Itō Hirobumi

• Born: September 2, 1841
• Birthplace: Tsukari Village, Chōshū Province (now Yamaguchi Prefecture), Japan
• Died: October 26, 1909
• Place of death: Harbin, Manchuria, China

Prime minister of Japan (1885-1888, 1892-1896, 1898, 1900-1901)

Itō Hirobumi played a major role in the drafting of the Meiji constitution and modernizing the Japanese government. He served as president of the privy council and was Japan’s first prime minister—an office to which he was elected a total of four times.

Early Life

Itō Hirobumi (EE-toh heer-oh-BEW-mee) was not quite twelve years old when Japan’s isolation from the outside world was ended by the arrival of U.S. Navy commodore Matthew C. Perry with four warships in 1853. Perry was the first representative of a Western government to arrive in Japan since the island nation had seal itself off from foreign religious and economic interference two centuries earlier.

By the time Itō began his career in the military, Japan was experiencing a political upheaval arising from the demise of the old ruling class. During the 1860’s, he observed many tumultuous changes at first hand. Western ships were arriving in increasing numbers to supply markets in Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Kobe, and they controlled the bulk of Japan’s export trade. Many leaders within Japan resented this new foreign intrusion and profiteering, and they rallied to the slogan “Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians.” Antiforeign nationalism was especially pronounced in Chōshû, an old castle town in which Itō was raised as the adopted son of a samurai warrior. He was in England studying in 1864 when he learned of plans to destroy foreign ships in Japan, so he rushed home to persuade Chōshū leaders from attacking the foreigners.

During the long Tokugawa period (1603-1867), Japan had a strong central government at Kyōto that was ruled by an imperial warlord known as the shogun. However, the rural areas and smaller towns were ruled by local chieftains known as daimyo and samurai who fought one another. The subsequent Meiji period (1868-1912) saw the restoration of the emperor, centralization of power, movement of the seat of government from Kyōto to Tokyo, and rapid modernization that included a fundamental reform of government. During the first few years of the Meiji period, small groups of political insiders, mainly from Chōshû and Satsuma, fought one another to gain influence in the new government. Itō was among the most influential of these new oligarchs and became both the first national prime minister and a major force for change. In 1873, he became a privy council member and led many government ministries.

During the rush to modernize and improve, Japan strived to learn from Western nations. Itō and other leaders knew that the era of isolation was over and that Japan must modernize and embrace the world or else become an inferior power. In 1882, Itō began traveling overseas with an influential group that included Prince Iwakura Tomomi, Ōkubo Toshimichi, and Kido Kōin to observe European models of government closely and to study their constitutions. The group first went to Berlin, the capital of Prussia, and Vienna, the capital of Austria.

Japanese government leaders believed that the Prussian constitution provided a better model for Japan than the constitutions of more democratically liberal England, France, and the United States. Prussia had a history that presented a number of similarities to Japan. For example, its government was a monarchy with a strong central government, its economy was late to industrialize, and its people were fearful of excessive political freedom. Itō conducted lengthy discussions with such German legal scholars as Albert Mosse, Hermann Roesler, Rudolph von Gneist, and Lorenz von Stein. He wanted to understand Western government and its sources of wealth and power at the same time he wanted to preserve the essentials of Japanese culture.

Life’s Work

Itō Hirobumi was one of the principal framers of the Meiji imperial constitution, which he began drafting in 1887. That document established the structure of the Japanese government that was in force until the end of World War II in 1945. The constitution attempted to balance the voices favoring modernization, freedom, and democracy within the structure of an authoritarian monarch and small group of ruling elites. Itō oversaw the reestablishment of the young Emperor Meiji as the head of state and made sure that Emperor Meiji was invested with absolute powers and was regarded as a semi-divinity with an unbroken ancestral linkage to the ancient past and the Sun Goddess, the creator of Japan.

Itō personally oversaw every aspect of the drafting of Japan’s constitution. He wanted it to be regarded as the “gift” of the emperor to his people. Principally written by Itō, the document was not reviewed for approval before being revealed to the citizens of Japan in 1889.

Although the emperor symbolically held a monopoly on power, the Meiji constitution also established a cabinet and a bicameral national legislature known as the Imperial Diet. The Diet’s upper house was appointed, while its lower house was elected. The appointed house limited the powers of the elected house. The emperor could, if he so chose, initiate, dissolve, open, or close the Diet.

Itō also installed the emperor at the head of a state-sponsored Shinto religious system that cultivated a mystical reverence of his reign at the same time the bicameral Diet moved Japan toward democratic reform. The emperor’s powers were limited by a complex system of checks and balances. Although the emperor’s powers were absolute in theory, the reality was that political conservatives such as Itō could direct the emperor to act in certain ways to ensure their influence and undermine more liberal views from the lower house. Emperor Meiji could appoint or discharge government officials when he pleased, but his rulings needed the endorsement of the Diet to be acted on. A few oligarchs wanted the Diet to be advisory and empowered only to debate legislation with no real power, but Itō argued that constitutional government required the approval of the governed, especially in matters of the national budget. Thus, the Meiji constitution empowered the Diet to endorse important fiscal matters, to initiate new laws, and to accept or to overturn the emperor’s edicts.

In international relations, Itō helped to form the policy that expansionist tendencies of China and Russia needed to be met with force. When China increased its involvement in Korean politics in 1894, Japan went to war and quickly defeated the Chinese with superior weaponry and tactics. Itō wrote the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 that ended the war with China and freed Korea from Chinese meddling.

In 1900, Itō founded the Seiyukai Party, one of the two large political groups coming out of the Diet that disagreed over fundamental national issues. He was influential in moving the Japanese government toward open discussions of issues such as the balance of power, education, industry, transportation, foreign relations, and investment in business.

In 1904, Japan and Russia went to war over a territorial dispute. Both nations wanted their interests in Korea and Manchuria protected. Although Japan suffered casualties of over 100,000 citizens in mobilizing one-fifth of the able-bodied men to fight Russia, it emerged victorious in 1905 with sovereignty over Korea and Sakhalin Island. Many Asian nations regarded the swift Japanese victory as a miracle—a righteous revenge by the East over the West. Government leaders dispatched Itō to the Korean capital at Seoul, where he was installed as a resident general.

Itō planned to modernize Korea along the same lines followed by Japan and make Korea a Japanese protectorate. He believed that Koreans would welcome this assistance and sympathize with Japanese ideals, but he failed to consider Korean nationalist feelings. Because of his underestimation of Korean hostility toward the Japanese, he did not adequately protect himself and was assassinated by Korean nationalists at Harbin in Manchuria in 1909, shortly after he reached the age of sixty-eight.

Significance

Itō’s achievement in writing the Meiji constitution makes him a central figure in the history of Japan. As a statement of political philosophy, that document embraced contradictory notions of modern and ancient rule and was meant to ensure order and enshrine the emperor, while enabling Japan to move toward Western-style democratic government. Itō realized that the emperor should not rule directly but attributed to him mythic powers that allowed Japan to retain its traditional Confucian and Shinto values at the same time that it gradually allowed for political participation and reform. The new constitution gave Japan confidence to present itself to the outside world as equal in status to any European state.

Bibliography

Burma, Ian. Inventing Japan. New York: Modern Library, 2003. Focusing on the period 1853-1964, this book documents how Japan in just over one hundred years modernized through a process of cultural reinvention, borrowing and imagining a shared mythology. Itō and others attempted to adapt and limit the influence of Western ideas in Japan.

Duus, Peter. Modern Japan. 2d ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Effective survey of the rise of Japan to world power status and postwar emergence as an economic superpower.

Jansen, Marius B., ed. The Emergence of Meiji Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Major chapters on the Tempō crisis, Tokugawa culture, the Meiji Restoration, opposing forces in Japanese society, and Japan’s move toward imperialism and militarism.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Nineteenth Century. Vol. 5 in The Cambridge History of Japan. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. The authoritative six-volume Cambridge History of Japan is the standard in the field of Japanese history. The fifth volume expertly brings together the best scholars in nineteenth century history, while the other volumes cover Japan from its origins to the present.

Pyle, Kenneth B. The Making of Modern Japan. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1996. Analysis of the political and economic reform during the Meiji Era that allowed for Japan’s transformation into a modern nation that rivaled or surpassed the traditional dominant nations of the West.