Who they were
Ito Hirobumi was Meiji Japan’s leading statesman and its first prime minister. Born a low-ranking Choshu samurai, he smuggled himself to London in 1863 to study and became a convinced modernizer.
What they did
He was central to the Iwakura Mission and, after studying European models, to drafting the Meiji Constitution of 1889. He served as prime minister four times, first in 1885, and founded the Seiyukai party in 1900. As the first Resident-General of Korea (1905–1909) he directed Japan’s protectorate over Korea. In 1909 he was assassinated at Harbin station by the Korean independence activist An Jung-geun; Japan annexed Korea the following year.
Legacy
In Japan, Ito is honored as a founding statesman and the architect of its constitutional state. In Korea and China, he is remembered as the face of the protectorate over Korea, and his assassin is honored there as a patriot. His name still divides East Asian memory.