Suematsu Kenchō


Suematsu Kenchō was a Japanese politician, intellectual and author, who lived in the Meiji and Taishō periods. Apart from his activity in the Japanese government, he also wrote several important works on Japan in English. He was portrayed in a negative manner in Ryōtarō Shiba's novel Saka no ue no kumo.

Early life

Suematsu was born in the hamlet of Maeda in Buzen Province, now part of Yukuhashi, Fukuoka Prefecture. He was the fourth son of the village headman, Suematsu Shichiemon. His name was initially Ken'ichirō, he later changed it to the shorter Kenchō.
At the age of ten he enrolled in a private school where he pursued studies in Chinese. Suematsu went to Tokyo in 1871, and studied with and. In 1872, he briefly entered the Tokyo Normal School, but left it soon after. It was around this time that he made the acquaintance of Takahashi Korekiyo.
In 1874, at age 20, Suematsu began working for the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun newspaper, writing editorials under the pen name Sasanami Hitsuichi. During his time working for the newspaper, he was befriended by its editor, Fukuchi Gen'ichirō.

Suematsu at Cambridge

Suematsu arrived in London in 1878 with the Japanese embassy which was dispatched there, and enrolled in Cambridge University in 1881. He graduated with a law degree from Cambridge in 1884, returning to Japan in 1886.

Political activities

Suematsu was elected to the Diet of Japan in 1890. Suematsu served as Communications Minister and Home Minister in his father-in-law Itō Hirobumi's fourth cabinet, 1900–01. He had married Itō'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, he joked about 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 for drama criticism.
Suematsu was raised to the kazoku peerage in 1895, when he was made a baron.
From 1904 to 1905 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 Kentarō was doing at the request of Itō Hirobumi at the same time in the United States. He was promoted to viscount in 1907.

Literary activities

Suematsu was also active as a writer of English works on Japanese subjects. His works include the first English translation of Genji Monogatari and several books on aspects of Japanese culture.