(1850–1888), Japanese statesman and political thinker. Baba Tatsui was born in Tosa Province (now Kochi Prefecture) in the area of Kaneko Bridge, Nakanoshima Town, near Kochi Castle. He initially studied at Fukuzawa Yukichi's Keio Gijuku School (now Keio University); later, during the 1870s, he studied English law and politics in England. A champion of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, he organized the Kokuyukai with the aim of spreading democratic values and became a leader of the Jiyu-to (Liberal Party), Japan's first national political party. Baba later left the party over a disagreement. Critical of Meiji leaders, he was prohibited from writing and speaking in public. In 1885, he was arrested for antigovernment activities, charged for having illegally purchased explosives. Acquitted in 1886, he sought political asylum in the United States where he wrote a long essay in English entitled "The Political Condition of Japan: Showing the Despotism and Incompetence of the Cabinet and the Aims of the Popular Parties" (1888). He died in Philadelphia and was buried there in the Woodlands Cemetery.
Further Reading
Ballhatchet, Helen. (1991) "Baba Tatsui and Victorian Britain." In Britain and Japan, 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, edited by Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels. New York and London: Routledge.
Soviak, Eugene. (1966) "An Early Meiji Intellectual in Politics: Baba Tatsui and the Jiyuto." In Modern Japanese Leadership: Transitions and Change, edited by Harry D. Harootunian and Bernard S. Silberman. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
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