Ōkuma Shigenobu

Ōkuma Hachitarō was born on March 11, 1838, in Saga, Hizen Province (modern day Saga Prefecture),[1] the first son of Ōkuma Nobuyasu and Miiko.[2] His father was a samurai-class artillery officer of the Saga Domain,[1][3] and the family were a high-ranking samurai family who had a 300 koku territory.[2]

At the age of seven, he entered the domain school Kōdōkan and studied mainly Confucian literature, the teachings of Cheng–Zhu school in particular. In 1854, he rebelled against the education of the school with his fellow students. He was expelled the next year for rioting.[2] At this point, he had moved to a Dutch studies institution.[1]

The Dutch school was merged with the provincial school in 1861, and Ōkuma took up a lecturing position there shortly afterward. Ōkuma sympathized with the sonnō jōi movement, which aimed at expelling the Europeans who had started to arrive in Japan. However, he also advocated mediation between the rebels in Chōshū and the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo.

During a trip to Nagasaki, Ōkuma met a Dutch missionary named Guido Verbeck, who taught him the English language and provided him with copies of the New Testament and the American Declaration of Independence.[4] These works are often said to have affected his political thinking profoundly, and encouraged him to support efforts to abolish the existing feudal system and work toward the establishment of a constitutional government.

Ōkuma frequently traveled between Nagasaki and Kyoto in the following years and became active in the Meiji Restoration. In 1867, together with Soejima Taneomi, he planned to recommend resignation to the shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu.[1] Leaving Saga Domain without permission, they went to Kyoto, where the shōgun then resided.[5] However, Ōkuma and his companions were arrested and sent back to Saga. They were subsequently sentenced to one month imprisonment.

Ōkuma Shigenobu as a young man.

Following the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Okuma was placed in charge of foreign affairs for the new Meiji government. At this time, he negotiated with British diplomat, Sir Harry Smith Parkes on the ban of Christianity and insisted on maintaining the government's persecution on Catholics in Nagasaki.

In 1873, the Japanese government removed the ban on Christianity.

He was soon given an additional post as head of Japan's monetary reform program. He made use of his close contacts with Inoue Kaoru to secure a position in the central government in Tokyo. He was elected to the first Diet of Japan in 1870 and soon became Minister of Finance, in which capacity he instituted property and taxation reforms that aided Japan's early industrial development.[6]

He also unified the nation's currency, created the national mint, and a separate Minister of Industry; however, he was dismissed in 1881 after a long series of disagreements with members of the Satsuma and Chōshū clique in the Meiji oligarchy, most notably Itō Hirobumi, over his efforts to secure foreign loans, to establish a constitution, and especially over his exposure of illicit property dealings involving Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka and others from Satsuma.

In 1882, Ōkuma co-founded the Constitutional Progressive Party (Rikken Kaishintō) which soon attracted a number of other leaders, including Ozaki Yukio and Inukai Tsuyoshi. That same year, Ōkuma founded the Tokyo Senmon Gakkō (東京専門学校) in the Waseda district of Tokyo. The school later became Waseda University, one of the country's most prominent institutions of higher education.[7]

Despite their continuing animosity, Itō again appointed Ōkuma to the post of Foreign Minister in February 1888 to deal with the difficult issue of negotiation revisions to the "unequal treaties" with the Western powers. The treaty he negotiated was perceived by the public as too conciliatory to the Western powers, and created considerable controversy. Ōkuma was attacked by a member of the Gen'yōsha in 1889, and his right leg was blown off by a bomb.[8] He retired from politics at that time.

However, he returned to politics in 1896 by reorganizing the Rikken Kaishintō into the Shimpotō (Progressive Party). In 1897, Matsukata Masayoshi convinced Ōkuma to participate in his second administration as Foreign Minister and Agriculture and Commerce Minister, but again, he remained in office for only one year before resigning.

In June 1898, Ōkuma co-founded the Kenseitō (Constitutional Government Party), by merging his Shimpotō with Itagaki Taisuke's Jiyūtō, and was appointed by the Emperor to form the first partisan cabinet in Japanese history. The new cabinet survived for only four months before it fell apart due to internal dissension. Ōkuma remained in charge of the party until 1908, when he retired from politics.

After his political retirement, Ōkuma became president of Waseda University and chairman of the Japan Civilization Society, from which scholars' many translations of European and American texts were published. He also gathered support for Japan's first expedition to Antarctica.

Marquess Ōkuma Shigenobu in the year before his death

At the request of the Emperor,[9] Ōkuma returned to politics during the constitutional crisis of 1914, when the government of Yamamoto Gonnohyōe was forced to resign in the wake of the Siemens scandal. Ōkuma organized his supporters, together with the Rikken Dōshikai and Chūseikai organizations, into a coalition cabinet. The 2nd Ōkuma administration was noted for its active foreign policy. Later that year, Japan declared war on the German Empire, thus entering World War I on the Allied side. In 1915, Ōkuma and Katō Takaaki drafted the Twenty-One Demands on China.

However, Ōkuma's second administration was also short-lived. Following the Ōura scandal, Ōkuma's cabinet lost popular support, and its members held mass resignation in October 1915. In 1916, after a long argument with the Genrō, Ōkuma resigned as well, and retired from politics permanently, although he remained a member of the Upper House of the Diet of Japan until 1922. He was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum in 1916, and was elevated to the title of kōshaku (侯爵) (marquis) in the kazoku peerage system the same year.

Ōkuma returned to Waseda, and died there in 1922.[10] An estimated 300,000 people attended his funeral in Tokyo's Hibiya Park. He was posthumously conferred with the Collar of the Order of the Chrysanthemum, the nation's highest honour. He was buried at the temple of Gokoku-ji in Tokyo.

From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia

• Beasley, W.G. (1963). The Making of Modern Japan. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Borton, Hugh (1955). Japan's Modern Century. New York: The Ronald Press Company.
• Idditti, Smimasa. Life of Marquis Shigenobu Okuma: A Maker of New Japan. Kegan Paul International Ltd. (2006). ISBN 0-7103-1186-9
• Idditti, Junesay. Marquis Shigenobu Okuma – A Biographical Study in the Rise of Democratic Japan. Hokuseido Press (1956). ASIN: B000IPQ4VQ
• Lebra-Chapman, Joyce. Okuma Shigenobu: statesman of Meiji Japan. Australian National University Press (1973). ISBN 0-7081-0400-2
• Oka Yoshitake, et al. Five Political Leaders of Modern Japan: Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu, Hara Takashi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Saionji Kimmochi. University of Tokyo Press (1984). ISBN 0-86008-379-9
• Tokugawa Munefusa (2005). Tokugawa yonhyakunen no naisho-banashi: raibaru bushō-hen Tokyo: Bungei-shunju
• Brownas, Sidney DeVere. Nagasaki in the Meiji Restoration: Choshu Loyalists and British Arms Merchants. http://www.uwosh.edu/home_pages/faculty_staff/earns/meiji.html Retrieved on August 7, 2008.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ōkuma Shigenobu.

• Yomiuri Shimbun: Less than 30% of primary school students in Japan know historical significance of Ōkuma, 2008.
• Photograph of Rabindranath Tagore and Count Okuma in Japan in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
• "Okuma, Shigenobu" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
• Newspaper clippings about Ōkuma Shigenobu in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW