Munemitsu Mutsu was a Meiji period political leader and diplomat; he held the title of count.
Background
Munemitsu Mutsu was born on 20 August 1844 in the city of Wakayama, the son of a samurai of the domain of Kii named Date Munehiro. His childhood name was Ushimaro, and he later went by the names Kojird, Genjiro, Yonosuke, and the literary name Fukudo.
Education
He went to Edo in 1858 to study and later in Kyoto became a supporter of the movement to restore power to the emperor. He entered the naval school operated by Katsu Kaishu in 1863 and in 1867 left his domain without official permission and journeyed to Nagasaki, where he took an active part in the Kaientai, a marine transport and trading company organized by Sakamoto Ryoma; at this time he went by the name Mutsu Genjiro.
Career
After the Meiji Restoration, he had occasion to meet the British minister Sir Harry Parkes and listen to his views. He thereafter met with Iwakura Tomomi, one of the leaders of the new government, in Kyoto, and urged him to open the country to trade and diplomatic relations. As a result, he was chosen for a post in the bureau in charge of foreign affairs and assigned to diplomatic service. He held such posts as governor of Hyogo Prefecture, but later returned to Wakayama to take part in reforms in the political organization of the domain. In 1870 he went to Europe as part of an inspection tour from his domain, returning to Japan the following year. After the remaining domains were abolished and replaced by prefectures, he held the post of governor of Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1872 he was appointed head of the national tax office and set about carrying out the reforms in the land tax system that he had earlier urged the government to undertake.
In 1874, angered by the arbitrary manner in which the men of the former domains of Satsuma and Choshti dominated government affairs, he presented an exposition of his view's entitled Nihonjin to the statesman Kido Takayoshi and resigned his post. The following year, however, he was appointed a member of the Genroin (Senate). At the time of the Seinan War, the revolt that broke out in Kyushu in 1877, he was accused of joining with Hayashi Yuzo, Oe Taku, and other men of the former domain of Tosa in plotting to raise troops and move against the government. The following year he was condemned to five years in prison, being confined first to the prison in Yamagata Prefecture and later to that in Miyagi.
He was released from prison in 1883 and the following year set off on a tour of Europe and America. In Austria he studied constitutional law and political administration under the eminent scholar Lorenz von Stein. On his return to Japan in 1886, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in 1888 became minister to the United States. The following year he negotiated a treaty with Mexico, the first treaty that Japan concluded with a non-Asian nation in which it held equal status with the other party to the treaty. In 1890 he wras appointed minister of agriculture and commerce in the first Yamagata cabinet. The same year he became a candidate from Wakayama in the first general election and w'as elected to the Lower House of the Diet, though he resigned the post the following year. He continued to serve as minister of agriculture and commerce in the succeeding Matsukata cabinet, but resigned in 1892 and became an advisor to the Privy Council. The same year, he became minister of foreign affairs in the second Ito cabinet. He was a highly resourceful and sharp-witted man, and soon earned the nickname “The Razor Minister.”
He resigned his post as minister of foreign affairs in 1895 because of illness. He went to Hawaii for a time to recuperate and, after returning to Japan, helped his friend Takegoshi Yosaburd to publish a magazine called Sekai no Nihon, to which he contributed articles.