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Komura, Jutaro (1855 - 1911) was a Japanese statesman.
He was born in Hiuga. He graduated from Harvard in 1877, and entered the
foreign office in Tokyo in 1884. He served as chargι d'affaires in Beijing,
as Japanese minister in Seoul, in Washington, in St Petersburg, and in
Beijing (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 Beijing, 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.
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