Suematsu Kencho
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Baron Suematsu Kencho (1855-1920) |
The Japanese politician and man of letters
Suematsu Kencho (末松 謙澄
Suematsu Kenchō,
September 30,
1855 -
October 5,
1920) was born in the hamlet of Maeda in
Buzen Province, now part of
Yukuhashi city,
Fukuoka prefecture.
Suematsu graduated with a law degree from
Cambridge University (
St. John's College, Cambridge) in the 1870s. He was active as a translator, historian, journalist, politician and statesman in the
Meiji Era, 1868-1912. His reputation has suffered somewhat at the hands of the anti-elitist
Ryotaro Shiba in his eight-volume
Saka no ue no kumo, and hence Suematsu is little-known in Japan.
While at Cambridge Suematsu wrote the first English translation of
Genji Monogatari. He was the third Japanese to graduate from Cambridge University.
Suematsu served as Communications Minister (1898) and Minister of the Interior in his father-in-law
Ito Hirobumi's fourth cabinet, 1900-01. He had married Ito's second daughter Ikuko in 1889 when he was 35 and she was 22. As they were from clans which had fought in the 1860s (Kokura and Choshu), he wittily described his marriage as "taking a hostage".
Suematsu was influential in the founding of
Moji port in 1889, approaching
Shibusawa Eiichi for finance. He also worked to improve the moral standards of Japanese theatre and founded a society to criticise theatre.
In 1904-5 Suematsu was sent by the Japanese cabinet to Europe to counteract anti-Japanese propaganda of the
Yellow Peril variety and argue Japan's case in the
Russo-Japanese War, much as Harvard-educated
Kaneko Kentaro was doing at the request of
Ito Hirobumi at the same time in the USA.
*
Suematsu Kencho: International Envoy to Wartime Europe, Ian Nish in
'On the Periphery of the Russo-Japanese War Part II', STICERD Discussion paper, LSE, No. IS/05/491, May 2005
*
Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868-1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan, by Noboru Koyama, translated by Ian Ruxton, (
Lulu Press, September 2004, ISBN 1411612566)
* "Suematsu Kencho, 1855-1920: Statesman, Bureaucrat, Diplomat, Journalist, Poet and Scholar," by Ian Ruxton, Chapter 6,
Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume 5, edited by
Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2005, ISBN 1901903486
*
Kikuchi Dairoku*
Inagaki Manjiro*
Cambridge University*
Anglo-Japanese relations*
Japanese students in Britain*
Suematsu's memorial stone is at
Yukuhashi city, Fukuoka prefecture. He was born there.
