After the
Meiji Restoration, Mutsu held a number of posts in the new
Meiji government, including that of governor of
Hyōgo Prefecture and later governor of
Kanagawa Prefecture, both of which were host to foreign settlements. He was head of the Land Tax Reform of 1873–1881, and served on the
Genrōin. He conspired to assist
Saigō Takamori in the
Satsuma Rebellion and was imprisoned from 1878 until 1883. While in prison he translated
Jeremy Bentham's
Utilitarianism into Japanese. After he left prison, he rejoined the government as an official of the
Foreign Ministry, and in 1884 was sent to Europe for studies. Later he became Japanese Minister to
Washington D.C. (1888–1890), during which time he established formal
diplomatic relations between Japan and
Mexico, and partially revised the
unequal treaties between Japan and the United States. On his return to Japan in 1890, he became
Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. He was also elected to the
House of Representatives of Japan from the 1st Wakayama District for a single term in the
1890 General Election. In 1892, he became
Foreign Minister in the Itō Hirobumi cabinet. In 1894, he concluded the
Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation of 1894, which finally ended the unequal treaty status between Japan and
Great Britain. Mutsu was the lead Japanese negotiator in the
Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the
First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). In the wake of an attempt on the life of the Chinese leading negotiator
Li Hongzhang by a Japanese fanatic, the Japanese government voluntarily reduced the size of the indemnity it planned to claim from China, and Mutsu famously remarked, 'Li's misfortune is the good fortune of the Great Ch'ing Empire'. The
Triple Intervention by
France,
Germany and
Russia reversed the gains that Mutsu had negotiated from
China in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and the Japanese public blamed Mutsu for the national humiliation. He resigned all government posts in May 1896 and moved to
Ōiso, Kanagawa, where he wrote his personal diplomatic memoirs '''' (蹇々録) after the treaty was signed to explain his views and actions. However, his memoirs could not be published until 1923 due to the diplomatic secrets they contained. Mutsu lived in what is now
Kyu-Furukawa Gardens. Mutsu died of
tuberculosis in
Takinogawa,
Tokyo Prefecture in 1897. Mutsu was ennobled with the title of
hakushaku (
count) under the
kazoku peerage system at the end of the Sino-Japanese War. ==Honors==