He was born in Iguchi village in Tosa, now Kochi City, eldest son of the Tosa samurai Ueki Naoe. The family was of low rank and not well off. He learned calligraphy from childhood and studied at the domain school Chidokan, later making his name as a leading voice of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement.
Chosen as a student at Tosa's Kainan school, he soon quit and returned home. That year Itagaki Taisuke and others from Tosa left the government in the Meiji 6 political crisis over sending an envoy to Korea. Deeply stirred, Emori resolved to go to Tokyo to study.
In Tokyo he eagerly attended the Mita speech meetings at Fukuzawa Yukichi's Keio Gijuku and the Meirokusha lectures, absorbing Western thought. He began writing letters to newspapers, one after another criticizing the government, and also attended Christian churches, broadening his ideas.
His newspaper letter Saru Hito Kunshu violated the Zanboritsu press law against criticizing the government, and he was jailed for two months. The experience only strengthened his views, and after release he kept writing essays on human freedom and rights.
He returned to Kochi with Itagaki Taisuke and joined Itagaki's Risshisha, helping draft its petition for a national assembly and editing and writing for its newspapers. It was the year of the Satsuma Rebellion, and some Risshisha members were arrested, but Emori escaped arrest.
He toured the country giving speeches, and in Fukuoka spoke at the opening of the Koyo school at Toyama Mitsuru's invitation. This year he published Minken Jiyu Ron, explaining the importance of freedom and rights in plain words, which was widely read. A speech violated the assembly regulations, and he was banned from speaking for a time.
As many private constitution drafts were written before the opening of a national assembly, he drafted the Toyo Dai Nippon Koku Kokken An. Recognizing broad freedoms and rights, it even provided a right to resist and form a new government if the state unjustly violated people's rights, and is considered the most democratic draft.
He called for a brewers' assembly against higher sake taxes and held it in Osaka, just after Itagaki was attacked in Gifu. He then went to Tokyo and wrote editorials for the Liberal Party's Jiyu Shinbun with Nakae Chomin, Baba Tatsui and others, championing people's rights.
He was elected to the Kochi prefectural assembly and took part in local politics. The year before he had published an essay on the poor, turning attention to their lives. He also praised Tosa village assemblies that let female household heads vote as pioneers of gender equality, advocating women's rights.
He went to Osaka to help Nakae Chomin's Shinonome Shinbun, meeting Kotoku Shusui, a future socialist, and others. He joined the Daido Danketsu movement to reunite the rights activists and campaigned against Okuma Shigenobu's treaty revision plan.
With the opening of the Imperial Diet he ran from Kochi in the first general election and won. In the Diet he argued so fiercely that newspapers described him as hot-tempered. The next year, differing with Itagaki and others, he left the Constitutional Liberal Party and led the Tosa faction.
Before the second general election his stomach ailment worsened and he died suddenly in Tokyo. Long forgotten afterward, he was brought back to light in the Showa era when the constitutional scholar Suzuki Yasuzo studied his papers. His phrase Freedom comes from the mountains of Tosa is now Kochi Prefecture's official motto.
Fukuzawa YukichiItagaki TaisukeŌkuma ShigenobuNakae ChōminKōtoku Shūsui
Ernest FenollosaTakamine JōkichiShimoda UtakoKomura JutarōMikimoto KōkichiTsubouchi ShōyōKanō JigorōŌyama Sutematsu
People of the Meiji period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.