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The was a meeting held by the major leaders of the 
The leaders present included
Meiji Restoration
The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...
in Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...
, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
from January to February 1875 to address the issue of forming a representative assembly A representative assembly is a political institution in which a number of persons representing the population or privileged orders within the population of a state come together to debate, negotiate with the executive (originally the king or other r ...
.
The leaders present included Okubo Toshimichi , also Okubo, Ohkubo and Ookubo, is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Ōkubo clan
**Ōkubo Tadayo (1532–1594), Japanese daimyō of the Sengoku period
**Ōkubo Tadasuke (1537–1613), Japanese daimyō of the Sengoku an ...
, Kido Takayoshi
, also known as , was a Japanese statesman, samurai and '' shishi'' who is considered one of the three great nobles who led the Meiji Restoration.
Early life
Born Wada Kogorō in Hagi, Chōshū Domain (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) as ...
, Itagaki Taisuke
Count was a Japanese politician. He was a leader of the "Freedom and People's Rights Movement" and founded Japan's first political party, the Liberal Party.
Biography
Early life
Itagaki Taisuke was born into a middle-ranking ''samurai'' ...
, Ito Hirobumi
Ito may refer to:
Places
* Ito Island, an island of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea
* Ito Airport, an airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
* Ito District, Wakayama, a district located in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan
* Itō, Shizuok ...
, and Inoue Kaoru
Marquess Inoue Kaoru (井上 馨, January 16, 1836 – September 1, 1915) was a Japanese politician and a prominent member of the Meiji oligarchy during the Meiji period of the Empire of Japan. As one of the senior statesmen (''Genrō'') in Jap ...
. In 1873, Itagaki had withdrawn from the government over the ''Seikanron
The ''Seikanron'' ( ja, 征韓論; ko, 정한론; ) was a major political debate in Japan during 1873 regarding a punitive expedition against Korea. The ''Seikanron'' split the Meiji government and the restoration coalition that had been establ ...
'' issue, and was now loudly agitating for representative democracy
Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represen ...
as the leader of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement
The (abbreviated as ) or Popular Rights Movement was a Japanese political and social movement for democracy in the 1880s. It pursued the formation of an elected legislature, revision of the Unequal Treaties with the United States and European c ...
. Likewise, in 1874, Kido had withdrawn from the government due to his opposition to the Taiwan Expedition of 1874
The Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874, referred to in Japan as the and in Taiwan and Mainland China as the Mudan incident (), was a punitive expedition launched by the Japanese in retaliation for the murder of 54 Ryukyuan sailo ...
.
The remaining Meiji oligarchs called for a meeting in Osaka in early 1873 in an attempt to reconcile differences and to persuade Itagaki and Kido to return to the government. As concessions, it was agreed that a Senate (Genrōin
The was a national assembly in early Meiji Japan, established after the Osaka Conference of 1875. It is also referred to as the Senate of Japan, being the word used to describe the Roman Senate, and other western legislatures named after it.
...
) would be established, along with an Assembly of Prefectural Governors
Assembly may refer to:
Organisations and meetings
* Deliberative assembly, a gathering of members who use parliamentary procedure for making decisions
* General assembly, an official meeting of the members of an organization or of their representa ...
. A new Supreme Court, called the Great Court of Cassation
Great may refer to: Descriptions or measurements
* Great, a relative measurement in physical space, see Size
* Greatness, being divine, majestic, superior, majestic, or transcendent
People
* List of people known as "the Great"
*Artel Great (born ...
''(Daishin-in)'' would also be established to separate the judiciary from the legislative branches of government.
The decisions reached at the Osaka Conference were officially sanctioned by an Imperial Proclamation in April 1875.
Although on the surface, the oligarchs appeared to be creating a form of representative assembly, the ''Genrōin'' and the Assembly of Prefectural Governors were appointive rather than elective, and were dominated by conservative bureaucrats, and in the same year, the first of the Peace Preservation Law
The was a Japanese law enacted on April 22, 1925, with the aim of allowing the Special Higher Police to more effectively suppress socialists and communists. In addition to criminalizing forming an association with the aim of altering the ''kokuta ...
s were enacted to suppress the liberal movement.
See also
*Meiji government
The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan.
Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...
*Meiji oligarchy
The Meiji oligarchy was the new ruling class of Meiji period Japan. In Japanese, the Meiji oligarchy is called the .
The members of this class were adherents of ''kokugaku'' and believed they were the creators of a new order as grand as that est ...
References
* Fraser, Andrew. ''The Osaka Conference of 1875''. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Aug., 1967), pp. 589–610 * Banno, Junji. ''The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional Sys''tem. Routledge (1992). * Brunton, Richard. ''Building Japan 1868-1876''. RoutledgeCurzon (1995). * Buruma, Ian. ''Inventing Japan: 1853-1964''. Modern Library; Reprint edition (2004) * Sims, Richard. ''Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-''2000. Palgrave Macmillan. {{ISBN, 0-312-23915-7 Meiji Restoration 1875 in Japan 1875 conferences