Hara dressed in court uniform
敬 原
Hara Takashi was born in a village of the feudal Morioka domain in Mutsu Province, (present-day Iwate Prefecture). He was the of a samurai-class family which had resisted the Meiji Restoration and the establishment of the very government which Hara himself would one day lead.
Hara Takashi left home at the age of 15 and went to Tokyo by boat. He failed the entrance examination of the prestigious Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, and instead joined the Marin Seminary, a French-established, free parochial school. It was here that he learned to speak French fluently. Soon after that he joined the law school of the Ministry of Justice (later University of Tokyo), but left without graduating to take responsibility for a student protest against the school’s room and board policy.
At the age of 19, Hara broke away from his family's samurai class and chose instead the classification of commoner (平民 heimin).
Beginning in 1879, Hara worked as a newspaper reporter for three years. He quit his job in protest over efforts of his editors to make the newspaper a mouthpiece for the Rikken Kaishintō political party of Ōkuma Shigenobu.
In 1882, Hara took a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the request of Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru. Inoue appointed Hara to become consul-general in Tianjin, and the first secretary to the embassy of Japan in Paris. Under Mutsu Munemitsu (1844-1897), Hara served as Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs and as ambassador to Korea. He then left the Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist for several years, and became the manager of a newspaper company, the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun.
In 1918, Terauchi Masatake fell from office due to the Rice Riots of 1918. Hara was appointed as his successor on 28 September 1918. As prime minister, Hara suffered in terms of popularity, because he refused to use his majority in the lower house to force through universal suffrage legislation. Hara's cautious approach disappointed liberals and socialists, who accused him of delaying universal suffrage as it would endanger his position in power. As a party politician, Hara had never been the favorite of the conservatives, bureaucrats and military, and he was widely despised by the ultranationalists.
During his term of office, Japan participated in the Paris Peace Conference, and joined the League of Nations as a founding member. In Korea, Japan used military force to suppress the Samil Rebellion, but later began more lenient policies aimed at reducing opposition to Japanese rule. Particularly following the Samil Uprising, Hara pursued a conciliatory policy towards colonies, particularly Korea. He arranged for his political ally, Saitō Makoto, a political moderate, to take over as governor-general of Korea; he instituted a colonial administration consisting mainly of civilians rather than military; and he permitted a degree of cultural freedom, including (for the first time) a school curriculum that featured Korean language and history. He also sought to encourage a limited amount of self-rule in the country - provided that, ultimately, Koreans remained under Japanese imperial control.
In 1921, Hara was stabbed to death by a right-wing railroad switchman, Nakaoka Kon'ichi, at Tōkyō Station. Nakaoka was released only 13 years after committing the murder.
At the age of 17 he was baptized as a Roman Catholic, taking the name of "David", and even though it was speculated that he became Christian for personal gain at the time, he remained a Christian in public life until the day he died.
