A Bomb Attack Interrupts Ōkuma’s Treaty Revision

Ōkuma Shigenobu became foreign minister in February 1888 and pursued revision of treaties that allowed foreign consular courts and restricted Japan’s tariff powers. He negotiated separately with individual countries, obtaining agreements with the United States, Germany and Russia.

His proposals included appointing foreign judges to Japan’s highest court. This attempt to secure foreign acceptance of Japanese jurisdiction provoked opposition inside the government and outside it. The dispute concerned the terms on which treaty privileges would end, rather than a unanimous rejection of treaty revision itself.

On October 18, 1889, after a Cabinet meeting, Ōkuma was traveling to the foreign minister’s residence when Kurushima Tsuneki, a member of the nationalist Gen’yōsha association, threw a bomb. Ōkuma was seriously injured and his right leg was amputated. He survived the attack.

Treaty revision stalled. Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka resigned that October, and Ōkuma left the Foreign Ministry in December. The injury ended neither his political career nor his work for the school he had founded, but those later activities followed a failed negotiation and lasting disability. The attack was the act of a particular opponent, not evidence that all critics of the proposed treaties supported assassination.