Background
Hiroyuki Katō was born on 5 August 1836 in Hyogo. He was the son of a samurai of the domain of Izushi in Tajima Province; his common name was Toyoshi and his given name Kôzô, which, after the Meiji Restoration, he changed to Hiroyuki.
加藤弘之
Hiroyuki Katō was born on 5 August 1836 in Hyogo. He was the son of a samurai of the domain of Izushi in Tajima Province; his common name was Toyoshi and his given name Kôzô, which, after the Meiji Restoration, he changed to Hiroyuki.
He studied Chinese at the Kôdôkan, the official school of the domain and in 1852 went to Edo and studied "Western gunnery and military science under Sakuma Shôzan. Thereafter he remained almost all the time in Edo, studying Dutch science and working at the Bansho Shira- besho, an institution set up by the shogunate for the study and teaching of Western learning. He also took up the study of German.
In 1864 he was made a retainer of the shogunate and became a teacher in the Kaiseijo, a school that developed out of the Bansho Shirabesho and that in time became iokyo Imperial University. He rose steadily in the shogunate administration, holding such important posts as ometsuke (head of office dealing with daimyo politics) and kanjogashira (official in the accounting office).
After the Meiji Restoration, he was invited to join the newly formed government and took part in the task of working out a new governmental system and a new code of laws. In 1870 he was also appointed lecturer to the emperor and empress and for the following five years instructed them in the customs and governmental systems of Europe and America.
In 1873 he joined with Mori Arinori, Nishimura Shigeki, and others to form the Meiro- kusha, an organization made up principally of scholars and intellectuals, and helped found a magazine called Meiroku Zasshi to express the opinions of the group. In 1874 he was appointed a member of the Sain, a legislative body set up at the beginning of the Meiji period, but when Itagaki Taisuke, Eto Shimpei, and others petitioned the government for the creation of an elected legislature, he expressed the opinion that such a move was premature, and a violent controversy ensued. In 1875 he became a member of the Genroin.
From 1877 he served as head of Tokyo Kaisei Gaklto, which was shortly afterward renamed Tokyo Imperial University, and later served as head of the faculties of Law and Letters and as president of the university. In 1886 he once more became a member of the Genroin and he also served as a member of the Upper House of the Diet and as a court councilor. After some fifty years of active life in scholarship and public affairs, he died in 1916 at the age of eighty.
In his earlier years he upheld the view that all men are born free and equal and are endowed by Heaven with certain rights, setting forth his theory in such works as Rikken seitairyaku, Shinsei taii, and Kokutai shinron. From around 1882, however, he began to display an increasing sympathy for the evolutionary ideas of Spencer and Hegal and, in his work entitled Jinken shinsetsu, he provided a theoretical foundation for the nationalistic point of view'.