Shin’ichirō Kurino

Shin’ichirō Kurino was born in Fukuoka in 1851 and went to Harvard in 1875. Returning to Japan in 1881, he entered government service and rose through the Foreign Ministry’s investigative and political bureaus. He became minister to the United States in 1894. ¹

On November 22 of that year, Kurino signed the revised treaty of commerce and navigation with Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham. The agreement provided reciprocal protections for residents and commerce and set a date for ending American consular jurisdiction in Japan. Once it took effect in July 1899, Japanese courts would exercise that jurisdiction and the foreign settlements would enter Japan’s municipal system. ²

Kurino continued treaty revision work in Italy and France. Appointed minister to Russia in 1901, he conducted negotiations in the period before the Russo-Japanese War. He subsequently became Japan’s first ambassador to France in 1906, working on the Franco-Japanese agreement and another commercial treaty revision. ¹

He was raised to the rank of viscount in 1912 and joined the Privy Council in 1932. He died in November 1937. ¹