SANJO SANETOMI, KOSHAKU

(Duke, or Prince) born Jan. 3, 1838, Kyoto died Feb. 18, 1891, Tokyo radical court noble who helped restore power (1868) to the Meiji emperor and end the 264-year domination of Japan by the Tokugawa family. After the restoration Sanjo became an important leader of the new government. In his youth he was a political leader of the court nobles gathered around the Emperor. In 1862, when the Emperor tried to reassert his authority over the shogunate (the military dictatorship through which the Tokugawa family ruled Japan), Sanjo acted as the Emperor's messenger, ordering the Shogun to expel all foreigners from the country. The next year, when Satsuma, one of the feudal fiefs into which Japan was then divided, effected a coup d'etat at the Imperial court and forced the Emperor to reverse his radical policy, Sanjo took shelter in the more sympathetic fief of Choshu. After the restoration Sanjo was chief minister of the Council of State throughout most of the period between 1871 to 1885. Theoretically this position revived the ancient and privileged role of Imperial adviser. In fact, Sanjo served chiefly as spokesman for the bureaucracy that ruled in the name of the emperor Meiji. In 1873, when the government faction seeking war with Korea pressed him for Imperial approval, Sanjo was unable to bear the pressure of decision and relinquished his post to his colleague Iwakura Tomomi, who was able to defeat the plans of the war party. Finally, in 1885, when the modern cabinet system was instituted in preparation for constitutional government, Sanjo was elevated to the post of lord keeper of the privy seal (naidaijin), a position above the cabinet entitling its holder to speak in the emperor's name.