SNA (Tokyo) — Becoming prime minister for a still unmatched fourth time in 1900-1901, Hirobumi Ito this time leads a parliamentary political party. However, the experiment soon founders due to the hostility of his oligarch colleagues.

Transcript

On October 19, 1900, Hirobumi Ito became prime minister for a fourth time.

Ito had formed a new political party—the Constitutional Association of Political Friends—just over a month previously, and he didn’t actually want to his party take over government so soon after its formation.

Ito’s new political party was an amalgamation of his own proteges and friends in the business world, together with what had been the old Liberal Party. It was meant to give the government a strong parliamentary basis to exercise power.

The problem which quickly emerged, however, is that the bureaucratic faction loyal to Aritomo Yamagata felt that Ito was nearly a traitor to the nation for consorting with political party men, and they tried to block any successes by the new government.

They were particularly hostile to Toru Hoshi, the Minister of Communications, whom they regarded as being the epitome of a corrupt political party politician.

Thus when the House of Representatives passed a tax increase—routinely welcomed by the government—the unelected House of Peers tried to block it, eventually forcing Ito to ask the Emperor himself to intervene in order to pass the measure.

Ito’s position eroded quickly. The old Liberal Party politicians had agreed to join Ito’s pro-government political party because of the clout that Ito wielded among the Genro and the bureaucracy, but it was clear enough that Ito had lost most of his influence in those circles by the very act of joining a political party.

Facing the disapproval of his conservative oligarch colleagues and seeing disputes breaking out among his new political party colleagues, Ito understood that his experiment had failed.

Hirobumi Ito resigned on May 10, 1901, after a term of only 204 days.

While he would never return to the nation’s top office, Ito would continue to play a vital role in other high-level capacities for most of the rest of the decade.

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