Background
Taisuke Itagaki was born on 21 May 1837 in Koichi. He was the son of a distinguished family of the domain of Tosa in Shikoku.
板垣 退助
Taisuke Itagaki was born on 21 May 1837 in Koichi. He was the son of a distinguished family of the domain of Tosa in Shikoku.
In the closing years of the Edo period supported the movement to restore power to the emperor. But Taisuke Itagaki found himself in disagreement with Goto Shôjirô and others in his domain who favored cooperation between the court and the shogunate, and in 1865 went to Edo, where he studied Dutch style military science.
When the Boshin civil war broke out in 1868, Taisuke Itagaki entered Kyoto as commander of a battalion. As a staff officer of the general command, he accompanied the imperial forces when they moved east to put down resistance, distinguishing himself in the fighting at Aizu. During the campaign in Aizu, Taisuke Itagaki is said to have first conceived the ideas that later led him into the popular rights movement. In 1869 he became a Sanyo (councilor) in the newly formed Meiji government. In 1870 he became a major councilor in Kochi, the prefecture that had been created out of the old domain of Tosa, and set about reforming the domain administration. In 1871 he returned to service in the central government, serving as a councilor of state and working to deal with problems arising from the abolishment of the domains and establishment of the prefectural system.
In 1873 Taisuke Itagaki resigned from the government as a result of the dispute over Korean policy, along with Saigô Takamori, Eto Shimpei, and others.
In 1875 he attended a meeting in Osaka that was designed to bring about a conciliation between the government and the popular rights group. As a result, Taisuke Itagaki temporarily resumed his position as councilor of state, along with Kido Takayoshi, but resigned again because of disagreements of opinion. In March, 1878, Itagaki returned to Tosa and there established the Kisshi-sha (In-stitute of Aspiration), a private school devoted to teaching the principles of democratic government., and in 1880 renamed it the Kokkai Kisei Domei, playing a leading role in the popular rights movement.
After the fusion of opposition parties had been disrupted by disagreements over treaty revision and other questions, he became president of the Rikken Jiyuto, which was established in 1890. He served as minister of home affairs in the second Ito Hirobumi cabinet in 1896 and in 1898 held the same post in the so-called Okuma-Itagaki cabinet, the first party cabinet in Japanese history. In 1900, when Ito Hirobumi founded the Seiyukai, Itagaki retired from the political scene and thereafter devoted his time to social work. As the first to take up the cause of popular rights and the foremost leader in the movement, he holds a place of prime importance in the political history of the Meiji period.
In 1881, after a shuffle in government leadership, the emperor promised the establishment of a national assembly at the end of ten years, and Itagaki thereupon formed the Jiyuto (Liberal Party) with himself as president. This immediately led to establishment of many branch organizations in various sections of the country which pledged themselves to work for the establishment of a parliamentary government. But he found himself faced with strong opposition from the government and made his way forward with the greatest difficulty. In 1882, when he was in Gifu on a speaking tour, he was stabbed by a would-be assassin and is reported to have shouted in defiance, “Itagaki may die but freedom will never die!” Shortly after, he and Goto Shojiro left the country and journeyed to Europe to avoid the criticisms against them and the movement. He returned to Japan in 1883 but, when the movement was intensifying, proceeded to dissolve the Jiyuto because he felt he could no longer exercise effective control over the more radical elements in the lower echelons of the party. Previously, the party had been moving to identify itself with the interests of the farming population. But Itagaki’s decision to dissolve it effectively frustrated all such efforts and greatly retarded the systematic promotion of the popular rights movement throughout the country as a whole.
In 1898 the Liberals led by Itagaki united with the Progressive Party (the second political party in Japan founded by Count Shige- nobu Okuma of Saga) to form the Kenseito, or Congressional Party, which commanded an overwhelming majority in the Lower House. Itagaki and Okuma then formed a cabinet with Itagaki as Minister of Interior but the cabinet soon collapsed owinK to internal discord and the Congressional Party dissolved into its original components.
In August 1900 Rikken-Seiyukai, or the Congressional Political Friends Party, was organized with Hirobumi Ito, the leader of the government, as its head, and Itagaki took this opportunity to retire once and for all from politics to devote himself to the solution of social problems.