Background
Nobuaki Makino was born on 24 November 1861 in the domain of Satsuma, the second son of Okubo Toshimichi, but was later adopted into the Makino family.
Nobuaki Makino was born on 24 November 1861 in the domain of Satsuma, the second son of Okubo Toshimichi, but was later adopted into the Makino family.
In 1871 Nobuaki Makino accompanied Iwakura Tomomi on the latter’s mission to Europe and America and remained in America to attend middle school in Philadelphia. When his father was assassinated in Tokyo in 1878, he withdrew from school and returned to Japan.
In 1880 Nobuaki Makino entered the Foreign Ministry and was assigned to duty in London. He became acquainted with Ito Hirobumi when the latter journeyed to Europe in 1882 to study constitutional systems of government. He returned to Japan and held a succession of posts, including assistant councilor of state, councilor in the Bureau of Judicial Affairs, governor of the prefectures of Fukui and Ibaragi, vice-minister of education, and minister to Austria and Italy, and in 1906 became minister of education in the first Saionji cabinet. Thereafter he served as advisor to the Privy Council, minister of education in the second Saionji cabinet, minister of foreign affairs in the first Yamamoto cabinet, and a member of the Temporary Advisory Board on Diplomatic Affairs.
In 1919 Nobuaki Makino attended the peace conference at Versailles as a plenipotentiary member of the Japanese delegation. In 1921 he became minister of the imperial household and in 1925 the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. He continued until 1935 to serve as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, working to smooth over the differences that arose among the bureaucrats, the military leaders, and the party politicians, but he was regarded by the militarists and right-wing leaders as being too sympathetic toward Britain and the United States, and in the young army officers’ uprising of February 26, 1936, he was attacked and barely managed to escape with his life.
Nobuaki Makino was a strong supporter of the Satsuma faction in the government and was allied with the Saionji party.
His daughter was the wife of Yoshida Shigeru, a prominent political leader of postwar Japan.