The Hawaiian gazette., 1908-05-08
THE MEN WHO
GUIDE JAPAN
advertiser Correspondence, Copyright
by Frederic ]. Haskin.)


by Frederic j. Haskin.)
TOXIC, April 15.-Occupying po-
sition absolutely unique In modern
statecraft, the Elder Statesmen of japan
exercise an influence that is all but su-
preme in the affairs of their country.
This remarkable group of old men has
no legal status, and their existence is
not recognized by the constitutional
form of government. They are the sur
vivors of the young Nipponese patriots
who fifty years ago undertook to bring
their country into the family of ma
lions and induce their people to adopt
Western civilization. The japanese
nation recognizes their success and de-
fers to them in all questions of great
moment, much in the same fashion that
the American nation might defer to-
day to the opinions of George Wash
ington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton if
those men were still in the land of the
living.
The Genro. as the Elder Statesmen
group is called in Japanese, is not
sharply defined. Historically consider
ed, the Japanese recognize six living
men as Elder Statesmen, but in recent
politics the active group is limited to
four. Prince Ito, Prince Yamagata,
Marquis Matsukata and Marquis Inouye
are the controlling spirits today. Mar
shall Prince Oyama is military man,
and he declined to sit in the political
conclaves of the Genro. Count Okuma
is one of the Elder Statesmen histori-
cally, but he has been for many years
the leader of the Opposition in Japan
ese politics, and therefore has not par
ticipated in the work of the Elder
Statesmen as a group.
The domestic revolution which pro-
duced modern Japan was not the work
of any one great leader, but the stimuli
taneous action of great many young
men who responded to the force of long
accommodating dissatisfaction at home,
and to the newly felt pressure from
abroad. The leaders of the revolution
which deposed the Shogunate and re-
stored the Emperor to actual as well as
nominal power, were Okubo, KIDD and
Saigo. They have all passed away, but
the six living Elder Statesmen were
closely associated with them in the
early days, and afterward bore the
brunt of the political battle which re-
suited in constitutional form of gov
eminent
The most interesting of the living
Elder Statesmen are Prince Ito and
Count Okuma, the one supreme in
power and the other insistent in opposi-
ton. Prince Ito is better known to
foreigners than any other Japanese
statesman. He is now nearing the
sixty-eighth mile-post of life, and is
the Power behind the Throne, the di-
rector of cabinets and closest personal
adviser of the Emperor. In 1868, when
he was twenty-five years old, he evad
ed the authorities and escaped from
Japan to England, in company with
Count Inouye, another of the living
Elder Statesmen Both were disguised
as sailors. They were provided with
plenty of money when they left home,
but they gambled with the sailors on
the way, and when they arrived in Lon
don they had but one silver dollar. Ito,
always master of the art of shifting
responsibility for dangerous under
taking, sent Inouye out with the dollar
to buy something to eat. He went into
a bakers shop and, not knowing
a word of English, pointed to loaf of
bread and held up his dollar. The shop
woman gave him the loaf, took the
dollar, and ended negotiations. The
two boys lived on this loaf of bread
until the next day, when some friends,
who knew of their mission, found them
wandering about London.
When Ito came home, he found him
self in a precarious position, his for
ign-hating clansmen despising him for
his English learning and the foreigners
at the ports distrusting his intentions
But the great KIDD trusted him, and
invited him into the councils of those
men who were about to bring on the
revolution. When the Shotgun was
overthrown, and the Mikado came into
his own, Ito acted as interpreter for
the boy Emperor when he first saw the
of the foreign powers
in 1868; the first occasion in. an un-
broken history of $500 years that the
Emperor of Japan had recognized the
right of embassy. 1t was Ito who had
much to do with the preparation of the
Imperial Edict which granted to the
Japanese people voice in government |
and to which was appended the sigma
ture of the Mikado, the first time in
all history that the name of an En-