The present day of history, August 24, 1897, the famous Japanese diplomat Mutsu Munemitsu passed away

Bunkoshi Koshi: He was the father of Japanese diplomacy and one of the key figures in the history of modern Sino-Japanese relations; he was appreciated by Ryoma Sakamoto, Hirobumi Ito, Iwakura, and Inoue Shin before and after; he participated in the restoration of editions of books, abolished the prefectures, conscripted the prefectures, and corrected the land rent during the Meiji Restoration; Mutsu Munemitsu showed his shrewdness and ability in revising unequal treaties, abolishing unequal treaties with 15 countries, and was nicknamed "Minister of Razor"; he took advantage of the opportunity of the Uprising of the Donggaku Party in Korea to use "cunning" diplomatic means. The Sino-Japanese War was launched. Therefore, Japanese diplomacy during this period was also named "Mutsu" and was called "Mutsu Diplomacy". Mutsu diplomacy has influenced and changed the landscape of international political relations in Asia.

Tenbo was born on July 7, 1844 (August 20, 1844) to a clan family of kii kuni and Wakayama (Wakayama Prefecture Wakayama City Kawakami 3-chome). His father was a Wakayama clan. Tsang Shi Tokugawa Misanya No. Kishu Domain, served as a surveyor and was a major minister in charge of finance and civil affairs.

When Zongguang was 8 years old (1852), civil unrest broke out in the Kishu domain, and his father lost in the internal political disputes of the clan, and since then the family conditions have plummeted, and the family has lived a difficult and poor life.

In the 5th year of Ansei (1858), at the age of 14, Mutsu Munemitsu left his hometown and went to Edo to study under Yasui Shiken, but was expelled from the division because he frequented Yoshihara. Later, he studied under Mizumoto Seimei, and after completing his studies, he joined the Zunwang Zhiyi Movement.

It was also at this time that he became acquainted with Katsura Kogoro (Takayoshi Kido), a young warrior of the Choshu Domain at the time, Shunsuke Ito (Hirobumi Ito), and the legendary hero of the Tosa Domain, Ryoma Sakamoto.

In 1863, Mutsu Munemitsu, with the help of Sakamoto Ryoma, entered the Kobe Naval Training Institute, a naval school run by the shogunate's regent Katsukai Sōgun (the then warship Shōkai Sōkai was concurrently appointed as the head of the Navy (principal), and Sakamoto Ryoma was appointed as the head of the school (student president)). He studied naval knowledge with Ryoma Sakamoto and other clans from the shogunate and various clans, and served as Sakamoto Ryoma's deputy and secretary for a long time.

In the leap May of the first year of Keio (1865), Mutsu Munemitsu, who had left the domain, followed Sakamoto Ryoma to found Kameyama Society, engaged in maritime trade.

In 1867, Keio established a naval aid team on this basis, and Mutsu Munemitsu, as the main founder and core backbone, always accompanied Sakamoto Ryoma's actions. They actively campaigned for the fall of the curtain and promoted the restoration of the great government in order to avoid civil war.

With the knowledge of Katsukai and Sakamoto Ryoma, Mutsu Munemitsu was able to use his talents, he was good at strategy, fighting bravely, and won the favor of Sakamoto Ryoma.

After Ryoma's assassination (the Omiya Incident), Mutsu Munemitsu lost his idol for a while and embarked on the path of assassination.

On December 7, 1868 (January 1, 1868), Mutsu Munemitsu and 16 other naval reinforcements and marine aid team members attacked the Brigade Cage Tenmanya on Kyoto's Yukoji, where Miura was located, known as the Tenmanya Incident.

After the Meiji Restoration, at the recommendation of Ito Hirobumi, Iwakura was recognized and joined the new Meiji government.

In the first month of the 4th year of Keio (1868), he was appointed to the Foreign Affairs Bureau and was appointed to deal with the attempted assassination of British Minister Pasha Li.

On May 4, 1868 , Keio was appointed as an accountant , responsible for the reception of foreigners and the purchase of warships from foreign countries.

On June 22, 1868, He was appointed judge of Osaka Prefecture.

During the War, Mutsu Muneko negotiated with the United States, which had shown its external neutrality, and successfully concluded a contract of purchase for the Ironclad Ship Stonewall (East Ship), at that time, the new government with a weak financial foundation still had 100,000 taels unpaid, and Mutsu Munemitsu negotiated with the osaka merchants, and it took only one night to successfully obtain the loan. On February 3, 1869, the East Ship was delivered to the new government.

In February 1869, Mutsu Munemitsu proposed to the central government a proposal for the reform of the tax system in response to the land rent (land tax), advocating reform of the existing land measurement method, the establishment of a land hierarchy system, the implementation of a unified land tax nationwide, and the change of in-kind land rent to monetary land rent.

On July 4, 1870 (October 28, 1870), he was appointed As counselor of the Wakayama Domain and was responsible for the reform of the domain. He recruited German technicians to open a tanning institute in Wakayama, and after that, tanning technology advanced rapidly, and the demand for major military supplies increased, prompting the development of the leather industry.

On July 14, 1871 (August 29, 1871), meiji participated in the local administrative reform of the abolished prefectures.

From January 24, 1872 (March 3, 1872) to February 13, 1872 (March 21, 1872), he was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

From February 13, 1872 (March 21, 1872) to March 12, Meiji 5 (April 19, 1872), he concurrently served as the head of the tax authority and devoted himself to the reform of local taxes.

On June 17, 1873 (Meiji 6), he was promoted to daizo Shōsuke Shintoshi (心途, for agent in Japanese), and co-led the activities of the reformers of the Great Tibetan Province, along with Okuma Shigenobu, Inoue Kaoru, and Shinozawa Yukichi.

From 1873 to 1881, in eight years, every piece of cultivated land in the country was measured in uniform scale units, and the mountain forest fields and fields of the country were surveyed. This work is an extremely large project, not only to demarcate the economic boundaries, to draw a fine map, but also to demarcate each piece of land, measure, determine the price of land, issue licenses and so on. The government's reform cost reached more than 37 million yen.

The land tax reform established the modern land ownership system. Feudal production disintegrated, and Japanese agriculture embarked on the road of modernization. As a result of government incentives for reclamation, Japan's arable land area increased by 22% in sixteen years.

In 1874 (Meiji 7), dissatisfied with the affairs of the Meiji clan government and opposing the tyrannical practices of the Sacho clan headed by Okubo Ritsu, Mutsu Muneyoshi resigned his post in anger and returned to his hometown, and with the ideal of strengthening the Kishu domain, he went to Europe to procure weapons and hire teachers.

In 1878, he was dismissed from office and imprisoned for five years for his involvement in the Tosa Rishisha Incident, which attempted to subvert the government. While in prison, he wrote books and also translated the works of the British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, An Overview of Moral and Legislative Principles and In Defense of Interest.

In January 1883, Mutsu was pardoned and released from prison. At this time, Ito Hirobumi advised him, you still go to Europe to study, knowledge changes fate.

In 1884 (Meiji 17), he went to England, Austria, Germany and other countries to investigate constitutional government. In his days in the West, Mutsu Muneko went crazy to study and study, and he compared the parliamentary system and constitutional system of various countries.

After returning to China, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On February 10, 1888 (Meiji 21), he was stationed in Washington, D.C.

On February 4, 1890 (Meiji 23), he also served as Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United Mexican States and signed the first equal treaty with Mexico, the Treaty of Reconciliation and Commerce between Japan and Mexico.

From May 17, 1890 (Meiji 23) to May 6, 1891 (Meiji 24), he was minister of agriculture and commerce in the first Yamagata Aritomo cabinet.

On July 1, 1890 (Meiji 23), he participated in the first general election of the House of Representatives of the Imperial Diet and was elected as a member of the House of Representatives in the 1st Constituency of Wakayama Prefecture, becoming the only member of the House of Representatives in the Cabinet.

From March 14, 1892 (Meiji 25) to August 8, 1892 (Meiji 25), he was a Privy Counsellor.

From August 8, 1892 (Meiji 25) to May 30, 1896 (Meiji 29), he was Foreign Minister for the Second Ito Hirobumi Cabinet. During his term of office, he actively promoted the revision of the treaty.

In 1894 (Meiji 27), he was responsible for signing the Japan-Britain Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Britain, which successfully abolished the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the unequal treaties between the Western powers and Japan since the end of the shogunate, abolished the consular tribunal, and restored some tariff autonomy. In the future, the adjustment and printing of the "Japan-US Treaty of Commerce and Navigation" was realized with the United States, and the treaty was corrected with Germany, Italy, and France. During Mutsu Munemitsu's tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Japan successively reached treaty corrections with the 15 countries that had signed unequal treaties in the past. As Foreign Minister in the Ito Cabinet, Mutsu Munemitsu showed his shrewdness in revising unequal treaties, earning the nickname "Minister of Razor".

On August 29, 1894 (Meiji 27), he was a Viscount of the Lord of The Order of The Crown prince for the purpose of treaty correction.

In May 1894, during the Sino-Japanese Peasants' War (Dongxue Party Uprising), Japan also sent troops to fight against Korea as the Qing Dynasty sent troops to Korea. On July 23, he occupied the Korean royal palace and established a pro-Japanese regime of the Kaihwa Party.com. On the 25th, the Battle of Toshima marked the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War.

He played an important role in Japanese foreign policy, successfully promoting the neutrality of Britain and Russia, and Mutsu Munemitsu's wartime diplomacy maintained coordination with Britain.

After the Sino-Japanese War, in April 1895, he and Ito Hirobumi, as ministers plenipotentiary for the Nissin Lecture and Treaty, signed the Treaty of Maguan with the Qing government of China, bringing the war to an end in favor of Japan.

However, under the intervention of Tsarist Russia, Germany, and France, Japan had to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China, that is, "the intervention of the three countries to return the Liao."

Because of Mutsu Munemitsu's active campaign and advice in the war, he was promoted to earl on August 20, 1895 (Meiji 28) with the merits of the Sino-Japanese War.

He resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs on May 30, 1896.

In his later years, Mutsu Munemitsu, while recuperating from illness, wrote a personal diplomatic memoir about him, called "蹇蹇錄" (けんんろく), the word "蹇蹇", from the "I Ching, 蹇卦" (I Ching, 蹇卦) "Wang Chen's trampling, the reason for the bandit".

The contents of this book were only made public in 1929 and is an important work on Japanese diplomacy in the Meiji era.

On August 24, 1897 (Meiji 30), Mutsu Munemitsu died of illness at Mutsu's residence in Nishihara (present-day Kita-ku, Tokyo) at the age of 54 (at the age of 53).

Munemitsu Oku (Nichibun: Mutsumune Mitsu; July 7, 1844 (August 20, 1844) — August 24, 1897), the main names Ito, Jiang Jidai Kojiro Ujiro, Oku-no-Oku, Nobudo, Japanese politician, diplomat, samurai (纪勋, shoji 2nd place, 1st class and count.

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