OKUBO, TOSHIMICHI, a Japanese statesman, b. in the province of Satsuma about 1830. `Asa membei of the proudest of the Japanese clans, he was nurtured in the tra ditions of exclusivism and undying jealousy of and hatred towards the tycoons of Yedo. His sympathies were early enlisted in that literary movement, whose goal was the res toration of the ancient undivided power of the mikado. Going to, Kioto he cultivated the friendship of those court nobles possessed of political capacity, and those patriotic students. who with himself finally overthrew the dual system of government. At the bombardment of Kagoshimi by the British fleet in 1864. he served in one of the batter ies as a defender of the city. In 1863, having pushed forward the secret plans of the revolutionary coalition at Kioto, he precipitated the crisis of six hundred years, and stepped into the front rank of leaders in the new government. He urged the unfurling of the mikado's brocade banner which stamped the tycoon as a traitor. He startled even the new government by urging the removal of the capital from Kioto to Yedo, the abandonment of the habits of excessive reverence to the sovereign,. and his entrance into public life as the active ruler of his people. Such was • the lively effect of Okubo's memorial, that within one month the mikado publicly took the oath on which the gov ernment of New Japan is built. The national capital was changed to Yedo, now called Tokio. Okubo thenceforward represented in his own person the foreign influences which have shaped the course of Japan since 1863. His name is imperishably associated with the long list of reforms which have changed the insular empire from an agglomera tion of feudal principalities to a compact modern state. Of all Japanese statesmen he was the least distinctly Japanese. A stony dash of the Caheasian in his character emi
nently fitted him to be the interpreter of foreign ideas to the mikado's court. In per sonal appearance his tall, arrowy forth and luxuriant side whiskers gave him the appear ance of a European rather than an Asiatic. He visited America with the embassy in 1872, and on his return was made minister of the interior. When the Saga rebellion broke out in 1873 he went in person on the battle-fields, and sat at the tribunals that con demned the insurgents to death. - 'When the Japanese army landed in Formosa in 1874, to chastise the cannibals, and the Chinese demanded their withdrawal. Okulto was sent by the mikado to Pekin to present the ultimatum of Japan. The Chinese paid the indemnity demauded of 700,000 taels, and agreed to police the. coasts of aboriginal For mosa. He was president of the Japanese commission to the centennial exposition at Philadelphia, but did not visit America. On the night of May 13, 1878, having been warned of his impending assassination (by fanatics who hated his progressive policy) he expressed before a party of friends his belief in the decree of heaven that would protect him if his work were not yet done; but which. otherwise. would permit his death, even though he were surrounded by soldiers. On May 14, while on his way to the mikado's palace unarmed, he was murdered by six assassins, who were said to have been runa way's from the Satsuma rebellion, put down only a few months before. The mikado immediately conferred upon his dead servant the Highest rank, and elevated his sons to the nobility. In the funeral cortege, probably the most imposing ever seen in Tokio, rode the highest foreign diplomats. Okubo-was.uuquestionably of the ablest men Japan