SNA (Tokyo) — From 1892-1896, Hirobumi Ito returned as prime minister and had one of the most successful administrations in Japanese history. He presided over Japan’s first modern war in which it decisively defeated Qing China, overturned the traditional East Asian political order, and created its own colonial empire.

Transcript

On August 8, 1892, Hirobumi Ito returned as prime minister of Japan.

Ito was a man of many firsts, and among them was that he was the first person to return to the office of Japanese premier having once left it.

Moreover, this time Ito would hold the office for more than four years and have by far the most successful run as Japanese prime minister compared to anyone else in the late 19th century.

It didn’t start so smoothly, however, as Ito faced the same problem as his immediate predecessors in dealing with an opposition-controlled Diet demanding cuts to the government budget.

Ito had by this time concluded that the sort of transcendental Cabinets envisioned by the Genro, standing aloof from party politics, didn’t really work in the era of the elected Diet. He believed that it was time to create a dominant pro-government political party which could shepherd needed legislation through the parliament.

Ito’s problem, however, was that his Genro colleagues strongly disagreed with his analysis. Although they acknowledged that the election violence of the Matsukata era had failed and they didn’t really have a solution of their own, they blocked Ito from moving forward with his own ideas.

The inadequate tools that remained to Ito were to try to cultivate informal relationships with the party leaders of opposition Liberal Party and Constitutional Reform Party, as well as to dissolve the Diet when he repeatedly faced an impasse.

This led to two separate general elections in 1894—in March and in September—but each time the two rival opposition parties retained their combined majorities.

Meanwhile, the Ito Cabinet had managed to resolve the decades-long humiliation of unequal treaties. In negotiations led by Foreign Minister Munemitsu Mutsu, the British government finally agreed to sign an equal treaty with Japan, though it wouldn’t come into force for another five years. Still, the Japanese state had finally achieved legal equality with European states.

What finally broke the domestic political stalemate was the outbreak of war with Qing China on July 25, 1894.

Ito, as prime minister, presided over what would become Japan’s unexpectedly one-sided victory over China, although he had little role in the military campaign itself.

The opposition parties, however, changed their tune dramatically as a wave of nationalism swept over Japan. The same elected politicians who had demanded that the military budgets be cut a few months earlier, had transformed into hawks demanding that China be crushed, and they became willing to boost military spending far beyond what the government had previously been asking for.

For its part, the Japanese military swept up through the Korean Peninsula with relative ease, pushing the fight into Manchuria and the Liaodung Peninsula.

The Meiji Genro knew, however, that the European powers had become alarmed by Japan’s stunning military success, and so on April 17, 1895, they signed the Treaty of Shimomoseki, bringing an end to the war short of any attempt to conquer Beijing itself.

By terms of the treaty, Japan was granted China’s Liaodung Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Pescadores islands, becoming a significant imperial power in East Asia.

Japan’s mood of giddy celebration was cut short, however, when less than a week after the signing of the treaty, Russia, Germany, and France handed Tokyo a diplomatic note demanding that the Japanese military evacuate the Liaodung Peninsula, the European powers feeling that Japan had already gone too far.

Ito and the Meiji Genro all agreed that confronting the combined might of the European nations was entirely impractical at this time, and so Aritomo Yamagata was sent to deliver the bad news to Imperial Japanese Army that they would have to leave Liaodung.

In the wake of the war, some in the Diet were criticizing Ito for having won the war, but having lost some of its fruits through weak diplomacy. But generally speaking the prime minister was now in a stronger position than before.

The opposition political parties were now willing to accept a major expansion of the army, to the point that a force that used to consume 10% of the national budget was now consuming 30% of the budget.

Meanwhile, Ito was slowly inching toward party government, abandoning the principle of transcendental Cabinets. Ito annoyed some of his Genro colleagues by inviting Taisuke Itagaki, head of the Liberal Party, to become Home Minister in April 1896.

However, this led the rival opposition Progressive Party (a larger version of the former Constitutional Reform Party) to press to have its leader, Shigenobu Okuma, also join the Ito Cabinet.

Hirobumi Ito was now unable to satisfy all sides, and so he resigned as prime minister on August 31, 1896, after an unprecedentedly long tenure of 4 years, 24 days.

Hirobumi Ito will return.

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