Ito Hirobumi

Itō Hirobumi was a Japanese politician and statesman who played a crucial role in building modern Japan. He was a London-educated samurai of the Chōshū Domain and a central figure in the Meiji Restoration, the movement that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and restored the imperial rule in 1868. He chaired the bureau which drafted the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, which was promulgated in 1889 and established a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral national Diet. He also founded the Rikken Seiyūkai, the first political party in Japan, in 1900. He served as the first Prime Minister of Japan from 1885 to 1888, and three more times afterwards, in 1892–1896, 1898, and 1900–1901. He was also one of the genrō, a group of senior statesmen who wielded great influence over Japanese politics during the Meiji and Taishō eras. He was involved in the negotiations of several unequal treaties with Western powers, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Triple Intervention, and the Russo-Japanese War. He was also instrumental in turning Korea into a Japanese protectorate and later annexing it in 1910. He was assassinated by a Korean nationalist, An Jung-geun, in Harbin, China, in 1909. He was posthumously ennobled as a duke by Emperor Meiji and honored with a state funeral. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Japanese history.