Person1856 – 1921

Hara Takashi

Also called: Hara Kei

President of the Seiyūkai who formed Japan’s first full party cabinet in 1918 after the Rice Riots — the “commoner prime minister”; assassinated at Tokyo Station in 1921

He was born into a samurai family of the Morioka domain, which had fought against the Meiji government in the Boshin War. After working as a journalist he entered the Foreign Ministry, serving as vice-minister and as minister to Korea. He joined the Seiyūkai that Itō Hirobumi founded in 1900, built up the party and became its president in 1914. He was the first prime minister to be an untitled member of the lower house, yet he opposed universal suffrage. After the March First Movement he replaced the Governor-General of Korea with Saitō Makoto and shifted policy to the so-called cultural rule.

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2 related events

1
1912 – 1932Taishō Democracyrelated figure
Under the Taishō Emperor (1912–1926) a democratic current spread in Japan, as the movement to protect constitutional government and the idea of minponshugi pressed for party government and universal suffrage.
2
1918Rice Riots of 1918related figure
As rice prices soared, riots that began in the summer of 1918 among women of fishing villages in Toyama spread across Japan, bringing down the Terauchi cabinet and bringing in Hara Takashi’s party cabinet.

People who appear alongside

Yoshino Sakuzō1878 – 1933
Tokyo Imperial University professor whose minponshugi — government for the people and by their wishes, leaving aside where sovereignty lay — inspired Taishō democracy
Inukai Tsuyoshi1855 – 1932
Party politician who led the movement to protect constitutional government and became prime minister (1931–1932) as Seiyūkai president; murdered in his residence by young naval officers in the May 15 Incident

Themes this person appears in

Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949
The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle