Tomomi Iwakura was a court noble and statesman of late Edo and early Meiji times.
Background
Tomomi Iwakura was born in Kyoto on 26 October 1825, he was a son of a member of the lower nobility named Horikawa Yasu- chika. He went by the childhood name of Kanemaru, but was later adopted by Iwakura Tomoyasu and took the name Tomomi; his literary name was Taigaku.
Education
In 1853 he became a student of classical Japanese poetry under the kampaku (chief advisor) Takatsukasa Masamichi.
Career
His abilities in time were recognized and he was made a chamberlain in the service of Emperor Komei.
During the period of retirement, he gradually came to favor the position of those who advocated the overthrow of the shogunate, and communicated in secret with patriotic samurai of various domains who were working towards that end. In 1867, when Emperor Komei died and Emperor Meiji came to the throne, he was pardoned and allowed to enter Kyoto once more. There he joined with Okubo Toshimichi of the domain of Satsuma and others in plotting to restore power to the throne. After the shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu had agreed to resign and return the pow'er of government to the court, Iwakura joined with the forces of the domains of Choshii and Satsuma and in 1868 successfully carried out the coup d’etat that initiated the Meiji Restoration. Iwakura acted as a key figure in the new government that was formed, holding such important positions as san'yo, gijo, fukusosai, and dainagon. In 1871, when the feudal domains were abolished and the prcfectural system established, Iwakura was appointed minister of foreign affairs. This was followed by his appointment as minister of the right and envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, when he was ordered to head a mission to Europe and the United States. Accompanied by Okubo, Kido Takayoshi, Ito Hirobumi as vice-envoys and a number of attendant officials and students bound for study abroad, he left Japan in the latter part of 1871. Though the negotiations with the United States concerning treaty revision did not go as had been hoped, the mission gained valuable information through its study of governmental systems in the different countries it visited and its actual observations of life in the West and returned to Japan in 1873.
During Iwakura's absence, Saigo Takamori and other members of the caretaker government had advocated the sending of a military expedition against Korea. When Iwakura returned, he vigorously opposed this idea, arguing that precedence should be given to the solving of domestic problems. A dispute arose in the Executive Council, and when the premier, Sanjo Sanetomi, was suddenly taken ill, Iwakura was called upon to act in his place. He submitted a statement of his views to the emperor and managed to gain the latter’s support and in this way defeated the advocates of a Korean expedition. Early in the following year, he was attacked and wounded at Akasaka in Tokyo by former samurai who resented the stand he had taken.
In 1883, the illness that had afflicted him from the previous year worsened. He was attended by Erwin Balz, a German doctor attached to Tokyo Imperial University, and Emperor Meiji paid a personal call to his bedside, but he died the same year, before Ito Hirobumi, who had gone to Europe to study constitutional forms of government, had returned to Japan. He was given a state funeral and posthumously promoted to the post of dajodaijin (premier). As a further mark of honor, his son Iwakura Tomosada was in 1884 given the title of duke.
Religion
He shaved his head and entered the Buddhist clergy, living in retirement in the village of Iwakura north of Kyoto under the religious name Yuzan.
Politics
In 1858, when the senior shogunate official Hotta Masayoshi came to Kyoto to seek imperial sanction for the commercial treaty that had been drawn up between Japan and the United States, the kampaku Kujo Hisatada drafted a reply to be presented in the emperor’s name, which left the responsibility for decisions in such matters in the hands of the shogunate. At this time Iwakura was among the group of eighty-eight nobles who protested the action and expressed strong disapproval of the treaty. In order to help restore power to the court, however, in the period 1860-61 he became a supporter of the kobu-gattai faction, which favored cooperation between the court and the shogunate, arranging a marriage between the emperor’s younger sister Princess Kazunomiya and the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi. As a result he incurred the anger of the antishogunate party, which was very powerful at the time, being branded one of the so-called “four villains.” He was impeached, forced to resign his post, and banished from the city.