Hara Takashi
Prime Minister of Japan from 1918 to 1921
Hara Takashi (原 敬; 15 March 1856 – 4 November 1921), informally known as Hara Kei, was a Japanese politician who served as the Prime Minister of Japan from 1918 until his assassination. Hara was the first commoner and first Christian appointed to be Prime Minister of Japan, and was given the moniker of "commoner prime minister" (平民宰相, heimin saishō).
Hara held several minor ambassadorial roles before rising through the ranks of the Rikken Seiyūkai and being elected to the House of Representatives. Hara served as Home Minister in several cabinets under Saionji Kinmochi and Yamamoto Gonnohyōe between 1906 and 1913. Hara was appointed prime minister following the Rice Riots of 1918 and positioned himself as a moderate, participating in the Paris Peace Conference, founding the League of Nations, and relaxing oppressive policies in Japanese Korea. Hara's premiership oversaw the Siberian intervention and the suppression of the March 1st Movement in Japanese-occupied Korea. Hara was assassinated by Nakaoka Kon'ichi, a far-right nationalist, on 4 November 1921.
Early life
Hara Takashi was born on 15 March 1856 in Motomiya, a village near Morioka, Mutsu Province, into a samurai family in service of the Nanbu Domain. Hara's family had resisted the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and fought against the establishment of the very government which Hara himself would one day lead. Hara was an outsider in Japanese politics due to his association with a former enemy clan of the new Imperial Government, which at the time was dominated by the former clans of Chōshū and Satsuma domains.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hara Takashi” is prime Minister of Japan from 1918 to 1921. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hara, Takashi and Prime, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q315553. VIAF identifies the subject as 57417469. The Library of Congress control number is n81092090. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1856, 1921, 1918 and 1906.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hara Takashi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.