Hirobumi Ito (1841-1909) was a Japanese statesman and one of the younger leaders of the Meiji government. He took primary responsibility for the creation of the constitutional system which governed Japan until 1945.

In the middle of the 19th century, Japan was governed by the Tokugawa shoguns (military dictators, or the bakufu). The emperor, though nominally Japan's ruler, had little influence on the government. In virtual isolation from the world since about 1600, a medieval Japan was persuaded by the threat of force by Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open its doors to the West in a series of consular treaties. The shogunate's meek accession to Western demands precipitated a nationalistic reaction, the overthrow of the bakufu, and the restoration of the governing power to the emperor.

Hirobumi Ito was born the son of a peasant named Juzo Hayashi on Sept. 2, 1841, in Tokamura, a village in the Choshu domain in...