- Hirata Tosuke
Count nihongo|Hirata Tosuke|平田東助| (
2 March 1849 –14 April 1925 ) was aJapan ese statesman andLord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan , active in the Meiji and Taishō periods.Hirata was born in the
Yonezawa Domain ,Dewa Province (currentlyYamagata Prefecture ) as the son of a local "samurai ". He fought in theBoshin War , and after the war ended, was ordered by the domain to go toTokyo and study at the Daigaku Nankō (predecessor ofTokyo Imperial University ). After graduating, he was a student member of theIwakura Mission of 1871 along withMakino Nobuaki . He later stayed inGermany to study atHeidelberg University (where he studied politics andinternational law ) andLeipzig University (where he studiedcommercial law ). He is said to be the first Japanese with adoctorate degree.He returned to Japan in 1876 and served in a number of posts in the new
Meiji government 's Ministry of Finance, and later became Documentation Bureau Director of the Grand Council "(Dajokan)" and Legislation Bureau Director. In 1890, he was selected as a member of theHouse of Peers by Imperial command.He successively held important posts including chief secretary of the Privy Council, director-general of the Legislation Bureau,
privy councillor , Agriculture and Commerce Minister in the first Katsura cabinet, Home Minister in the second Katsura cabinet, provisionary Diplomatic Investigation Board member, andLord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan .Hirata was also very active in the movement of local agricultural reforms, an industrial cooperative program, and poverty relief projects, striving to protect the local country people against the inflationary economy after the
Russo-Japanese War andWorld War I .References
* Bix, Herbert B. "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan". Harper Perennial (2001). ISBN 0-06-093130-2
* Duus, Peter. "The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910" (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power, 4). University of California Press (1998). ISBN 0-520-21361-0.
* Sims, Richard. "Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-2000". Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23915-7
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