1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Komura, Jutaro, Count

KOMURA, JUTARO, Count (1855–  ), Japanese statesman, was born in Hiuga. He graduated at Harvard in 1877, and entered the foreign office in Tokyo in 1884. He served as chargé d’affaires in Peking, as Japanese minister in Seoul, in Washington, in St Petersburg, and in Peking (during the Boxer trouble), earning in every post a high reputation for diplomatic ability. In 1901 he received the portfolio of foreign affairs, and held it throughout the course of the negotiations with Russia and the subsequent war (1904–5), being finally appointed by his sovereign to meet the Russian plenipotentiaries at Portsmouth, and subsequently the Chinese representatives in Peking, on which occasions the Portsmouth treaty of September 1905 and the Peking treaty of November in the same year were concluded. For these services, and for negotiating the second Anglo-Japanese alliance, he received the Japanese title of count and was made a K.C.B. by King Edward VII. He resigned his portfolio in 1906 and became privy councillor, from which post he was transferred to the embassy in London, but he returned to Tokyo in 1908 and resumed the portfolio of foreign affairs in the second Katsura cabinet.