Background
Yukio Ozaki was born on 24 December 1858 in the area that later became Kanagawa Prefecture; his literary name was Gakudo.
尾崎 行雄
Yukio Ozaki was born on 24 December 1858 in the area that later became Kanagawa Prefecture; his literary name was Gakudo.
For a time he attended Keio Gijuku in Tokyo, but transferred to a technical school, the forerunner of the engineering department of Tokyo University, in order to study dyes.
In 1877 he withdrew from this school as well and, on the recommendation of Fukuzawa Yukichi, became chief editor of the Niigata Shimbun. Following this, he entered official life for a time at the invitation of Yano Fumio, serving as a secretary in the Institute of Statistics.
He became an editorial writer for the Tubin Hbchi Shimbun.
In 1888 he went abroad for an inspection tour of Europe and America. With the promulgation of the new constitution in 1889 he was pardoned and permitted to return to Tokyo. In the first election held in 1890, he ran as a candidate from Mie Prefecture and was elected to the Lower House of the Diet. He was thereafter elected a total of twenty-five times, continuing in the Diet until his defeat in 1955. In that year, the Diet voted to make him an honorary member in recognition of his long career in that body.
He served as minister of education in the first Okuma cabinet in 1898, but was obliged to resign as a result of the furor aroused by a speech he made before a group of primary school teachers. The speech was intended as an attack upon the influence of money in politics, but he unwisely opined that, should Japan for some reason become a republic, Mitsui and Mitsubishi would be the candidates for president, a type of speculation that was deemed offensive to the throne. In 1900 he parted company with Okuma and Inukai Tsuyoki, the political leaders he had hitherto cooperated with, and joined Ito Hirobumi in forming a political organization called the Rikken Seiyukai. He left the organization in 1903 because he opposed its move to cooperate with the government on the latter’s budget proposal. He served as mayor of Tokyo from 1903 to 1912.
In 1914 he became minister of justice in the second Okuma cabinet. Following this, he joined Inukai and others in a nationwide lecture tour to drum up support for the universal suffrage movement. During the Pacific War, he was accused of lAse-majeste by the Tojo cabinet because of a speech he made in support of the election of Tagawa Daikichiro, but he was acquitted of the charges.
He commanded great respect because of his long years of experience in the Diet. But because of his frequent withdrawals or expulsions from political organizations and his relative lack of organizing ability and cooperative spirit, he tended to become increasingly isolated in the world of politics and to wield only limited influence. In his late years, he became an advocate of world federation. His name is honored in the Ozaki Memorial Hall in the building known as the Kensei Kinenkan in Chiyoda, Tokyo.
He sent a gift of cherry trees to the city of Washington, D.C., to be planted along the Potomac River as a symbol of Japanesc-American friendship.
In 1912-13, at the time of the first Movement to Protect the Constitution, he spoke out violently against Prime Minister Katsura Taro in the Diet, and as a result became known, along with Inukai, as one of the "gods of constitutional government.”
With the government shakeup in 1881, he withdrew from official life along with the councilor Okuma Shigenobu. He assisted Okuma in forming the Rikken Kaishinto (Progressive Party) and became a member of the party.
In 1887 he participated in the fusion of political parties that was formed to oppose the government and was among the group of persons who were forced to leave Tokyo under the provisions of the Peace Preservation Regulations.
In 1884 he was elected a member of the Tokyo Prefectural Assembly.
