Toshimichi Okubo

Toshimichi Okubo (1830-1878), Japanese statesman, one of the “Three Heroes” of the Meiji Restoration, with Takayoshi Kido and Takamori Saigo. Born to a low-ranking samurai family in Kagoshima in Satsuma fief on Kyushu (now Kagoshima Prefecture), Okubo received a traditional military/bureaucratic education, studying with Takamori Saigo.

After his father's banishment for political intrigue, Okubo lost his official post and became his family's sole breadwinner. Made a tax administrator in 1858, Okubo began pro-imperial plotting against the government of the Tokugawa shogun. A proverbially cold and cunning conspirator, he initially opposed opening Japan to outsiders and proposed an anti-Tokugawa coup. His influence grew and in 1862 he became adviser to the lord of Satsuma, advocating internal reform to strengthen the fief for a national role. Now seeking to reconcile court and shogun, he grew more moderate, negotiating a shogunal visit to the court at Kyoto.

A coup in Kyoto in 1863 by Tokugawa loyalists hardened his anti-shogunal views, just as Kagoshima's punitive bombardment that year by British warships following the murder of an Englishman by Satsuma samurai convinced him of the need for dialogue with the West. His party established a naval college in Satsuma, sending samurai to England to study. In 1866 he and Saigo secretly allied with Takayoshi Kido from Choshu, another strongly anti-Tokugawa domain, inaugurating the Meiji Restoration. After the accession of Emperor Meiji, Satsuma-Choshu forces seized the imperial palace on January 3, 1868, and the Tokugawa shogunate soon collapsed. Okubo dominated the new regime, abolishing the feudal fiefs in 1871 whilst making Kido and Saigo take responsibility for his actions. He also reformed taxation and banned the samurai privilege of wearing swords.

From 1871 to 1873 he toured the West with other government officials as part of the Iwakura Mission, meeting Otto von Bismarck, and studying Western technology and policy. On his return he pursued further national self-strengthening, forming a government in 1873 to industrialize and modernize Japan. Saigo and Kido were soon alienated, though Okubo tempted back the latter with a show of political restraint: his actual policy as home minister and de facto prime minister was to monopolize power and suppress dissent.

When disgruntled Satsuma samurai, fronted by the reluctant Saigo, rebelled in January 1877 he directed the conscript army which crushed the uprising. Now regarded as a traitor by conservatives, he angered progressives with his authoritarian rule. On May 14, 1878, he was assassinated by sympathizers of Saigo.