The was a meeting held by the major leaders of the
Meiji RestorationThe , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
in
Osakais a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
,
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
from January-February 1873 to address the issue of forming a
representative assemblyA 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 and legislate...
.
The leaders present included
Okubo Toshimichi, was a Japanese statesman, a samurai of Satsuma, and one of the three great nobles who led the Meiji Restoration. He is regarded as one of the main founders of modern Japan.-Early life:...
,
Kido Takayoshi, also referred as Kido Kōin was a Japanese statesman during the Late Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration. He used the alias when he worked against the Shogun.-Early life:...
,
Itagaki TaisukeCount was a Japanese politician and leader of the , which evolved into Japan's first political party.- Early life :Itagaki Taisuke was born into a middle-ranking samurai family in Tosa Domain, , After studies in Kōchi and in Edo, he was appointed as sobayonin to Tosa daimyo Yamauchi Toyoshige,...
,
Ito HirobumiPrince was a samurai of Chōshū domain, Japanese statesman, four time Prime Minister of Japan , genrō and Resident-General of Korea. Itō was assassinated by An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist who was against the annexation of Korea by the Japanese Empire...
, and
Inoue KaoruCount , GCMG was a member of the Meiji oligarchy during the Meiji period Empire of Japan. As one of the senior statesman in Japan during that period, he had a tremendous influence on the selection of the nation's leaders and formation of its policies.-Early years:...
. In 1873, Itagaki had withdrawn from the government over the
SeikanronThe Seikanron debate was a major political conflagration which occurred in Japan in 1873....
issue, and was now loudly agitating for
representative democracyRepresentative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
as the leader of the
Freedom and People's Rights MovementThe was a Japanese political and social movement for democracy in 1880s....
. Likewise, in 1874, Kido had withdrawn from the government due to his opposition to the
Taiwan Expedition of 1874The , usually referred to 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 sailors by Paiwan aborigines near the southwestern tip of Taiwan in December 1871...
.
The remaining
Meiji oligarchsThe Meiji oligarchy was the name used to describe the new ruling class of Meiji period Japan. In Japanese, the Meiji oligarchy is called the ....
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.
