Iwakura and other conservatives, rejecting the British…

Iwakura and other conservatives, rejecting the British model, borrow heavily from the Prussian constitutional system.

One of the Meiji oligarchy, Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909), a Choshu native long involved in government affairs, is charged with drafting Japan's constitution.

He leads a Constitutional Study Mission abroad in 1882, spending most of his time in Germany.

He rejects the United States Constitution as "too liberal" and the British system as too unwieldy and having a parliament with too much control over the monarchy; the French and Spanish models are rejected as tending toward despotism.