ABSTRACT
One of the most trusted of his Majesty's advisers, Okubo Toshimichi was the Minister who was mainly responsible for the vast administrative reform symbolised by the public appearance of the Emperor Mutsuhito and the removal of the imperial court from Kioto to Yedo, renamed Tokio. Okubo Toshimichi was a Satsuma samurai of good family. He was born in 1836, and from a comparatively early age acquired no little fame as a student of Chinese literature. Okubo sought and obtained from the beginning sound knowledge of the affairs of the outside world that to most of his countrymen was in those days a sealed book. He was one of the Iwakura Embassy which set out from Tokio at the close of 1871 and visited the United States of America, Great Britain, and the various countries of Europe, ostensibly to announce to the powers what sweeping changes had been effected in Japan from the date of the present ruler's accession in 1867.
