Background
Kiyotaka Kuroda was botn on 9 November 1840 in Kagoshima. He was a the son of a samurai of the fief of Satsuma. In his earlier years he went by the name Ryosuke.
黒田 清隆
Kiyotaka Kuroda was botn on 9 November 1840 in Kagoshima. He was a the son of a samurai of the fief of Satsuma. In his earlier years he went by the name Ryosuke.
He entered the school of Western gunnery founded by Egawa Tarozaemon Hidetatsu in Edo, but left the school in 1864.
In 1863 he took part in the war between Satsuma and the British.
For the remainder of the Edo period, he devoted himself to the movement to overthrow the shogunate, working strenuously to bring about an alliance between the fiefs of Satsuma and Choshu. He took part in the Boshin War in 1868 and in 1869 distinguished himself as leader in the attack on the Goryokaku, the stronghold of the forces in Hakodate that remained loyal to the shogunate.
In the newly formed Meiji government he served as chief assistant to the minister of foreign affairs, and later to the minister of military affairs. In 1870 he was appointed vice-commissioner for colonization. In 1871 he went to America and returned with Horace Capron, an American agriculturalist, whom he appointed as an advisor on colonization and encouraged to draw up plans for the colonization and development of Hokkaido, at the same time putting him in charge of the establishment of the Sapporo Agricultural College. In 1872 Enomoto Takeaki, the leader of the resistance forces in Hakodate who had earlier surrendered to the government and been pardoned, was appointed commissioner of colonization. In 1874, when the system of colonial soldiers (tondenhei) was established in Hokkaido, Kuroda was made a lieutenant general and the same year was further appointed a councilor and head of the Commission of Colonization. He had previously made an inspection tour of Karafuto (Sakhalin) and had several times advised the government that it should abandon plans for the colonization of Sakhalin and concentrate its efforts upon the development of Hokkaido. In 1875 Enomoto, as minister to Russia, concluded a treaty whereby Japan gave Sakhalin to Russia in exchange for the Chishima (Kurile) Islands.
In the same year, the Kanghwa Incident occurred in Korea. In 1876 Kuroda was made envoy extraordinary, minister plenipotentiary, and minister without portfolio and, in company with Inoue Kaoru, journeyed to Korea, where he carried on negotiations that led to the conclusion of a friendship treaty between Japan and Korea and the opening of Korean ports to trade. In the Seinan War in 1877 he was a member of the government forces dispatched to put down the uprising, and after the death of Saigo Takamori and Ôkubo Toshimichi, acted as leader of the Satsuma faction in the government. In 1881, when the ten-year plan of the colonization commission reached its fulfillment, a scandal broke out concerning the sale of government property belonging to the commission, which aroused unfavorable comment among the public, the commission being accused of selling property at an unfair advantage to the company of Godai Tomoatsu, who was, like Kuroda, a native of Satsuma. The following year the commission was abolished and Kuroda was appointed an advisor to the Cabinet.
In 1885 he visited China and the following year made a world tour. Upon his return to Japan in 1887, he was appointed to succeed Hijikata Hisamoto as minister of agriculture and commerce in the first ltd cabinet, and with ltd’s resignation, he replaced him as prime minister, forming a cabinet made up of men from Satsuma and Chdshü. In 1889, while he was in office, the Meiji Constitution was promulgated, and Kuroda immediately afterward enunciated the principle of chozen-shugi, or the transcendence of party aims and loyalties. In the same year, when Foreign Minister Ôkuma Shigenobu, who was negotiating the revision of Japan’s treaties with the foreign powers, was attacked and injured, Kuroda resigned the post of prime minister and was appointed an advisor to the Privy Council. In 1892 he became minister of communications in the second ltd cabinet. In 1895 he was made president of the Privy Council and continued to hold a cabinet post until 1898. In comparison with the other elder statesmen of the Meiji period, he died at a relatively early age.