Hyūga Province
Komura was born to a lower-ranking samurai family in the service of the Obi Domain in Kyushu's Hyūga Province (now Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture). He attended the "Daigaku Nankō", the predecessor of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1875, he was selected by the Ministry of Education as one of the first students to study abroad under a government scholarship. At Harvard University, Komura shared lodgings with the fellow Japanese student Kaneko Kentarō. In due course, Komura graduated from Harvard Law School in 1878.