ABSTRACT
It is rare to find a man of such significance in the political development of a country so neglected by its historians as Saionji Kinmochi. There are, even in the National Diet Library in Tokyo, no collected papers of the man whose political activities began before the opening of Japan to the West and ended only months before her momentous attack on Pearl Harbor. Much of this neglect has been the result of the nature of his involvement in politics. As adviser to three Emperors, his influence, though at the highest levels, was un-publicised and largely unchronicled. Some of the blame however must fall on the urbane public image cultivated by Saionji himself and passed into history by his protege Hara Kei, whose acid descriptions of Saionji’s ineffectuality have distorted descriptions of Japan’s last Genro.
