First Prime Minister: The Day Itō Hirobumi Took the Top of Japan at Forty-Four

On December 22, 1885 (Meiji 18), Itō Hirobumi became the first prime minister of Japan. He was forty-four. He was, even by the standards of the world at the time, one of the youngest heads of government, and the extraordinary career in which a son of poor farmers at the Shōka Sonjuku reached the top of modern Japan in twenty-eight years stands out in modern history. On the same day, the cabinet system was inaugurated, and Itō bore the responsibility of fundamentally redesigning the political structure of Meiji Japan.

The Creation of the Cabinet System

Before 1885 the Meiji government operated under the Daijō-kan system — a traditional structure with the Daijō-daijin (Grand Minister of State) at the top, and below him the Minister of the Left, the Minister of the Right, and the Councillors. Sanjō Sanetomi held the office of Grand Minister of State, but as a decision-making organ of a modern state the structure was conspicuously dysfunctional. Itō Hirobumi conceived the abolition of the old system and the introduction of a new cabinet system informed by the parliamentary-cabinet systems of Britain and Germany. The Prime Minister sat above the ministers of the various ministries, and a system was set out for decisions by collegial discussion with clear assignment of responsibility. On December 22, 1885, the abolition of the Daijō-kan system and the inauguration of the cabinet system took place the same day, and Itō took office as the first prime minister.

Why Itō

Three reasons lay behind the choice of Itō as the first prime minister. First, the experience of European and American observation. As vice-envoy of the Iwakura Mission he had toured twelve countries in the Americas and Europe and had seen the operation of modern states firsthand. Second, the preparation for drafting the constitution. From 1882 onward, in his second European trip, Itō had conducted constitutional research and was the senior member of the government most familiar with the institutional design of a modern state. Third, his position as the foremost younger figure of the Chōshū faction. After the death of Kido Takayoshi, he stood as the representative of the Chōshū faction, and after the death of Ōkubo Toshimichi of Satsuma, he was recognized as a statesman representing the next generation.

The First Cabinet

The first Itō cabinet comprised: Minister of Foreign Affairs Inoue Kaoru, Minister of Home Affairs Yamagata Aritomo, Minister of Finance Matsukata Masayoshi, Minister of the Army Ōyama Iwao, Minister of the Navy Saigō Tsugumichi, Minister of Justice Yamada Akiyoshi, Minister of Education Mori Arinori, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce Tani Tateki, and Minister of Communications Enomoto Takeaki. It was an oligarchic cabinet drawn from the Chōshū, Satsuma, Saga, and Tosa Restoration domains. Inoue, Yamagata, and Matsukata — all future prime ministers — sat in it; the lineup itself symbolized the political structure of Meiji Japan.

Achievements as Prime Minister

Itō Hirobumi served as prime minister four times in his life (First, 1885-1888; Second, 1892-1896; Third, 1898; Fourth, 1900-1901). The first cabinet led the drafting of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (promulgated 1889); the second cabinet led the country through the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895); the third and fourth attempted, through the founding of the Rikken Seiyūkai (1900), the move toward party politics. Many of the principal political watersheds of Meiji Japan were realized in places where Itō was involved. Much of the political system of modern Japan that the son of a single farming family built is inherited, in basic structure, in the current postwar constitutional order as well.

"The rise and fall of a nation lies with its people; the rise and fall of a people lies with their learning."