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with whom he became close friends.

As one of the few Russian experts within the military, he was an invaluable resource to Army planners during the Russo-Japanese War, and served as aide to General Kodama Gentarō in Manchuria.

However, the Hara cabinet came under unceasing criticism due to the Nishihara Loans, the disastrous Nikolayevsk incident and accusations of Army misappropriation of secret funds, and supporting unsavory figures such as White Movement general Roman von Ungern-Sternberg.

However, when news reached the ears of the Army Ministry of a 3 million Yen bonus that Tanaka received on agreeing to join the Rikken Seiyukai, the promotion was denied.

[1] On three separate occasions in 1927 and 1928 he sent troops to intervene militarily in Shandong Province to block Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition to unify China under Kuomintang rule, in what became known as the Jinan Incident.

In 1928, however, the machinations of the ultranationalist secret societies and the Kwantung Army resulted in a crisis: the assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin and the failed attempt to seize Manchuria.

Bereft of support, and under mounting criticism in the Diet and even from Emperor Hirohito himself, Tanaka and his cabinet resigned en masse on 2 July 1929.

[3] In a memoir published in the mid-1950s, a Japanese-born Taiwanese businessman, Tsai Chih-Kan, claimed that he had personally copied the "Plan" from the Imperial Library on the night of 20 June 1928 in a covert action assisted by several of Japan's leading prewar politicians and officers, who were opposed to Tanaka.