Itō Hirobumi

Itō Hirobumi (1841–1909) was a late-Tokugawa shishi and Meiji statesman from Chōshū domain (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture), and is known as the first Prime Minister of Japan. As one of the disciples who studied at Yoshida Shōin's Shōka Sonjuku, he was deeply involved in the overthrow of the shogunate and the promotion of the Meiji Restoration. He later led the enactment of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, laying the foundations of modern Japan.

Itō was born the son of a farming family in Suō Province (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture), but he gained samurai status when his father was adopted into the Itō family. At a young age he entered the Shōka Sonjuku, where he received a great ideological influence from Yoshida Shōin. As the sonnō jōi spirit grew stronger, Itō threw himself into the expulsion-of-foreigners movement together with Takasugi Shinsaku. He was a radical shishi who also took part in the burning of the British Legation (1862).

However, in 1863 he secretly traveled to Britain and saw the realities of the West for himself. He came to realize that expelling foreigners was unrealistic, and he turned toward a policy of opening the country and Civilization and Enlightenment. After the Boshin War he held key posts in the Meiji government. As deputy envoy of the Iwakura Mission (1871–1873), he toured Europe and America and studied deeply how a modern state should be organized.

Following the Political Crisis of Meiji 14 (1881), in which his rival Ōkuma Shigenobu fell from power, Itō became the central figure in drafting the constitution. From 1882 to 1883 he conducted constitutional research in Germany and Austria. He then drafted the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (the Meiji Constitution), modeled on a Prussian-style constitutional monarchy, and in 1885 he took office as the first Prime Minister. He served as Prime Minister four times in total. After the Sino-Japanese War, he also took part as chief plenipotentiary in the conclusion of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

Regarding his relationship with Japanese swords, Itō too was a radical shishi who took up the sword. In his youth, when the sonnō jōi spirit was strong, swords were the spiritual pillars of the shishi and symbols of their action. Besides joining the burning of the British Legation, he and Yamao Yōzō ambushed and assassinated the kokugaku scholar Hanawa Tadatomi. In later years, however, Itō found a way forward in protecting the nation through the "sword of modernity" of constitution and law rather than the sword itself, embodying the era's transition from force to rule of law. In 1909, he was assassinated by An Jung-geun at Harbin station, and the life of this great statesman of the Meiji era came to an end.