Background
Jutaro Komura was born on the 16 September 1855 to a lower-ranking samurai family in the service of the Obi Domain in Kyushu's Hyūga Province (present-day Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture).
Jutaro Komura was born on the 16 September 1855 to a lower-ranking samurai family in the service of the Obi Domain in Kyushu's Hyūga Province (present-day Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture).
In 1874 Jutaro Komura graduated from what was later to become the law department of Tokyo Imperial University. He then went to America and entered the law school at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1878.
In 1880 Jutaro Komura entered the Ministry of Justice and two years later became a Supreme Court judge. In 1884 he transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working in the translation bureau. After a period of relative ob-scurity, his abilities were recognized by Minister of Foreign Affairs Mutsu Munemitsu and in 1893 Jutaro Komura became first secretary in the Japanese legation in China. On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, he carried on negotiations with the Chinese government as chargé d’affaires, at the same time laboring to convince the legations of the other powers in Peking that hostilities between Japan and China could not be avoided. He returned to Japan when the actual fighting began and became head of the Bureau of Political Affairs.
With the assassination of Queen Min in Korea in 1895, Jutaro Komura was sent to Korea as a minister without portfolio and remained there as the Japanese minister. After the king of Korea transferred his residence to the Russian embassy, Komura drew up the so-called Komura-Weber Agreement, or the Russo-Japanese Agreement, on Korean affairs in 1896. After returning to Japan he became vice-minister of foreign affairs. In 1898 Jutaro Komura became minister plenipotentiary to the United States and in 1900 minister to Sweden and Russia. During the Boxer Rebellion, he kept the Japanese government carefully informed on Russia’s role in the events and after the end of the rebellion he v'as sent to Peking as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to sign the final settlement.
In 1906 Jutaro Komura was appointed ambassador to England and in 1908 became foreign minister once more in the second Katsura cabinet.
Jutaro Komura known for his opposition to emigration. Komura expressed the opinion at that time that since the vast majority of Japanese immigrants to the United States were of the lowest socio-economic classes, including chiefly farmers and laborers, they contributed quite negatively to American perceptions of, and attitudes towards, Japanese.
Jutaro Komura was an advocate of the policy of Japanese expansion on the continent and favored a warlike attitude. After becoming foreign minister in the Katsura Taro cabinet in 1901, he strongly opposed the Russian occupation of Manchuria. At the same time he cultivated close ties with England and negotiated an agreement between Britain and Japan, known as the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, concerning their joint attitude toward Russia’s policies. He was also active in the movement to restore tariff autonomy to Japan, the negotiation of an accord between Japan and Russia, and the Japanese annexation of Korea.