Itō Hirobumi

Itō Hirobumi rose from a poor farming family in western Japan to become the country's first prime minister in 1885 and the chief architect of the Meiji Constitution of 1889. He served as premier four times and shaped the cabinet, the parliament and the first governing party of modern Japan. As the first Japanese Resident-General of Korea he presided over the protectorate that preceded annexation, and he was shot dead by a Korean nationalist in 1909.

He was born Hayashi Risuke on 16 October 1841 in Suō Province, within the Chōshū domain. While he was still small, his father was adopted into a samurai family named Itō, giving the household the lowest samurai rank. As a youth he studied at the private academy of the radical teacher Yoshida Shōin and joined the movement to "revere the emperor and expel the barbarians", taking part in the burning of the British legation in Edo in 1862 and in the killing of a scholar. In 1863 he was one of five young Chōshū men smuggled to Britain, in defiance of the shogunate's ban on foreign travel, to study at University College London. He hurried home in 1864, convinced that expelling foreigners was hopeless, and helped negotiate peace after Western warships bombarded Shimonoseki.

After the Meiji Restoration of 1868 his English and knowledge of the West brought rapid promotion. He was governor of Hyōgo, studied American finance in 1870–71, which fed into the reform putting Japan on the gold standard, and helped design a national banking system. From 1871 to 1873 he was a deputy ambassador on the Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe, an experience that turned him towards gradual, institution-based reform. He then sided against a proposed invasion of Korea and became a councillor and minister of public works.

After forcing out his rival Ōkuma Shigenobu, who wanted a British-style parliament quickly, in the political crisis of 1881, Itō became the leading figure in the government. He spent 1882–83 in Europe studying constitutions, learning most from the Vienna scholar Lorenz von Stein. In 1885 he replaced the old council of state with a cabinet and became Japan's first prime minister, and in 1888 he left that post to chair the new Privy Council that reviewed the draft. The constitution, promulgated on 11 February 1889, presented itself as a gift from Emperor Meiji, reserving great power to the throne while creating a national parliament, the Diet.

Itō was prime minister again in 1892–96, the years of the First Sino-Japanese War, and helped negotiate the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which China ceded Taiwan and gave up its claims over Korea. His third cabinet in 1898 lasted only months. Accepting that governments needed party support, he founded the Rikken Seiyūkai in 1900 and briefly led a fourth cabinet in 1900–01. He opposed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, preferring a deal with Russia, and in later years tried to strengthen cabinet control over the army, with limited success.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made Korea a protectorate in November 1905, and Itō took up the post of Resident-General in March 1906. He said he wished to modernise Korea rather than absorb it. When Emperor Gojong secretly appealed to the powers in 1907, Itō pressed for his abdication and imposed a treaty that put the country's administration in Japanese hands and disbanded its army. An armed resistance movement spread, and Itō backed harsh military reprisals that also struck civilians. He resigned in June 1909, having approved plans for annexation in April.

On 26 October 1909, at Harbin station in Manchuria, the Korean independence activist An Jung-geun shot him six times, killing him. Japan annexed Korea in August 1910. In Japan he is remembered as a founder of constitutional government; in Korea he is widely seen as a symbol of Japanese imperialism.

Our 1880 map shows Japan as Itō was reshaping its government, and the 1900 map shows the Empire of Japan after it had taken Taiwan; by the 1914 map Korea had been annexed.