page_title: Itō Hirobumi
section_title: Rise to power
hierarchical_section_title: Itō Hirobumi / Political career / Rise to power
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the leading members of the Iwakura-mission. It was made 1872 in London. In the middle is sitting Iwakura Tomomi, the leader of the Japanese diplomats. 日本語: 岩倉使節団。1872年、ロンドン滞在中に撮影。岩倉使節団の面々。左から木戸孝允、山口尚芳、岩倉、伊藤博文、大久保利通。 Deutsch: Foto der leitenden Mitglieder der Iwakura-Mission aus dem Jahr 1872 (London). In der Mitte befindet sich Iwakura Tomomi, der Leiter der Mission.
context_page_description: Prince Itō Hirobumi was a Japanese politician, Prime Minister and preeminent member of Japan's genrō, an elite group of senior statesmen who dominated the Meiji oligarchy. A London-educated samurai of the Chōshū Domain and leader of the early Meiji Restoration government, he chaired the bureau which drafted the Meiji Constitution in the 1880s. Looking to the West for inspiration, Itō rejected the United States Constitution as too liberal and the Spanish Restoration as too despotic. He instead drew on British and German models, particularly the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Dissatisfied with Christianity's pervasiveness in European legal precedent, he replaced such religious references with those rooted in the more traditionally Japanese concept of a kokutai or "national polity" which hence became the constitutional justification for imperial authority.
  By 1881, Itō Hirobumi emerged as the dominant figure in the Restoration regime. In 1885, he became the first Prime Minister of Japan, an office his constitutional bureau created. He went on to hold the position four times, thereby becoming one of the longest serving PMs in Japanese history.
context_section_description: After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Itō was appointed governor of Hyōgo Prefecture, junior councilor for Foreign Affairs, and sent to the United States in 1870 to study Western currency systems. Returning to Japan in 1871, he established Japan's taxation system. With the advice of Edmund Morel, a chief engineer of the railway department, Ito endeavored to found the Public Works together with Yamao Yozo. Later that year, he was sent on the Iwakura Mission around the world as vice-envoy extraordinary, during which he won the confidence of Ōkubo Toshimichi, one of the leaders of the Meiji government.
  In 1873, Itō was made a full councilor, Minister of Public Works, and in 1875 chairman of the first Assembly of Prefectural Governors. He participated in the Osaka Conference of 1875. After Ōkubo's assassination, he took over the post of Home Minister and secured a central position in the Meiji government. In 1881 he urged Ōkuma Shigenobu to resign, leaving himself in unchallenged control.
  Itō went to Europe in 1882 to study the constitutions of those countries, spending nearly 18 months away from Japan. While working on a constitution for Japan, he also wrote the first Imperial Household Law and established the Japanese peerage system (kazoku) in 1884.
  In 1885, he negotiated the Convention of Tientsin with Li Hongzhang, normalizing Japan's diplomatic relations with Qing-dynasty China. In the same year, In 1885, Itō established a cabinet system of government based on European ideas, replacing the Daijō-kan as the nation's main policy-making organization.
caption: Photo of the leading members of the Iwakura mission
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