Event

The brilliant and influential statesman and first prime minister of modern Japan, Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909), has been badly misunderstood. The son of a poor farmer, he showed exceptional talent as a boy and was sent to study in Europe and the United States. He returned home convinced that Western civilization was the only viable path for Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Ito became a powerful intellectual and political force behind Japanese institutional and legal reforms aimed at shaping a modern government based on informed leadership and a knowledgeable populace. Among his many achievements were the establishment of Japan’s first constitution and the founding of a new type of constitutional party, the Rikken Seiyukai (Friends of Constitutional Government). Reformulated after 1945, the Seiyukai became the Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics in the postwar period. In this talk, I will highlight Ito's idea of a constitutional state using a phrase recently popular in discussions of the Japanese constitution, “Kuni no Katachi (the Shape of a nation).” Ito was the first in Japan to recognize that a constitution was not only a terse text but a practical effort to shape the nation.
* CEAS Humanities Colloquium Series