Portrait of Ito Hirobumi

This work is the prototype for a statue of Ito Hirobumi installed in Okurayama Park in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture. The larger-than-life-size bronze figure was originally mounted on a pyramidal pedestal over nine meters high, designed by Takeda Goichi, which was further topped with a cubic pedestal. Only the pedestal survives today. The statue was erected on what had been the grounds of the villa of Okura Kihachiro, a place of which Ito was fond, which Okura later donated to Kobe City. In the history of modern Japanese sculpture, the realism of this work can be said to be pioneering, as it is a sculpture by a Japanese artist born in 1843 who tackled Western-derived three-dimensional expression. A draft of Japan’s constitution is clutched in Ito’s left hand. The artist was born into a family of shrine carpenters in what is now Kisarazu City, Chiba, and initially carved wood using the miyabori technique. Ogura Sojiro was astonished upon encountering European realistic sculpture, and learned plaster and stone carving techniques from Vincenzo Ragusa, a sculptor teaching at the Imperial College of Art. As bronze statues commemorating figures that contributed to Japan’s modernization became commonplace, Ogura gained renown for creating prototypes for these statues. (N.R.)