Itō Hirobumi

Biography

Itō Hirobumi was born Hayashi Risuke in 1841 to a poor farming family in the Chōshū domain; his father was later adopted into a low-ranking samurai family. Drawn into the anti-foreign sonnō jōi movement, he was one of the Chōshū Five smuggled to Britain in 1863 to study at University College London, but he hurried home in 1864 when Western ships attacked Shimonoseki. His English and first-hand knowledge of the West made him valuable to the new Meiji government, which made him governor of Hyōgo in 1868; in 1870 he studied currency in the United States and helped set up Japan's banking and tax systems.

He was a deputy ambassador on the Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe in 1871-1873 and then became a councillor and minister of public works. By the early 1880s he led the Meiji oligarchy and was put in charge of drafting a constitution; after studying European systems, especially in Berlin and Vienna, he created a cabinet system in 1885 and became Japan's first prime minister. As first president of the Privy Council he oversaw the review of the constitution promulgated in 1889.

He was prime minister four times, leading the country through the First Sino-Japanese War and the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and in 1900 founded the Rikken Seiyūkai party. After the Russo-Japanese War he became the first Resident-General of Korea in 1905; in 1907 he forced Emperor Gojong to abdicate and imposed a treaty placing Korea's internal administration under Japanese control. He resigned in 1909, and on 26 October that year the Korean independence activist An Jung-geun shot him dead at Harbin station.