Itō Hirobumi

Born Hayashi Risuke in 1841 to a poor farming family in Chōshū Domain, Itō and his father were adopted into a low-ranking samurai household. After Japan's opening in 1854, he joined the nationalist sonnō jōi movement before being sent to study at University College London in 1863. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, he climbed quickly through the new government: junior councilor, then a mission to study American currency systems, later a full councilor traveling with the Iwakura Mission across the U.S. and Europe. By the early 1880s he had become the de facto leader of the Meiji oligarchy. Officially tasked with drafting a constitution in 1881, he studied European systems and chose the Prussian model - reserving power with the emperor, restricting the role of parties. In 1885 he replaced the old Daijō-kan with a cabinet system and became Japan's first prime minister, serving four terms between 1885 and 1901. He oversaw the First Sino-Japanese War, negotiated China's surrender on terms that annexed Taiwan and freed Korea from the tributary system, and after the Russo-Japanese War became Korea's first Resident-General under the 1905 treaty. Though he initiall