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Japan Special - Itō Hirobumi (Japan's 1st Prime Minister & the Meiji Restoration)

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Japan Special - Itō Hirobumi (Japan's 1st Prime Minister & the Meiji Restoration)

Episode Transcript

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors! This week: Ito Hirobumi. Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I'm here with my dad. We are supposed to be reviewing all the British prime ministers from Robert Walpole to Rishi Sunak, but we are on vacation in Japan and are going to talk about the first prime minister of Japan, Ito Hirobumi.

Joe: Don't worry, Abram, I'm still researching William Pulteney, but we're here and I wanted to both expand my knowledge of Japanese history and teach some of it to you. Isn't that what normal people do on vacation?

Abram: Nope.

Joe: Hahaha.

Abram: No, I did like the Pokémon Centers here. I went to everyone in Tokyo.

Joe: Am I a good parent or a bad parent for that?

Abram: I don't know.

Joe: You don't know if I'm a good parent or a bad parent for that?

Abram: I hope you're a good parent. I'm not sure though.

Joe: Okay, well, we'll work on that.

Abram: Don't forget, you can find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at www.primefactorspodcast.com. By that I mean www. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, or review.

Joe: All right, since we're in Japan, we don't have our box of podcast with us. I don't know how the audio quality is going to be, so hey, we're going to go with it. This also won't be part of the British story, so you can feel free to skip if you only—

Abram: It'll sort of be part of the American story a little bit.

Joe: I mean, the history of Japan is integrated with the history of all these other places. But honestly, Ito Hirobumi has an amazing story, and I'm just excited to share it with you and Abram.

Abram: Also, for this episode, we won't do a rating or a known or ice cream cone. But if we do decide to continue doing Japan ones in the next one, we'll probably have at the end, we'll do this one too. We're not sure if we're going to continue doing Japan ones. We're gonna see about it, and by involve, like, polls and things.

Joe: So this is just a one-off, but we're considering other occasional looks at important prime ministers outside the UK, or maybe continuing with more Japanese ones. We'll insert some additional information right about here once we decide on how we're going to do a poll or something. So imagine future me giving you instructions right now. If you like episodes like this and want us to do more either about Japan or about other prime ministers of interest around the world, we'll be posting a link to a survey on the episode page on www.primefactorspodcast.com for this episode, as well as on our YouTube page. Please let us know there if you'd like to hear more about prime ministers other than from the UK. So, Abram, are you excited?

Abram: I'd rather be worrying about Pulteney. Let's do it so you can get back to researching him.

Joe: Okay, so I have a picture for you, Abram. So here's a picture. We'll put it up on the website potentially.

Picture This

Joe: So picture this. It's February 11th, 1889, and Tokyo is alive with celebration. A young child, maybe your age, darts down a narrow alleyway, the path illuminated by festive red lanterns that are swaying gently above. As he reaches the main thoroughfare, he finds himself amidst a jubilant crowd. Lots of excited people. The air is filled with excitement. There's the aroma of street food, but it's a cold winter's day. It's kind of crisp, and Tokyo doesn't get a lot of snow, but there's actually even a light snow cover over the ground here that causes his footsteps to sort of crunch as he's moving along. Banners and flags are fluttering in the breeze and lanterns are casting a warm glow on the scene. Voices rise in unison, some shouting "banzai" or something similarly Japanese, but a cheer that echoes through the streets. Some revelers are already partaking in barrels of sake distributed free from nearby bars in celebration. Their laughter and cheers and probably drunken revelry are adding to the celebration. But this young kid isn't drinking any of the sake. That's not for him. He's too young. "We have a constitution!" someone shouts. The parade in front of them, nobles and military leaders, is a vivid tapestry of colors and sounds as horses clomp their way along the road to a rhythmic beat of drums and the notes of flutes. The young boy, now bundled warmly because it's unusually cold outside, stands in awe as the procession moves forward. Elaborate carriages adorned with intricate designs. Beautiful horses carrying dignitaries and officials, their faces reflecting pride and hope for the future. Soldiers are marching in formation, and their uniforms are a symbol of the nation's newfound unity and strength. The child watches wide-eyed as history unfolds before him. "Our Emperor has granted us a constitution!"

Abram: That's exciting.

Joe: That's exciting.

A Japanese History Primer

Joe: Okay, so how we're going to start today, because you don't know a lot of Japanese history, I'm going to start today with kind of a primer, kind of just get us up to the Edo era so we can talk about the life of Ito Hirobumi. So we're going to be fast. It's not going to be enough. People that know Japanese history are going to say, "But you missed a really good part." You know, it'd be kind of like talking about British history and then skipping the War of the Roses. But we're gonna do our best. So in the beginning, humans arrived in Japan somewhere about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. But this isn't a podcast about that. That's prehistory. Prehistory means before.

Abram: But wait, it's still history, so nothing's before history.

Joe: Ah, but we usually think of history as starting at the beginning of writing, right? So once history can be written down, then it becomes history. And before that, it's archaeology and prehistory.

Abram: Even though there can't be prehistory.

Joe: It's definition. So, from about 14,000 BCE to about 300 BCE, this is called the Jomon period. It's named for a type of pottery, right, that looks like it had a cord or a rope around it. Japanese pottery was the most sophisticated in the world, but I don't know anything about pottery, so we're just gonna keep moving. New groups of settlers arrived in Japan from China, Korea, cultures mixed, ushering what they call the Yayoi period, which lasted until about 300 years CE. They had bronze weapons, they settled in place, they liked to grow rice, and eventually they're even going to learn to work iron. As society became more sophisticated, about 100 clans or early kingdoms formed in Japan. Now, still fast-forwarding, the next period of history is called the Kofun period, about 300 to 538. It's named for gigantic burial mounds that were built. And if you remember from some of our other travels, like, lots of cultures have burial mounds, right, at different times. So it's pretty cool. Now, those 100 kingdoms or clans, they conquered each other, they solidified, they formed larger states. There's a kingdom in Yamato in central Japan. It's going to become dominant by either conquering or forming alliances. It's a simplification. They weren't the only power, but they were an important one. And they were especially important for our story because the leaders of the Yamato kingdom eventually became the emperors of Japan. And the current emperor, who is Emperor Naruhito, still traces his lineage from those kings.

Abram: Wow, that's far back.

Joe: Well, that's one of the things that Japan takes a lot of pride in, is that they have an unbroken line of emperors. And then, as we'll see, it's going to be something that's very important to Ito and others. Of course, it wasn't always father to son, and there's some complexities here, but we'll just keep going. So just like in Britain, right, where in Britain, you know, they have some legendary kings— I don't even know if you know all of them. You know King Arthur, certainly. There was another legendary king called King Leir. There was a King Brutus that theoretically came from Troy, I think. Some of the earliest emperors, or some of the earliest kings of this period, are actually legendary, right? So they don't really exist. The first kings, or the first emperors of Japan that are provable by history, are around 500 CE. So China, very old, has already been established at this point. In fact, China even might have had some communication with the Roman Empire.

Abram: Whoa.

Joe: Yeah, we mentioned Rome. We should high five. Now, in the 400s, five kings supposedly traveled from Japan to China to ask them to recognize Japan as a separate country. But weirdly, these five kings are only mentioned in Chinese sources. They're not actually on the list of emperors. So I don't know why they didn't— they're not mentioned, but clearly there's some questions, right, in this early historical period. At around 552, Buddhism arrived in Japan from Korea. Buddhism originated in India.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And gradually spread eastward. So the Buddhist faith became more and more important in Japan, and Buddhist leaders gradually were taking over the government, establishing a capital in what is modern Kansai. Japan was also influenced by the Chinese ideas of how a country should work, and that mainly meant a strong central authority and a state that ruled over smaller dependent states. That's how China liked to do things.

Abram: Yeah, did that result in them falling apart like a million times?

Joe: Oh, there were wars as different sides vied for power.

Abram: Do you know what I mean by they fell apart like 5,000 times back then?

Joe: Well, it's hard to hold a state together over hundreds of years, especially a long time ago. So in 710, the capital was moved to Heijō-kyō in modern Nara. This is when Japan started writing down its history, as well as that list of legendary emperors. This was a tough time. There were lots of natural disasters and smallpox, and many people died.

Abram: Yeah, that doesn't look good.

Joe: Emperor Shomu thought they were being punished for not being religious enough, so he built a bunch of temples. It didn't help.

Abram: In 794, Emperor Kammu moved the capital to Kyoto, where it would be until the 1860s. They still had smallpox, and even more people died around 812. The power of the emperor declined, and powerful groups and clans built up their own armies. There are hundreds of years of civil wars and conflicts here, with occasional multiple competing emperors and different factions.

Joe: Abram, I'm gonna take that away from you. You're reading my notes.

Abram: That's because you're having trouble. We don't have time to get into it all, as this section is taking too long already. Culture flourished at the emperor's court despite the fighting, and this is when the Japanese writing system was formed.

Joe: So this is why Abram doesn't get all of my notes when we record.

Abram: Tell others I'm helping!

Joe: You're helping. All right, so by 1156, there was a particularly bad conflict between two rival emperors over all of Japan. Well, not all of Japan. One of the emperors won, but it didn't matter because the people with the biggest sticks were in the military, and a samurai leader called Yoritomo became the first shogun in 1192. So let's talk about that. By this point, there are a group of military leaders called samurai. They're a little bit like European knights. They're going to change a bit over time, but they'll practice a warrior's code called bushido. They will fight with dual swords, and they're actually allowed to kill anyone of lower class that they want. Maybe not at this early period, but certainly by the end. They're the samurai. They're important. The samurai leader that conquered the emperor became known as the shogun, and we're entering a period where the emperor has very little power. He's going to live in Kyoto while the real government is run by the military led by the shogun. Think of it as Japan kind of having two leaders that don't always get along, but one of the leaders has a lot of pointy swords and the other has religion with flourishing arts and culture.

Abram: Who would win?

Joe: I think the people with the pointy sticks win.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So every now and then the emperor is going to rebel against this and try to reclaim power. In 1221, the Emperor Go-Shoba successfully fought one shogun, only to have his own generals turn against him and seize power for themselves after successfully conquering. So this situation is going to be in place for a while. The shoguns weren't all-powerful. We already mentioned how Japan had once been 100 little kingdoms, and that's not so different from what's happening now. As Japan evolved into a bunch of little feudal states, each one led by a daimyo, and they fought each other, there was still a lot of local power. But we have a lot of little conflicts between lots of little warring states that are still theoretically under the emperor and theoretically under the shogun, but they're also wanting to sort of have their own thing. This is when ninja start to appear. Do you know what a ninja is?

Abram: Yes.

Joe: Okay, Abram knows what a ninja is. That's the important thing. But they're master spies and martial artists that serve these daimyos, and they backstab each other. They're also supposedly very sneaky. Finally, finally, finally, we have some European history. Because into this mix comes the Portuguese. In 1543, a Portuguese ship was blown off course and landed in Tanegashima, I believe. And they were the first Europeans to visit. They opened up trade, and the warring leaders were very eager to buy muskets and military weapons off of the Portuguese. Now, of course, being the Portuguese, they also brought Christianity, and they tried to convert people, and the Buddhists didn't like it very much.

Abram: Which means the Buddhists are actually immune to converting? Well, not completely, but they're not immune.

Joe: But, you know, Christianity likes to come and convert people, and they weren't actually able to do it to the Buddhists. Well, no, a whole bunch of people were converted, but the government sort of pushed back. And in Japan, there's going to be a very long history of kind of having a small number of Christians that are generally sort of discriminated against up through the end of the Edo era. So around that time a guy by the name of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a war leader and one of those daimyos. He managed to defeat a lot of others, unite Japan again, but he didn't stop there. He also tried to attack China and Korea. He made the class system stricter. He banned commoners from even owning swords.

Abram: Which is good.

Joe: Yeah, I guess, unless—

Abram: It would be good now.

Joe: But what if the commoner wants to cut his rice with a sword? I mean, how could he do that? Well, he made other changes too. And when he died, his ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu, he took over as shogun in 1603. This is the start of the Edo era. And that's important because this is the era that, a couple hundred years later, Ito Hirobumi is going to be born into. The Tokugawa shogunate will do a lot, but for our story, one key thing that he's going to be doing is he's gonna make Japan an isolated country in 1639. All trade with Europe is going to be banned except for a Dutch port at Nagasaki. Limited trade will be allowed only with Korea and China. No Japanese person is allowed to leave Japan or even own boats large enough to leave. Christianity won't be completely destroyed, but it'll be outlawed. People will be sorted into classes: artists, peasants, scholars, military. And this system is going to last for about 300 years. At the time of the birth of Ito Hirobumi, just to summarize, we had Emperor Ninko. He lived in Kyoto, which was the official capital. Just like in China, by the way, the emperors had different names when they were alive versus when they were dead.

Abram: Yeah, in China, we did a period researching, they had three names. There's the name when they're alive, there's the name when they died, I think, and there was also the era name, which was the era they were in.

Joe: I think so.

Abram: That's in China though.

Joe: I thought it was when they were alive, when they died, and their temple name. We'll have to look it back up.

Abram: Yeah, I think it's yours. Anyways, that's about China, not Japan.

Joe: So, but Japan does a little bit the same because remember, Japan is really picking up a lot of what they do from China. Even the writing system is based on what was done in China, even though Japan modified it a lot. So we had Emperor Ninko. In life, he was called Ayahito, but for simplicity, I'm always going to call the emperors by their posthumous names because that's the names that are mostly written in the history books. But he had no power and he was just a figurehead under the shogun anyway. The shogun had his capital at Edo, which is modern-day Tokyo. The current shogun at the start of our story is Tokugawa Ieyoshi. He's descended more or less from that shogun that we talked about a couple hundred years earlier. By the way, these names have the family name first, right? So Tokugawa is his family name, Ito is his family name, right? It's, you know, family name, surname, right? You know, we have ours at the end. Don't worry about either of them, they're going to die soon and they won't be big figures in our story. Japan was feudal at this point. There's somewhere between 250 and 280 feudal domains across Japan, each controlled by a local leader or a daimyo. But we only care about two for this story, 'cause otherwise it's gonna get way too complicated. There is the Satsuma Domain and the Choshu Domain. And Ito is gonna be born as a Choshu. Let me show you this real quick. So, here's a map of Japan.

Abram: I know that.

Joe: And so, the Choshu Domain is way over here in the west. And the Satsuma Domain is even further west, right? It's on— this island whose name I can't remember now.

Abram: Kyushu.

Joe: Kyushu. See, this is why I keep you around.

Abram: No, you keep me around for different reasons. That's kind of mean.

Joe: I am kidding. I'm kidding. So it's even further west. So they're very far from sort of the centers of power, either at Kyoto or at Tokyo. The good news about those locations are that they're prime spots for Europeans to be interacting with. And so I think they might have had a little bit more influence from Europe than some of these other locations. So contact with foreigners was still limited. Now, the emperor commanded in 1825 to expel all foreigners at all costs. So they were very impolite. They didn't like tourists. But we're a tourist here, so they clearly have gotten rid of that rule ever since. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to visit so many Pokémon Centers.

Abram: You don't know this. Well, now you do. But all of the Pokémon I've gotten at Pokémon Centers are actually watching us record.

Joe: It's very cute. So trade was allowed, right, at this point with China, Korea, and the Dutch, but only in Nagasaki. And the countries like Britain, Russia, the United States, they wanted to get into the Japanese market, but it was currently blocked.

Little Ito

Joe: So finally, it is time for Ito Hirobumi to be born. On October 16, 1841, Ito Hirobumi was born to Hayashi Jozo and his wife Kotoko in Tuskari Village, today part of Hikari City in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. So he was born to a poor peasant class family, although Ito's father must have been pretty good because he worked for a lower class samurai named Ito Naoemon. He worked in the nearby castle town of Hagi, and that was the capital of the Choshu Domain. If we had silver spoons for this, do you know how many silver spoons he would get?

Abram: Zero.

Joe: Zero. He has a peasant family. He's starting from literally nothing. In fact, this— can you see this picture?

Abram: It looks like a regular building.

Joe: Does it look like a regular building? This is his house.

Abram: Just a regular house.

Joe: It's a regular house. It has a thatched roof. It's pretty small though. It is very far from where the prime ministers that we usually talk about get born. They often get born in their own castles.

Abram: Of course it's very far. We're on a whole nother continent.

Joe: Yep. So for the record, he was born on the 15th day of the 9th month of the 12th year of the Tenpo era. But that's too hard to keep track of, so we're just going to say October 16th, 1841, and we're going to be using our own dating system. But Japan had its own dating system at the time. Ito was only one when the edict to repel all foreigners was repealed by the emperor, so I don't think he had anything to do with that. They're still mostly not going to be permitted, but this is kind of like the first crack in the wall, and there's going to be more.

Abram: Or what happened?

Joe: So when Ito is 12, Millard Fillmore appears in our story. But just a little bit, just briefly. So Fillmore sent Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy to try to forcibly open up Japanese ports to US trade. Now, Ito is not going to be involved in this either because he's still 12, but this is an important bit of background to what's going on in his life. So on July 8th, 1853, Commodore Perry arrived at Edo Harbor with four warships. Keep track of that. Four warships. Japanese ships try to block him, but he tries to break the blockade to sail into the harbor. He claims, because he does, that he has a letter from the U.S. president, and he will only deliver this letter to the leader even if they try to stop him. He will invade Japan to deliver the letter if needed. The Japanese try to convince him to go to Nagasaki instead, but he insisted that he'd only go to the capital because this is a letter from Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States of America. In one of these meetings, Perry famously handed the Japanese a pair of white flags. You know what white flags are used for?

Abram: What?

Joe: If you raise a white flag over a ship, it means "I surrender." So he's basically handing them, "Here's some flags, when you're ready to give up, just wave them." Does that sound mean?

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So they took that very correctly as a threat. He was finally allowed to land. He delivered the letter to a high-ranking representative of the shogun. But even when he landed, he took 250 troops and a full military band with him. He is making as much noise and looking as big as possible.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So less than two weeks later, the shogun died.

Abram: What?

Joe: Yes. This was bad because the new shogun was Tokugawa Iesada, and he had health problems. And pretty much his senior councilor, particularly a guy named Abe Masahiro, is pretty much going to take control. He was a weak and ineffective leader, so instead of making a decision by himself, he took a poll of the top leaders of Japan to ask them what they should do about the U.S. demands. And the leaders were split roughly 50/50. He still couldn't make a decision. And he just ended up looking weak.

Abram: So wait, there's an emperor that couldn't do something, and then the person who was helping was a shogun who couldn't do something. So then he polled everyone and they couldn't decide. They're getting really far from the person who actually should be deciding.

Joe: They are. But in February, 1854. So about a month later, Perry returned demanding an answer. This time he came with eight ships and 1,600 men. He insisted that the negotiations happen in Edo, but they eventually settled for Yokohama.

Abram: Also, Edo is Tokyo.

Joe: I'm sorry. So during this period, Tokyo is called Edo, and at the end of the Edo period, the beginning of the Meiji period, it is going to be renamed. And the Meiji Revolution, or the Meiji Revolt, is one of the key things that Ito Hirobumi is going to be involved with in his life. So Commodore Perry and the Japanese signed a treaty that said that the U.S. can have a consulate in Japan. So they officially, by force, kind of made the Japanese open up. But of course, they just looked very threatening. The U.S. can trade in two ports. US ships can get food and supplies in Japan if they need it. And over the next four years, Britain, France, Russia are also going to make similar treaties, right? So suddenly Japan goes from being a country that nobody can go to, to having—

Abram: Except the Dutch—

Joe: Except the Dutch— to having a lot of different countries being able to operate. Even though the treaty was signed, the new shogun was not happy about it, and so he secretly started to buy warships and military training from the Dutch in order to be better prepared if he needed to fight the US or one of the other Western powers. But back in Hagi, which is the capital of the Choshu Domain, Ito Hirobumi's father, he must have been doing a great job because Ito Naoemon, the samurai that he was working for, adopted his whole family.

Abram: What?

Joe: Yes, he basically said, "You are such a good person working for me, I am going to bring you in and you will be part of my family." As part of this adoption, little Hayashi Risuke, which is Ito Hirobumi's real name, is going to take on the last name of his new adopted family. So he's going to become Ito Risuke. That's not his last name. He's going to keep changing his name. It's a thing. They were still lower-class retainers. What I read is he was more or less like an accountant. But they were no longer officially peasants. When Ito was 13, his father was given a job at Kyoto, and he moved his family with him. One of the practices at the time, by the way, was that samurai would be forced to spend half of their time in their home domains, and half of their time serving the shogun. And this would prevent any of the samurai from becoming too powerful. By forcing them to sort of spend time away from home, right? You know, you can't just consolidate your power. You gotta go work for it. And I believe that the samurai that Ito's parents were working for would move them back and forth as he needed to move back and forth for the shogun. So, at 14, he got real work for the Choshu Domain, and he was sent to guard duty at Edo Bay. So, even at 14, he's now a guard, he's probably dressed in a guard uniform. He made a good friend with one of the leaders, and that leader realized that he wasn't just a kid who wanted to be a guard. He started slipping him books and reading material. He discovered that Ito was a curious and intelligent young man. And that man was the brother-in-law of a person that you've never heard of, but it's gonna be very important to our story. This is Kido Takayoshi. He is basically the Alexander Hamilton of Japan, or one of the three leaders of Japan during this period that are basically something like founding fathers. So here's a funny quote. Ito sent this as a letter, quote: "This is a personal thing, but I'm embarrassed that my clothes have become too small. Please tell this to Grandma and Mother. I'm a big eater. Another embarrassment. I'm afraid both of these things make me a laughingstock." So, at 14, he's in Edo Bay. He's still growing. His clothes are getting too small to fit him, and he has to send a letter home saying, "Please send me new clothes." A year later, Ito's term in guard duty was over, and he was given a letter of recommendation to a school called Shoka Sonjuku. The village school under the pines, back in the Choshu Domain, under a teacher who is also important who's called Yoshida Shōin. He had another funny quote here about learning at the school. He said, quote, "We students read day and night. I urge you too to keep reading and studying. I don't for a moment think that you are neglecting your studies, but I do believe it is very important." He was sending this letter back to one of the friends that he made in guard duty.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Ito the Terrorist

Joe: So, Ito wasn't just going to any school. He was going to a school that was churning out rebellious intellectuals ready to challenge the Edo era. One of the mottos of that school and of this movement was, "Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians." And it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Now, I've had some trouble wrapping my head around it. So Shōin, the lead teacher at his school, who was one of the main people of this, he certainly wanted to expel the barbarians. But he, when Commodore Perry was in Japan, tried to sneak on one of his ships in order to come to the U.S. So clearly it's not simply that he wants to expel the barbarians, but he wants to go and learn from them. More importantly, perhaps, this school taught that they should be loyal to the emperor and not the shogun. So that is going to become a very important point. His teacher is super interesting. We could do an entire episode on his teacher, but we are not going to. So when studying at the school, the teacher described Ito as, quote, "a negotiator" and said, "He's not very talented and he is slow in learning, but he's serious-minded and modest. So I like this very much." That's like a report card. It's like, yeah, he's slow.

Abram: It's like when you do a report card but focus more on personality than how they actually did.

Joe: Yes. So when he was 17— so we're all the way in 1858 now— Ito was made an attendant to Kido Takayoshi, right? That's the brother-in-law that we just talked about. And he moved to live in Tokyo. And this is about the time that he changed his name to Ito Shunsuki. And why did he change his name that time? I don't know. One source claimed that this was to mark that he was no longer a student, but I don't actually know for sure. So he had learned from this school, he had graduated, he went to become an attendant. This is about the time when the U.S. was forcing Japan into what they called the Unequal Treaties. The U.S. used military threats to say that U.S. citizens in Japan would not be subject to Japanese laws, that Japan could not impose any taxes on U.S. goods, and that the U.S. would be the most favored nation. So what that means is if Russia or Britain or Germany or somebody were to sign a treaty with Japan that was better than the treaty with the U.S., the U.S. would automatically get that as well. There was lots of other problems going on. There was new diseases being brought by the Europeans, especially cholera. Trade was disrupting what had been a pretty static economy for hundreds of years. And worse, the shogun was very, very defensive about this. So even though they had just signed these treaties, the shogun did something called the Ansei Purge, where he would imprison or even kill anyone that disagreed with these new policies. So, "We're going to trade with the US, and we're not going to care that they are not subject to our laws. And if you complain, I'm going to put you in prison." Frankly, the shogun was still very weak. Remember, he was sickly. He had those elders that had helped to make that decision, but he actually died. So on August 14th, 1858, Tokugawa Iemochi became the new shogun. So he continued the policy, he continued to purge people that disagreed with him, that disagreed with the policy towards the U.S. And Yoshida Shōin, Ito's teacher at that school, got arrested. Now admittedly, he was attacking some of the shogun's men in Kyoto, so he was not just like, "I'm peacefully saying my opinion." He's like, "Nope, I'm going to attack you." So he was arrested for treason, and then he was executed.

Abram: So is that the teacher who gave the personality report card?

Joe: Yes.

Abram: Oh yes, no more personality report cards.

Joe: So Ito, Kido, and others had to come and claim Shōin's body, and they gave him a funeral together. And at this funeral, Ito seemed to have decided that he was going to fight against the regime that killed his teacher. Like his teacher, he also decided that he wanted to try to find a way to travel the world and see outside of Japan. He told his friends that he wanted to go to Britain, but Shōin had wanted to go to the U.S., so I don't know why. But remember, this is all still illegal. So unfortunately, or maybe not unfortunately, this is when Ito fell in with a group of former Shōin students that were fighting against the government. We might call what he was doing being a terrorist today. Maybe he was a freedom fighter, right? It's very hard to say, so we're not going to try to judge too much. But when he was 21, so 1862, he was a member of a team that tried to assassinate Nagai Uta, who was a high-ranking Choshu official that was agreeing with the shogun.

Abram: And was that related to the thing where they killed his teacher?

Joe: Yeah, that—

Abram: Yeah, I wouldn't call that completely like being a terrorist. I'd call that like wanting revenge by killing people, maybe.

Joe: So he's—

Abram: I wouldn't call that like exactly a terrorist because he has— there's more for it, but it's still pretty bad, I think.

Joe: There's more. So he fails to kill Nagai Uta. A few months later, he was part of a team that tried to burn down a newly constructed British legation or consulate building that was being built in Tokyo. So the British were building a headquarters in Tokyo, he burned it down. Okay, that's pretty mean. But then a couple months after that was kind of the biggest thing that he was involved with. There was a Japanese scholar named Hanawa Jiro Tadatomi. And this scholar, they thought, was looking for ways to overthrow the emperor. Now, it turns out he wasn't. He was innocent. He wasn't looking for ways to overthrow the emperor. But Ito personally killed him.

Abram: That's bad.

Joe: So this is the first prime minister that we've discussed that actually killed someone. And in fact, one of only two prime ministers in Japanese history that have killed someone.

Abram: Which one's the other?

Joe: I don't remember his name, but apparently it was big and scandalous because he killed his wife by accident because he was a terrible person and hit his wife. If we ever study the Japanese prime ministers, he's going to get a lot of negative points for that, but we're not there right now.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: So we have no idea how these acts shaped Ito or what he felt about it, how he felt while killing someone. But the situation in Japan was getting worse and worse and worse. There were protests against the shogun, there were protests against the Western governments, and at this point the emperor decides to get involved. So the emperor, who normally just listens to whatever the shogun said, said in March 1863— this is Emperor Komei— that he's going against the shogun. The shogun wants to make this treaty, but the emperor announced, "No, we must expel the barbarians, we must kick out the U.S. and the British." So the emperor basically signaled to Ito and others that the type of attacks that were going on was good by him. Now, of course, Ito did all of that stuff before the emperor gave his permission, so, you know, I don't know what to think about that. So you can decide what that means. But he didn't remain a freedom fighter, he didn't remain a terrorist, whatever we want to call it, because at his heart, Ito was an intellectual, even though Shōin seemed to think he was slow. So he was selected that June for a very different type of mission. Do you want to guess what type of mission he was selected for?

Abram: What?

Ito Leaves and Ito Comes Back

Joe: He and four others were going to be smuggled out of Japan. They will be smuggled out of Japan. They're going to be put on a boat and they're going to be sent to Britain, so they can learn Western ways and technologies. They're gonna be called the Choshu Five.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: And in a letter to his father, he says, "Today there is pressing need to learn everything about that country," Britain, "and to master naval technology. Otherwise, there is no hope for us." So he's basically going so that Japan can learn from the invaders, essentially, how to fight the invaders.

Abram: Mm-hmm. That seems good, I guess.

Joe: Well, it's better than burning down buildings and killing people. So unfortunately, Ito's trip to Britain is not going to go as planned. It's going to take him five months to sail from Japan to Britain, during which time the situation in Japan is actually going to get worse. But he's not going to know that it's getting worse because the communication is super slow. In June 1863, the shogun is going to agree with the emperor that the foreigners need to leave. So it's another sign that the shogun's power is just not even very strong. But before even that happened, the Choshu Domain— remember I said that there were two of those 280 feudal areas? The Choshu Domain is the one that Ito is from. The Choshu Domain decided that they were gonna close the Shimonoseki Strait. So that is the water near their part of the country. Between Honshu and Kyushu. And they're gonna attack any Western ship that passes between the islands. They're gonna attack an American merchant ship, and then they're gonna attack a French ship, and then a Dutch ship. And they're just really aiming to upset all of the Europeans, right? They just want, "Go away. We don't care. The Choshu are going to attack you if you come through our water." At the same time, the Satsuma Domain were also starting to attack Western forces, although they had a different reason. And we won't go into it too much, but there was a guy named Richardson. He was essentially a British tourist traveling around near Yokohama. He happened to cross paths with the leader of the Satsuma, but he didn't get out of the leader's way because he was British. Why the heck would he get out of anyone's way unless he was British nobility? But, you know, he was better than everybody else. So, he somehow got in the middle between the daimyo and his guards, and so the guards just killed him. So, the British government decided, "Wait, you just killed this British merchant who was traveling around," and they said, "You need to pay a fine." The Satsuma couldn't pay the fine, so the British attack. But weirdly, the British do very badly.

Abram: Why?

Joe: Well, I don't know. The British have one of the best navies in the world, but the British attack the Satsuma force at Kagoshima. The captain of the British flagship was killed, as well as ten other sailors. And the British essentially retreat. But they didn't retreat for long. They brought friends. So, back up a little bit. We have the Satsuma that have upset the British. We have the Choshu that's upset everybody. And so, by September, they were just done with it. The British, French, and American forces combined, and they fought a battle, forced the Choshu to open the strait. This is in 1863, so— the Americans only sent one ship.

Abram: Probably because they're falling apart.

Joe: So what was going on in 1863?

Abram: The Civil War.

Joe: Right, so the Civil War was raging. The US was very busy. They didn't really care about Japan. They just sent one ship. But that's fine. They were still there. And now they're listed as being a part of the battle. So great. By the time Ito arrives in London, all of this is over. He studies at University College London. He learns English, he learns Western culture, he learns Western manners. And while he's there, his philosophy seems to change. He starts to dislike the class structure in Japan, and he decides that anybody can be educated. He stops thinking that Japan should expel the Westerners, and really, his philosophy seems to change to, "How can we make Japan on the level playing field with the Westerners?" Right? "We're never going to get rid of the British and the Americans, but how do we participate with them as equals?" But as soon as the word reaches him that the Choshu Domain, his home, is essentially at war with the British, he packs up and comes home. He doesn't finish his studies. He doesn't stay in Britain all that long because he now has these new ideas that he's learned. He's 23. He thinks he can change the world. Maybe he can, so he immediately sails home. While he's sailing home, things are still getting worse. 3,000 Choshu soldiers decide that they're going to rebel against the shogun, and they travel to Kyoto, try to seize the emperor. They fail, and for some reason decide that they're just going to burn down Kyoto instead. It doesn't make any sense. Why do they do that? Didn't we have a thing in our last episode where with Henry Pelham they just said, "Oh, we can't win, let's just burn the town?"

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: Why would they burn their own capital? 28,000 houses were burned down in Kyoto. We were just in Kyoto yesterday. I wonder if any of the houses that we saw were burned down.

Abram: It's impossible.

Joe: That's true, because they were there. Anyway, the following month, the shogun counterattacks. He brings a force of a whole bunch of different domains, goes to Choshu to punish them. However, the Satsuma refused to fight and instead negotiate a peace. All of the Choshu rebel leaders are surrendered. They're eventually going to be killed, but the Satsuma prevent all of the Choshu troops from being killed. Ito arrives back in Japan just as things are wrapping up, and he's able to actually participate in the peace treaties that the shogun is signing with the US and with Britain. This is Ito's first taste of, like, being important and being a diplomat, and using his voice and being a trusted voice, arguing that expelling the Westerners isn't the best idea. Japan should learn from them and should learn to compete on their own stage. And this is what he goes and he talks about. So, things settle down for a little while. They're not at war with the Western powers anymore. But in the background, the Choshu and the Satsuma, they've been enemies forever, but now they're sort of coming together. They form an anti-shogun alliance called the Satcho Alliance. They arm themselves with weapons and technologies provided by the British. And this is where those founding fathers of Japan, like Ōkubo Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori, and Kido Takayoshi, who we've already talked about. This is really where they come, and this is kind of like the founding legend of modern Japan. But don't worry about those names, they're not that important other than Kido. So in 1866, the shogun attacks the Choshu again. This time the Satsuma refused to fight, but now the Choshu has more modern military. So 14 groups of soldiers under the shogun attempt to conquer the Choshu, 100,000 shogun troops faced off against only 4,000 Choshu troops. But what do you think happened?

Abram: The side with less won?

Joe: Yes! It's not supposed to work that way, but they had newer weapons, they had learned Western-style techniques, all of those domains weren't really that used to working together, so they fought and won. Now, I don't know what Ito was doing at this point. I don't know whether he was one of the soldiers, whether he was already working as an administrator in the government. The biographies that I read are a little bit quiet about this. But the other reason why they might have had that giant victory— do you want to guess what it was?

Abram: What?

Joe: The shogun was dying of smallpox.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: So, you know, when your leader is dying of smallpox, it can be hard to wage a major battle. So now Tokugawa Yoshinobu becomes the new shogun. He negotiates a peace treaty, but he realizes that he needs better military. Let's say if you were the Choshu and you were getting your weapons from the British, and you're the shogun and you want to get weapons to fight against that, who would you go to?

Abram: The British?

Joe: No, the British are already selling weapons to the Choshu. So who's like—

Abram: The French.

Joe: The French. Yes, he went to the French this time, and the British are backing the Choshu, the French are backing the shogun.

Abram: Also, we'll probably get to this eventually in the British podcast.

Joe: I look forward to getting to this in the British podcast.

Abram: It'll be like four years, but still, we will get to this in the British podcast.

Joe: I am so looking forward to getting to this in the British podcast. More death. Guess who dies next?

Abram: The new shogun.

Joe: The new shogun— the old shogun just died, so the new one's going to be around for a little while. The emperor dies. So Emperor Komei dies, and Emperor Meiji takes the throne. Now he's only 15, so he has a council of elders that support him, and maybe he's not all that powerful by himself.

Abram: I bet he's not that powerful.

Joe: So in November 1867, everything goes nuts. The Choshu and Satsuma, they unite. They decide to take down the shogun. The shogun sees their armies marching and he quits. He says, "I'm done, I resign, I'll follow the emperor, no problem." But it's too late, they're already having revolution. Okay, so on January 3rd, 1868, the combined forces of Satsuma and the Choshu attack Kyoto again. And they seize the emperor. They force the emperor to announce the end of the shogunate and that the emperor is now in charge. Dot, dot, dot. Well, maybe I should listen to these people that just kidnapped me. Or maybe they didn't kidnap me. Maybe they liberated me, but now are standing around me with big sticks that have points on the end. So, in a letter to Kido, Ito now wrote, quote: "When they sought their independence, in a situation different from that in Japan, the American people had no military to speak of, but they came together in unity and destroyed a powerful adversary. Each of them had unswerving loyalty to their country, and they created the greatly prosperous America we see today. In Japan, our people have been oblivious to the great favor that they've received from the imperial throne, whose line is unbroken over several thousand years. They cringe before the emperor, but they don't really follow him."

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Meiji Government

Joe: So now he's saying, "We should just follow the emperor as long as the emperor says what we agree with." But thanks to his efforts negotiating with the Western powers in that little war we talked about, Ito is made the head of foreign affairs in the government, and he's only 27.

Abram: Wow.

Joe: He even gets another job. He gets made the governor of the new Hyōgo Prefecture. That's where Kobe is. And he's made the governor there because they want to make Kobe into a big trading port in the new government that's going to be trading with all of these European and world powers. As soon as possible, Emperor Meiji is moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, and it is Tokyo now because they've just now renamed Edo into Tokyo. The shogun is gone, but the people that are backing the shogun and the old ways are still around. And they're going to be around for a while, but they're still actually fighting. They're going to keep fighting until 1869 when the country becomes kind of united again, but there's still going to be a lot of civil wars and lots of problems going on. So as the governor of Hyōgo, Ito submits the Hyōgo Proposal for how he thinks Japan should be governed, right? He wants Japan to have a strong monarch. He wants the military and the political branches to work together. He wants Japan to be open and interacting with countries around the world. He wants Japan to eliminate the class system, right, so there's no longer peasants versus samurai. And he wants to promote education and bring Western science and thought into Japan. He also proposed that they build some universities in Kyoto.

Abram: And yeah, currently seems pretty good besides the fact that he killed someone.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, he's pretty good other than the fact that he killed someone.

Abram: Which is really bad. But if that didn't happen, I'd say he'd be doing like extremely good.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, there's more.

Abram: He has—

Joe: He's not even prime minister yet.

Abram: Yeah, if we decide to do a ranking, I think everything around him would be a big silver screen. So like, even though his life isn't that interesting himself, like what's happening around him would like be very interesting.

Joe: I agree. You know what we can do at the end? We'll just call it not a ranking. And then give some scores.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: Okay, great idea. So Ito's friend Kido— remember him? He wrote what they called the Charter Oath, or he finalized it, which was read out and is sort of like the first constitution. You can see Ito's ideas are already starting to appear there. So number one: Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion. Number two: All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of the affairs of state. Number three: The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent. Number four: Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of nature. Number five: Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule. So this is kind of like their Declaration of Independence. This is sort of them saying, "This is the foundation of the government we want to build." And so while all this was happening, Ito sort of finalized his life. He changed his name to Ito Hirobumi, so he now has the name that we've been calling him. And Hirobumi means something like "scholar," right? So he kind of gave himself a name that is sort of like, "Hey, look at me, I'm going to be smart and important." He got married to a woman named Hayashi Tameko, and they're gonna start having kids. So they're gonna have a son, Ito Hirokuni, the next year, and then after that, Itō Suketarō. And they're gonna have a couple, I think three sons and one daughter. But there's gonna be an important little twist to his family's story before we get too far. So, a British ambassador said something about Ito. Do you wanna hear what he said? He called him, quote, "a clever, useful fellow, but easily got hold of by foreigners not of the best class."

Abram: That's a bit rude.

Joe: Yeah, he's a bit rude.

World Tour #1

Joe: In 1871, so now he's, you know, the new government is formed. Ito Hirobumi and others, including his friend Kido, they left Japan, this time legally, and he's gonna go on a world tour. So in January 1872, he arrived in San Francisco. He used his knowledge of English, which he had picked up in Britain, to take advantage of the American nightlife. And he's going to be remarked on this later because, remember, he's married. Some of his opponents are going to say that maybe when he went to the U.S., he met with some, you know, nightlife. I don't know if it's true or not, but people are going to accuse him later of being a bit of a person that likes women a lot. So he gave a famous speech in San Francisco which they call the Rising Sun speech. Quote: "No longer should the red disk at the center of our national flag be seen as a blob of sealing wax keeping our imperial state confined within its borders. No, as it was originally meant to do, it symbolizes the rising sun moving upwards and onwards as Japan rises to take its place among the civilized countries of the world." Did most people actually think it meant what he thought it meant? No, I don't think so. The thing is, Ito's gonna enter a period where he's getting a little bit ahead of his skis. So he's going to have a lot of ideas. He's going to be learning about how the U.S. monetary policy works. He's going to be learning how the political system works. And he's going to suggest things. He's going to suggest that Japan go on the gold standard. He's going to suggest that Japan redoes its Treasury to work like the U.S. Treasury. But Kido is gonna send him a letter that says, quote: "You may know a lot about a faraway place, but you do not know our own country that well. Your logic sounds good, but you are not paying attention to the real situation in Japan." Whoa. So what Kido is saying is that, like, you know, every time you see something cool in one of these other countries, don't just try to say that we should do the same. We should pay attention to how things are in Japan and make good choices. So in July 1872, Ito really gets in over his head. Like, they were supposed to renegotiate new treaties with the Americans and the British and the French, and one of the American diplomats basically convinces Ito that, "Why don't you just negotiate with us? And you're pretty smart, you can be the negotiator." And so, Ito, like, sent a letter to Japan asking for authority, but honestly, it was just a trick. He was not as good of a negotiator as he thought. And they ended up wasting a lot of time, and Kido got very upset because Ito, essentially, he's not that old yet, and he's making some mistakes.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: But it's okay. We all make mistakes. In London, he made another big mistake because in August, in London, Ito decided to propose that maybe the emperor should convert to Christianity. Like, if the emperor was Christian—

Abram: That's— I don't really like that.

Joe: No, no, no.

Abram: Stop trying to overthrow the religions of Japan.

Joe: Well, the idea is that he keeps seeing like, "Oh, this is nice," and "Oh, this is nice," and Japan should do all of these things. So one of the biographies I read said that maybe this was a lie. Maybe this was just something that they said 'cause he could never have really said that. But—

Abram: I believe this one.

Joe: Basically, the idea is that he keeps seeing good ideas, and he keeps wanting to take those ideas back to Japan without realizing that you can't just copy someone else's system and have it work out okay. And Kido is kind of like his mentor here. His—

Abram: I'd say the US is more like his mentor.

Joe: Well, that's probably what's happening. But he's not in the U.S. anymore.

Abram: Do you know what I mean, that it's more like that?

Joe: Yeah. So while he was traveling, Kido was actually spending time in every location studying the political systems. He learned about the U.S. and how its Congress works. He learned about France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia. Like, they went to all these places, and in each case they learned how their government worked so they could decide what they could bring back to Japan. Now, Japan did try to implement Ito's gold standard. It failed miserably. They tried to introduce paper currency in Japan. It failed miserably. Like, so some of these ideas are getting tried now.

Abram: Copying does not mean getting on the same scale.

Joe: Yeah, well, Japan is a very different place.

Abram: Do you know what I mean? That he thinks, like, by copying someone, he can get, like, the exact same as them. They're in a different situation. It might work better for them. He doesn't realize that copying isn't like— copying doesn't mean getting on the same scale, right?

Joe: Right, I think so.

Abram: Do you think that's his main problem right now?

Joe: I think it's a big problem right now. So in fact, the key conclusion from the trip that they made after sort of writing up what was going on is that every European culture established their own government and the path to that government was based on their own history and culture. So Japan shouldn't try to copy the United States or Britain. Japan should build a model that is based on the history and culture of Japan.

Abram: I agree with that.

Joe: Catching up on other stuff that happened while he was away, the 280 domains have now been demolished, right? They've been reorganized into 72 prefectures.

Abram: Why are there only 47 now?

Joe: I don't know. That is a good question. The governors of those prefectures are appointed by the emperor instead of elected, but the old daimyos that complied would be given a voice in the new government. In fact, they were starting to have the idea of having a House of Lords that would incorporate some of those people. The other thing going on was that Korea was basically refusing to talk to Japan ever since the revolution, so Japan was even considering invading Korea to force them to open up. Like Japan had just learned from the United States, what's the best way to open trade? Bring in warships.

Abram: Um, I don't completely agree with that. The US was being bad. Fillmore was being bad. I think that one I can understand a little bit. He just learned from America by using the wrong people. Yeah, that's why you shouldn't copy other countries if you want to get on their scale.

Writing the Constitution

Joe: So they were basically threatening to invade Korea if Korea didn't open trade. They're back in Japan. 1873, Ito's made the Minister of Public Works, but more importantly, he is asked to be one of two people that write the Meiji Constitution. So Ito wanted a monarchy that had real power but supplemented by democratic institutions. Continuing our story, things in Japan are still not stable. There's unemployed samurai— like, they used to be upper class, but now they're just people. They actually have a rebellion. In November 1873 in the Saga Prefecture. The rebellion is going to be put down, but this is not the last time. There's going to continue to be problems. The military is bored, they're looking for something to do. So in January 1874, Japan invades Taiwan.

Abram: Boo!

Joe: Well, basically, some Japanese sailors were killed by some Taiwanese people. Japan invades to retaliate. China shows up, Japan retreats, but they sign a peace treaty that says Taiwan is now under Chinese control, or had already been under Chinese control, but Japan's going to be given the Ryukyu Islands in Okinawa instead. So that's okay. Ito is still working on the constitution. He brings something called the Osaka Conference together, leaders from all over Japan discussing how to transition to democracy. They discuss a two-house system, but they disagree on the details. But they decide that the emperor can appoint a council of elders temporarily. Still not done, still people upset. The Satsuma now decide that this constitution is getting too liberal. "We don't agree that you got rid of the class system." They withdraw from the Meiji government.

Abram: Who knows?

Joe: The Satsuma, remember, one of the two feudal domains that had originally fought the revolution. They just decided, "Hey, we aren't going to be part of this anymore. This is getting too liberal for us." But they don't just withdraw, they rebel. They start attacking their neighbors. And this is an important story— this is where the story of someone called Saigō Takamori, who's an important Japanese folk hero— he's protecting the old ways. And so he is one of the leaders that is fighting the battle to keep the old ways intact, but he loses. Most of his men commit suicide after losing a battle at Mount Enodake, and he escapes only to be killed in a different battle in a couple of months. But for some sort of Japanese history stories, right, they sort of see him as a champion of the old ways. Unrelated to all this, Kido just died.

Abram: Who was that again?

Joe: Kido was Ito's friend and one of the three people that was kind of like the leaders of the Japanese Revolution.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: So this revolt, put down. But guess what? One of the leaders— I don't expect you to remember all these names— Ōkubo Toshimichi, he was one of the three founding fathers of Japan. He's just been—

Abram: He's the Alexander Hamilton guy.

Joe: He's one of the ones like Alexander Hamilton. Like, maybe he's more like George Washington. I'm not sure. But he's just been assassinated. So it doesn't matter. Ito takes over his job in the government. He's now the Home Minister. And a scandal is going to erupt a little time later with a guy by the name of Ōkuma Shigenobu. Don't worry about it. If this was a regular episode, I'd tell you to put a pin in him because he's gonna be a future prime minister.

Abram: Pin!

Joe: But basically, he was pushing for a British-style system. Ito said, "No, not yet." And he gets pushed out of government. He's gonna get blamed for a scandal. He gets pushed out of government, and Ito becomes the most powerful person other than the emperor in Japan.

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: By the way, this Ōkuma guy is gonna be founding one of the first political parties in Japan, and he's gonna be an enemy to Ito, but we don't need to worry about him too much.

World Tour #2

Joe: The problem is all of this stuff was too stressful. So, in November 1881, he's basically collapsing from stress. A letter between two friends of his says, quote: "Lately Ito has been in deep anguish. He suffers nervous collapses and sleeps very badly every night. He drinks a bottle of sake before he can get to sleep. Left as is, his condition will worsen. So if he can take a year-long trip to Europe, that would be a good thing for him, don't you agree?" It would just make his views stronger, maybe. So guess what? Definitely they send Ito on vacation for a year in Europe. Not really, not really vacation. They send him to learn. So he goes to study constitutions. He meets with professors in Berlin and Vienna. He gets to meet Kaiser Wilhelm I. Do you know what Kaiser Wilhelm I told him?

Abram: What?

Joe: "Don't have a parliament, they're bad." Oh yeah, he went to the UK, he went to Russia, he went to Italy. He went to the coronation of the Russian Emperor Alexander III while he was traveling. So he's—

Abram: Oh, he went to the UK?

Joe: He did go to the UK.

Abram: And what year is this?

Joe: 1882, he was in the UK.

Abram: Which means that would be in what I like to call the repetitive era.

Joe: Okay.

Abram: Which is when it basically is always alternating between this Gladstone guy, put a pin in him for the British podcast, and this Robert Gascoyne-Cecil guy, also put a pin in him. They basically just alternate all the time, and like, it just goes like Gladstone, Gascoyne-Cecil, Gladstone, Gascoyne-Cecil, Gladstone, Primrose, Gascoyne-Cecil, Primrose—put a pin. So I don't know which one it is of the two, but it's one of them.

Joe: Thank you, Abram. Your knowledge of British prime ministers is amazing. So one of the messages that he sent back home is actually that now he's starting to worry about education. He says, quote: "Those who receive higher education should commit themselves wholeheartedly to the pursuit of practical learning. Science is to political debate as rising is to falling." Oh. So go to school to learn how to build bridges, but don't go to school to learn how to be a politician, because you'll just be wrong. When he returned from Europe, he did something very strange with his family. He had a close friend named Hirotaka, and he adopted Hirotaka as his son. So he will now be called Ito Hirotaka, and he's gonna make him his heir. If Ito dies, all of his stuff is going to go to this new person that isn't any of his kids.

Abram: That must make his kids angry.

Joe: It must. But I can't find a single thing about what they thought about it, or indeed whether he was still alive when Ito Hirobumi died and how it actually worked out. But at this moment, he adopted this guy and made him his heir, and I can't figure out why. The best I found is that this was maybe a political thing. Maybe he felt that his kids weren't good enough and he wanted a kid that would become a prominent politician. But Ito Hirotaka never became a prominent politician either, so I just can't figure it out. While he was on his trip, he standardized the rules of the emperor's succession based on the British model.

Abram: What is that?

Joe: So basically, when the emperor dies, how to choose the next emperor. You know, in Britain they use primogeniture. Well, nowadays it's something else because it can go to women too, but whatever. So he basically standardized the imperial succession system to match the British one, and he also started a new peerage system in Japan also that matched the British one. So now Japan has counts and dukes and marquesses and things like that. Now they have names, and their names are actually Chinese. And so no sooner does he invent the idea of a count that they make him a count, except it'll be called a hakushaku in Japanese.

Abram: It's basically a count.

Joe: But it's basically a count. In fact, the whole thing, it's the same levels as the British system, just with Chinese names.

Prime Minister Ito

Joe: And on December 25th, 1885, on Christmas, Ito is appointed by the Emperor as the very first Prime Minister because one of the other suggestions that he made was, "Why don't you have a cabinet that's more like the British system?" And the Emperor says, "Great! The British system has a Prime Minister. Who should be Prime Minister? Oh, you."

Abram: Wait, so the Emperor crucifies you? Yes, it's good for him.

Joe: So he invented a peerage system, he's immediately made a peer. He invents the concept of prime minister, he's immediately made prime minister. So as prime minister, what did he do? He negotiated a peace treaty with China to normalize relations. He established the University of Tokyo, and he did other stuff to keep the government running. But two years later, April 30th, 1888, he resigns. So he can take a new role as the head of the Privy Council because he decides that he will have more power if he works directly for the emperor than if he is prime minister. Because at this point, like, they don't really have all the parts yet. The legislature isn't fully existing. They don't have the constitution yet. He's just going to go be the head of the Privy Council instead. The emperor appoints a military leader, Kuroda Kiyotaka, as the second prime minister. So you can put a pin in him if we ever talk about him.

Abram: I hope we will.

Joe: We'll see.

Abram: Just saying, I'm voting for more Japan and more British.

Joe: Wow, we'll see. But all of that work they did to build a constitution, everything that's been happening in the background, everything that he's been doing for the past two years as prime minister, all comes together February 11th, 1889, the Meiji Constitution takes effect. There were mass celebrations, there were parades.

Abram: This is where the story came from, right?

Joe: This is the picture this at the beginning of the episode. What does the Constitution say? It says the Emperor is head of state. He commands the military. He declares war. He declares peace. There will be two houses of legislature, a House of Peers with high-ranking nobility, using that new peerage system he just invented, and a House of Representatives which will be voted democratically. The emperor gets to appoint the prime minister, so of the peers, the emperor can decide who is going to be prime minister. There's going to be an independent court system, but key things here: loyalty to the emperor is required above all else, and obedience to his laws. So this is a constitution, but it's still the emperor in charge, and any amendments, any changes in this constitution must be approved both by the legislature and the emperor. And so in 1890, finally, they have the first parliament. So he was prime minister without a real parliament. Now, political parties started to form. Of course, we often have political parties with parliaments, but Ito was against political parties. He thought the only political party is "follow the emperor." Anything else?

Abram: Yeah, that reminds me of George Washington. I heard he didn't like political parties.

Joe: Yeah, he didn't like political parties. He in fact suggested to the emperor that they start a pro-emperor party in 1892, but the emperor said, "No, that's not the type of country that I want." But the emperor was realizing that there were problems. Parliament wasn't quite coming together the way they wanted. They didn't have the leadership the way they wanted. So the emperor decided, "I need you to come back. You're prime minister again." Prime minister term number two begins. Now, during that time as prime minister, he renegotiated the unequal treaties for real this time, and he put Japan on a better footing with the West. So unfortunately, in July 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War breaks out with China over control of Korea. China thinks that Korea should be under them. Japan thinks Korea should be under them. Korea's like, "I just want to be independent." But the war breaks out, China's defeated by the Japanese military, China gives Taiwan to Japan, and Korea says, "Oh, okay, you guys can manage Korea. No worries." Ito negotiated this treaty, and you know what he got for it?

Abram: What?

Joe: He was now made a marquis.

Abram: Oh.

Joe: Which is called a kōshaku in the Japanese system. So Korea was still technically independent, but China would say that they were no longer blocking anything that Japan might want to do there. Something happens here that is considered a pretty big black mark on Ito's second term. On October 8th, 1895, Japanese agents assassinate Queen Min, the wife of King Gojong of Korea. In fact, the Japanese agents seem to have wanted to assassinate the Korean emperor as well. It turns out that she was working with Russia to make a treaty with Russia that said that Russia would protect Korea from the Japanese.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So, King Gojong ends up hiding in the Russian embassy to keep the Japanese agents from killing him.

Abram: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So, we don't know whether Ito ordered this, whether it was the military that did it, whether Ito agreed with it or disagreed with it. None of the sources I can find say it was his idea. But some of them do say that this is like a big black mark on his tenure, right? Like, they assassinated a queen because they wanted more control over Korea.

Abram: Whoa, that's bad.

Joe: So in August 1896, shortly after this happened, Ito steps down. Second prime minister term ends. So that term was four years. So a lot of stuff happened. We skipped over a lot because this is pretty long as it is. In October 1897, Korea says, "You can't control me. I am now an empire." So Korea announces that the Korean Empire is formed, and that King Gojong becomes Emperor Gojong. Do you think that is gonna stop Japan, like, just 'cause they called themselves an empire?

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: No. More stuff happens, and the emperor says, "Oh goodness, Ito, I'm sorry. Can you come back again?" Parliament's having a hard time agreeing, and we're just, you know, things are fragmenting every time you're not around. So he gets appointed prime minister again, third term, January 12th, 1898. But this time he's less popular. There's political parties that are against him. He's clearly the emperor's favorite. The political parties want to be the ones that get to have, you know, the political control. He decides he's going to start his own party again, but he's still refused. He's not allowed to start his own political party.

Abram: Why isn't he allowed to?

Joe: Because the emperor and the other leaders think that it's just uncouth to have a political party. You know, why have a political party? You should just be pro-emperor, right? That's enough. So during this period, he tries to increase suffrage. He tries to make more people vote. He tries to increase the number of people that can vote in Japan from 440,000 people to two million, but other people in the government are kind of against this. So he tries to raise taxes. Unfortunately, he doesn't succeed in raising taxes, and he's forced to resign after only 170 days. Prime minister term number three, over.

Changes in the World

Joe: So what does Ito do when he feels sad?

Abram: Goes on vacation.

Joe: He goes on vacation, or he travels around the world. But this time, he doesn't go around the world. He decides to spend some time in China and Korea. In Korea, he now meets the now-Emperor Gojong. He's wined, he's dined by the Korean emperor, and nobody seems to mention, "Oh, by the way, did you have my wife killed?" Yeah, I don't know. They seem to do that. Then guess what? He goes to China. And in China, things are a little bit more complicated because there, at this point, there's a guy by the name of Emperor Guangxu, and he wants to follow Japan. He wants to model the Chinese government on Japan. They have something called the Hundred Days Reform, and they're encouraging people to wear Japanese clothing and encouraging the political system to be closer to how Japan's doing it and to open up to Westerners in the same way. But this is not popular, and while he is there, while he is literally in China, the Empress Dowager Cixi, she launches a coup. She throws the emperor in jail. He's like, "The guy I just had dinner with has just been overthrown while I'm in China." Wow. A little bit unlucky. But he sends letters to her saying, "Please don't kill all of my friends. They were just trying to be more like Japan." And she ends up killing all of his friends that he met in China. And in fact, she even ends up killing her husband. Supposedly by poisoning. That's never been proven, I think, but most people think that she killed her husband. But it's going to get more interesting. Unfortunately, back in Japan, the government collapsed. They're still having trouble holding together parliamentary systems. People keep fighting. The emperor says, "Please, Ito, come back, I need you." And before he makes it there and probably becomes prime minister for number four, the emperor appoints Prime Minister Yamagata instead.

Abram: Why?

Joe: I think he just needed somebody fast, and Ito was all the way in China, and they didn't have fast trains then.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So Yamagata started forming a very old-fashioned cabinet full of the old Satsuma and Choshu leaders, like really looking backwards. It was— it looked like some of these reforms that they've been putting in place to be more Western might get rolled back. So Ito traveled around the country, all over Japan, giving speeches about the importance of the constitution, about the importance of democracy, about the changes that had been made. Everywhere he went, his speeches were written down in newspapers, his speeches were published in books. He basically went on a full promotional tour around the entire country trying to convince them not to go backwards, not to abandon the constitution even when democracy doesn't seem to be working well, but to embrace it and to be a stronger country because of democracy and because of the constitution. In this process, he finally got to form a political party. He called it the Friends of Constitutional Government party. And actually, weird thing, all of the political parties at this time have the word "constitution" in them. There's like the Constitution Party and the True Constitution Party, and we all know them by different names because they're all Constitution. They're all pretty much the same. So they have an election. He wins the election. Because he just gave all these speeches, and so now he's prime minister number four. But this is the first time, in a way, that he's prime minister not only because the emperor wants him, but because he really was building up grassroots support. So, he's still not completely popular with the leadership.

Abram: Also, this episode's probably gonna go a lot like the Gladstone episode for this part, where he just keeps becoming prime minister and then keeps stopping being prime minister. Then he comes back, and then he leaves, and he comes back, then he leaves, then he comes back. This is gonna play out a lot like the Gladstone episodes.

Joe: I'm looking forward to the Gladstone episodes so you can see how that happens. So he's just won, he's just been appointed prime minister again. China, by the way, just had the Boxer Rebellion. So the Boxer Rebellion was an anti-Western rebellion, again, where Western powers and Japan fought against the Boxers. And Boxers were like Chinese martial artists. So for some reason, they just called them boxers instead of martial artists. I don't know why.

Abram: 'Cause their names weren't Marshall and they didn't paint?

Joe: Sure. Unfortunately, that had cost money, and they had to increase taxes in Japan again in order to pay for that. But the House of Peers, the upper house of parliament, refused to increase taxes. And then something very undemocratic happened.

Abram: What?

Joe: The emperor told them, "I am the emperor. I command you to vote for this bill." And so they did. And so much for democracy, huh? If the emperor can just demand that parliament vote their way, that's a little bit worrisome for how this stuff is going to go. Still, the cabinet fell apart, everyone was fighting, and he resigned as prime minister after only 204 days. For prime minister number four.

World Tour #3

Joe: But what does Ito do?

Abram: Goes on a world tour.

Joe: He does. So he's 60 years old now, and this time he starts in the United States. He travels across the U.S. He receives an honorary doctorate from Yale. He travels to France. He travels to Russia. He tries to convince Russia to give up claims on Korea in exchange for some territory in the Manchuria region. But that fails. And by the way, that is going to fail really bad because Japan and Russia are going to fight something called the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Russia is going to lose. Japan's going to get a port on the Chinese coast, part of Manchuria, other new territories, and that's going to be the end of sort of Russia being able to have any control over Korea. In fact, that war is going to go so badly that Tsar Nicholas II is going to be very much weakened, and I think you know what happens to him.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: So while in the UK— he went to the UK— he becomes an honorary Knight of the Bath.

Abram: Yay!

Resident-General of Korea

Joe: So with Russia completely out of the way, Japan officially declares that it will "protect" Korea. And I'm going to use this in quotes, very big quotes: "protect" Korea. So on November 9th, 1905, Ito was sent to Korea by the Japanese government to force them to sign a treaty where Korea will basically give up their independence and give itself over to Japan for "protection," you know? And because Japan's going to protect them, he brings troops with him, and the troops circle the Imperial Palace of Korea, and he meets with the emperor and says, "Please sign this." Now the Emperor Gojong refuses. He says, "I need to discuss this with my people before I sign this treaty." But Ito says, "No, you don't. You're an absolute ruler. You don't have democracy here. You don't need to discuss anything. You should just sign it." So Gojong still refuses. Ito returns two days later. Gojong refuses to meet with him. He says, "Oops, I'm not feeling well." So Ito meets with his cabinet, or the emperor's advisors, and he forces the emperor's advisors to sign the treaty without the emperor. So Korea has now signed a treaty. Whether it should count or not, I don't know. But on December 21st, 1905, Ito is made by the Japanese government the Resident-General of Korea. He's given troops, Japanese troops, that'll be stationed in Korea that have to listen to him. And that actually is causing some problems because those Japanese troops are reporting to a politician, not a general. And so the military says, "No, wait, part of the constitution says that the military follows the emperor. The military doesn't follow this guy who's Resident-General." But Ito goes to the emperor. The emperor says, "No, no, no, the troops can follow him." And this is kind of a big turning point where the military wants to be its own power that is separate from the political power. And this is a case where they've just lost. Like, the military is now subservient to a politician, but it's not going to stay that way. So in 1907, Ito forces Emperor Gojong to abdicate in favor of his son. So he's basically like, "No, I need you to leave."

Abram: Go, Gojong!

Joe: And you are going to put your son in charge, "and we're gonna secretly control your son." In fact, even more, as soon as that happens, or shortly after that happens, Ito disbands the Korean military. The only remaining military in Korea will be Japanese. This causes riots. There's many other problems, but the Japanese really like it because they promote Ito again, and he is now a duke, which is sometimes called a prince in this system. Okay, so he has lots of money. He builds a Western-style mansion in Tokyo. But even though Ito is in control of the country, he does not want Japan to claim it. He does not want to merge Korea and Japan. He says that Japan is still a separate country. He says, quote: "There is no need to annex Korea. Annexation would be extremely difficult and burdensome." But back in Japan, 1907, another set of reforms happen to the Meiji Constitution. The military gets even more power. They really don't want to be reporting to civilian government, and the military pretty much forces Ito to annex Korea. So on April 10th, 1909, Korea is officially annexed as a part of Japan. And Ito, either because he was very unhappy about that and resigned, or because the military pushed him out— he quits. He does not want to be Resident-General of Korea anymore. So he leaves. He wrote a document about this time, but it never got published, that said what his vision was for how Korea should be ruled. He thought that Korea should be annexed, but it should still have its own parliament with two houses. They should still have their own royal family. That royal family should be subservient to the Japanese one, but that, you know, they'll still be a separate country but part of Japan, like an autonomous area. Yeah, but it wasn't officially submitted because Ito was asked by the Japanese government, "Hey, can you go to China? I need you to go negotiate with the Russians some more." So he goes to China and Russia to discuss Manchuria. He arrives at Harbin province in China at a train station, pulls in— the train pulls in, he gets off the train. And there's a man there. His name is An Jung-geun. He's a Korean independence fighter. So just like Ito assassinated people in his youth for the freedom of Japan, a freedom fighter in Korea meets him at the train platform and kills him. October 26th, 1909, he's shot, he's killed. That is the end of our episode. So, Abram, what did you think of Ito?

Abram: I feel like— once he became 30, he became pretty good. Well, not very good, but okay. He wasn't well-liked. I think his biggest mistake, besides killing someone, which is huge, was thinking that copying someone would be the same thing as putting them, like, at the same place.

Joe: Yeah, but he kind of learned from those mistakes.

Abram: He learned from them, yes.

Joe: I mean, he was a prime minister four times.

Abram: He was clearly— but all of those except one was because of the emperor, and the emperor maybe had special opinions.

Joe: That's true, that's true. I don't know, I disagree with you. I think that he did some awful stuff. I think he made some bad mistakes in the beginning. He was one of the people that made the constitution, that designed a democratic government for Japan, that created the Imperial Diet, the legislature that still exists today with some changes. There'll be a new constitution that comes after World War II that will change a bit of this system here, but it's still fundamentally his system. He was instrumental in making Japan into the modern country that it was, but he still has some major downsides. He was a little bit too quick to rush in. He spent a little period maybe kind of killing people he shouldn't have killed, and then he really wasn't effective in keeping the military leadership from taking over.

Abram: Yeah, he just wasn't that effective. The only reason why he ever came in was because the emperor needed him.

Joe: Yeah, and if you think about it, Japan went from being an isolated kingdom that only waged war on each other to very quickly attacking China, attacking Korea, attacking Russia.

Abram: Yes, he made the country a lot stronger.

Joe: Abram, did you have fun?

Abram: Yes, I definitely think we should continue the story. Of Japan and the UK. Okay, I still keep that opinion.

Joe: All right, well, we'll figure it out. We'll have some discussions. But I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, and maybe we'll be talking about Japan more. Maybe we'll find some other interesting prime ministers to talk about as well. Goodbye from me. Abram, say goodbye.

Abram: Bye-bye. Bibliography.

Joe: The research for this episode is primarily from Ito Hirobumi: Japan's First Prime Minister and Father of the Meiji Constitution by Takii Kazuhiro, translated by Takechi Manabu. This was supplemented by numerous other online sources to add additional details for many of the wars and other events that were happening during this tumultuous time.

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