Background
Tsuyoki Inukai was born in the region that later became Okayama Prefecture; his literary name was Bokudo in 1855.
Tsuyoki Inukai was born in the region that later became Okayama Prefecture; his literary name was Bokudo in 1855.
In 1875 he went to Tokyo and became a student in Keio Gijuku, where he made the acquaintance of Ozaki Yukio.
At the time of the Seinan War in 1877, he became a correspondant for the newspaper called Yubin Hochi and was sent to Kyushu to cover the fighting. He developed a strong admiration for the chief editor of the newspaper, a former shogunate official named Kurimoto Joun, and was much influenced by him. In 1880 he withdrew from Keio Gijuku, and along with his classmates Toyokawa Ryohei and Asabuki Eiji, founded a magazine published every ten days called Tokai Keizai Shimpo in which he advocated protectionist trade policies.
In 1881 at the invitation of Yano Fumio he took a position as a government official in the Institute of Statistics, but with the government shakeup in the same year, he withdrew from official life along with Okuma Shigenobu.
In 1882 he participated in the formation of the Rikken Kaishinto (Progressive Party) headed by Okuma. For a while he served as chief editor of the Akita Nippd. At the time of the Seoul Incident in 1884, he was sent to Korea as a special correspondant for the Tubin Hochi. After his return to Japan, he transferred to the staff of the Choya Shimbun. In 1885 he was elected a member of the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly.
In 1890 he entered the first general election as a candidate from Okayama and won election to the Lower House of the Diet. He was thereafter repeatedly reelected, serving a total of nineteen terms.
At the time of the formation of the second Matsukata cabinet in 1896, he acted as advisor to Okuma Shigenobu, the head of the newly formed Shim- poto, who became foreign minister in the cabinet.
In 1931, after the fall of the Wakatsuki cabinet, he became prime minister and formed his own cabinet. He had hardly been in office half a year when, in the so-called May 15 incident, he was attacked at his official residence by a group of young naval officers and assassinated.
In 1888 he joined in the formation of the Daido-danketsu, an antigovemment organization led by Goto Shojiro that advocated popular rights, and drafted the prospectus for the organization.
He was known for his sympathy toward Asian liberation movements and was a supporter of such men as Kim Ok-kyun, founder of the Korean Independence Party, the Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, and R. B. Bose, head of the Indian independence movement, who at one time or another had fled to Japan.
In 1925, when the universal male suffrage law was passed, he merged the Kakushin Kurabu with the Seiyukai and retired from political life. He continued to take the side of the opposition parties and minority factions who opposed the domain cliques in power in the government. In 1929, after the death of Tanaka Giichi, he was chosen to be Tanaka’s successor as head of the Seiyukai and thus returned to political life.
He was a distinguished calligrapher, had a wide knowledge of Chinese culture, and was noted for his refinement and integrity.