Itō Hirobumi

Prince Itō Hirobumi (伊藤 博文, 16 October 1841 – 26 October 1909, born Hayashi Risuke and also known as Hirofumi, Hakubun and briefly during his youth Itō Shunsuke) was a Japanese statesman and genrō. A London-educated samurai of the Chōshū Domain and an influential figure in the early Meiji Restoration government, he chaired the bureau which drafted the Meiji Constitution in the 1880s. Looking to the West for legal inspiration, Itō rejected the United States Constitution as too liberal and the Spanish Restoration as too despotic before ultimately drawing on the British and German models, especially the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Dissatisfied with the prominent role of Christianity in European legal traditions, he substituted references to the more traditionally Japanese concept of kokutai or "national polity", which became the constitutional justification for imperial authority. In 1885, he became Japan's first Prime Minister, an office his constitutional bureau had introduced. He went on to hold the position four times, becoming one of the longest serving PMs in Japanese history, and wielded considerable power even out of office as the occasional head of Emperor Meiji's Privy Council. A monarchist, Itō favoured a large, bureaucratic government and opposed the formation of political parties. His third term in government was ended by the consolidation of the opposition into the Kenseitō party in 1898, prompting him to found the Rikken Seiyūkai party in response. He resigned his fourth and final ministry in 1901 after growing weary of party politics, but served as head of the Privy Council twice more before his death. Itō's foreign policy was ambitious. He strengthened diplomatic ties with Western powers including Germany, the United States and especially the United Kingdom. In Asia he oversaw the First Sino-Japanese War and negotiated Chinese surrender on terms aggressively favourable to Japan, including the annexation of Taiwan and the release of Korea from the Ch