Yamagata Aritomo

Prince Yamagata Aritomo (山縣 有朋; 14 June 1838 – 1 February 1922) was a Japanese military leader and statesman who was one of the most influential figures in the political life of the Empire of Japan. As one of the Meiji oligarchs, he was a key architect of the country's modern military and political foundations. He twice served as Prime Minister and was a field marshal (gensui (元帥)) in the Imperial Japanese Army. As a lifelong conservative, Yamagata championed authoritarian, bureaucratic rule and military expansion, opposing liberalism, party politics, and popular government. He is regarded as the father of Japanese militarism.

Born to a low-ranking samurai family in the Chōshū Domain, Yamagata became a leader in the loyalist movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. As a commander in the Boshin War, he helped lead the military forces of the Satsuma–Chōshū Alliance to victory in the Meiji Restoration. Following the Restoration, he traveled to Europe to study Western military systems and returned to become the central figure in the creation of the modern Imperial Japanese Army, implementing a nationwide conscription system. He led the new conscript army to victory over the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, which validated his military reforms and destroyed the last vestiges of the samurai class. He further secured the army's independence from civilian control by creating an autonomous Imperial Japanese Army General Staff which reported directly to the Emperor.

Entering civilian government, Yamagata served as Home Minister, where he established an efficient, centralized police and local government system. As Prime Minister from 1889 to 1891, he oversaw the opening of the first Imperial Diet under the new Meiji Constitution and articulated a foreign policy doctrine of national security that guided Japan's expansionism. After the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, he served a second term as Prime Minister from 1898 to 1900, during which he passed laws to prevent political party members from holding key bureaucratic posts.

From 1900 until his death, Yamagata was the most powerful of the genrō (元老), an unofficial council of elder statesmen who advised the emperor and selected the nation's prime ministers. In this capacity, he wielded immense influence from behind the scenes, building a vast personal following within both the military and civil bureaucracy. He oversaw Japan's foreign policy during the Russo-Japanese War and the annexation of Korea, and his influence was a major factor in the Taishō Political Crisis and the Siberian Intervention. A dominant figure for over half a century, Yamagata's career is inseparable from the history of the rise of modern Japan.