Background
Masatake Terauchi was born on 15 February 1852 in the domain of Choshu.
寺内 正毅
Masatake Terauchi was born on 15 February 1852 in the domain of Choshu.
At the age of twelve entered one of the military forces of the domain, where he came under the guidance of such important leaders as Yamada Akiyoshi and Shinagawa Yajiro. In 1869 in the Boshin civil war he served as a member of the maintenance corps in the attack on the forces remaining loyal to the shogunate at Hakodate. His ability was recognized by Omura Masujiro, the leader of the imperial forces, and he was enrolled in the army training school in Osaka. In 1871 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. While serving as a captain of the Imperial Guards in the Seinan civil war in 1877, he was wounded in the battle of Tabaruzaka and lost the use of his right hand, but because his talent in military matters was highly esteemed, he was retained on active duty and thereafter assigned to administrative posts.
In 1883 he served as military attaché to the Japanese legation in Paris. After returning to Japan, he became undersecretary to the war minister and in 1887 became head of the Military Academy and chief of staff of the First Division. In 1892 he was transferred to the post of first bureau chief of the General Staff Office, where he worked to build up the strength of the army. During the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, he served as Chief of I ransport and Communications. In 1896 he took over the administrative duties of the chief of the bureau of military affairs and went to Europe in order to study the military situation there. His next assignment was that of commander of the Third Division. In 1898 he became the first inspector-general of military education, organizing a system of education within the army. In 1900, as vice-chief of the General Staff, he helped to plan the dispatch of Japanese troops to Peking to combat the forces of the Boxer Rebellion. In 1902, while serving as head of the Military Staff College, he was appointed war minister in the first Katsura Taro cabinet, a post that he retained for the following ten years until the time of the second Katsura cabinet.
As a war minister he participated in drawing up the articles pertaining to military affairs for the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902. After the Russo- Japanese War, he became chairman of the committee for the establishment of the South Manchuria Railway Company. In 1910, after the annexation of Korea, he served as the first governor-general of Korea, in this and other ways acting as a leader in Japan's expansion on the continent. In 1916, when pressure from the elder statesmen and military leaders had brought about the fall of the Okuma Shigenobu cabinet, Terauchi formed a cabinet of his own made up of former bureaucrats, expounding the principle of nonparty government and insisting that the conduct of public affairs should not be conditioned by the whims of political parties. He did, however, cooperate with the Rikken Seiyukai party of Hara Takashi and the Rikken Kokuminto of Inukai Tsuyoki.
In the field of foreign affairs, he concluded, in the midst of World War One, the Ishii-Lansing agreement of 1917, in which Japan and the United States sought a reconciliation in their views regarding China. In 1918, when a number of foreign powers were sending troops to Russia in an attempt to change the course of the Russian revolution, Terauchi followed their example by dispatching Japanese troops to Siberia. On the home front, he was criticized for failing to stabilize the postwar economy and allowing inflation to become rampant and was looked upon as a spokesman for the military clique that was intent upon forcing military expansion upon the country. The economic distress and unease that resulted from these conditions erupted in the form of rice riots in many of the cities, which, in turn, brought about the downfall of the Terauchi cabinet.
