Hara Takashi
Hara Takashi was born on 15 March 1856 in Motomiya, a village near Morioka, Mutsu Province, into a "samurai" family in service of the Nanbu Domain. Hara's family had resisted the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and fought against the establishment of the very government which Hara himself would one day lead. Hara was an outsider in Japanese politics due to his association with a former enemy clan of the new Imperial Government, which at the time was dominated by the former clans of Chōshū and Satsuma domains.