Gotō Shimpei

Gotō Shimpei

Gotō Shimpei ( Japanese 後 藤 新 平 ); (* July 24, 1857 ( Japanese calendar : 4th day, 6th month, 4th year Ansei ) in Shiogama, Isawa-gun , Mutsu Province (today: Mizusawa-ku , Ōshū , Iwate Prefecture ); † April 13th 1929 in Kyoto ), was a Japanese medic and statesman. Among other things, he was the Japanese civil governor of Taiwan (Formosa) , the first president of the South Manchurian Railway , of NHK , the Japanese scouts , minister for communications , interior and exterior in various cabinets of the Taishō period , later mayor of Tokyo and then commissioner for its reconstruction after the 1923 earthquake .

Youth and education

Gotō was born into a samurai family in Shiogama Village ( 塩 釜 村 ), Isawa-gun County. First he attended school (according to the western pattern) in Fukushima ( 福島 洋 学校 , Fukushima yōgakkō ) and at 17 the Sukagawa medical school ( 須 賀 川 医 学校 , Sukagawa igakkō ), which he graduated at the age of 20. He was protected by his paternal uncle, Yamamoto Isoroku .

During the Satsuma rebellion in 1877 he worked as a medic on the government side, then he worked in the hospital in Tsuruoka . He became a doctor at the Medical School of Aichi Prefecture ( 愛 知 県 医 学校 , Aichi-ken igakkō , today: the Medical Faculty of Nagoya University ), with 25 years he was headmaster and chief physician there. His patron Yasuba Yazukazu - provincial governor at the time - had given him this position .

In February 1882 he entered the service of the Interior Ministry as deputy director of the Hygiene Office ( 衛生 局 , Eisei-kyoku ). As a doctor, he treated Itagaki Taisuke, President of the Liberal Party , who was injured in an attack at a party meeting in Gifu . In September of that year he married his wife Wako ( 和 子 ).

In 1890 he was posted to Germany for further training. Here he studied in Berlin under Robert Koch and in Munich at the LMU under Max von Pettenkofer .

Political career

On his return in December 1892 he took over the management of the Ministry of Interior's Hygiene Office. In 1893 he was involved in the Sōma affair ( 相 馬 事件 , Sōma jiken ) and spent five months in prison. Family members alleged that servant Nishikiori Takekiyo ( 錦 織 剛 清 ) kidnapped the head of the family, for which he was sentenced to four years of forced labor. In fact, Shishaku (Vice Count) Sōma Tomotane , who had long been involved in legal disputes, was taken to an asylum where he was poisoned the day after his arrival, February 22nd, as revealed by an autopsy. Depending on the source, Gotō was either acquitted for lack of evidence or sentenced to six months' imprisonment.

During the Sino-Japanese War (1894/95) he headed the quarantine in the port city of Hiroshima . His activity found the attention of the general Kodama Gentarō ( 兒 玉 源 太郎 ).

Formosa

In the Shimonoseki Treaty , China ceded the island of Formosa (today: Taiwan) to Japan. Kodama Gentarō was the fourth governor general from 1898 to 1906, Gotō the civil governor of his government. He worked on building state monopolies for salt, sugar and camphor . He also promoted railroad construction.

Gotō, as a medical professional , took the position that Taiwan had to be governed according to "biological principles" ( 生物学 の 原則 , Seibutsugaku no gensoku ), i.e. H. First you have to analyze the behavior of the locals in order to be able to make appropriate policies. For this purpose he created the "Extraordinary Committee for the Study of the Ancient Customs of Taiwan" ( 臨時 台湾 旧 慣 調査 会 , Rinji Taiwan kyūkan chōsakai ), which he also chaired.

See also: Taiwan under Japanese rule

Boy Scout Movement

Within the emerging scout movement , he became the first president of the Japanese Scout Association . He campaigned for this organization all his life.

Politician

In April 1903 received a seat in the manor house . Knighted as Danshaku (baron) three years later . From November 1906 Gotō stood in front of the South Manchurian Railway Company. In the second Katsura cabinet (July 14, 1908– August 30, 1911) he was Minister of Communications and Director General of the Railway Authority ( 鉄 道 院 , Tetsudō-in ). During this time he initiated far-reaching reforms of the transport system, which met with strong criticism, but were stubbornly implemented. With the establishment of the colonial office ( 拓殖 局 , Takushoku-kyoku ) in 1910 its first director.

He had been working towards a compromise with Russia for a long time. He was to be part of the delegation that was to be sent to St. Petersburg in 1911 , but then did not travel due to the death of Meiji - tennō .

He was a close ally and supporter of the Prime Minister. With him he founded the conservative Rikken Dōshikai . He left the party in late 1913 after the death of its first chairman, as he was in opposition to the new chairman Katō Takaaki . In the third Katsura cabinet he held the same posts as in the second and was also director of the state railway administration. In the Terauchi cabinet he was Minister of the Interior for the first time (October 9, 1916-23 April 1918), until August 29, 1918 Foreign Minister. At that time he lived in Miramura-chō, Azabu -ku.

In 1918 he became foreign minister in the Hara cabinet . As a representative of pan-Asianist politics, he took a line that was aggressively aimed at expanding the Japanese spheres of influence. So he advocated the Siberian intervention , which was planned from April and became known to the public from June. He also wrote articles for the magazines of the Amur Association ( Kokuryūkai ). Programmatic and not necessarily mutually compatible standpoints were also state socialism and commitment to agriculture.

Gotō believed in the support of foreign policy by cultural societies. One of Gotō's most important political supporters was Hoshi Hajime ( 星 一 ), owner of the Hoshi Pharmaceutical Factories ( 星 製 薬 株式会社 , Hoshi Seiyaku Kabushiki kaisha ). At the request of the German ambassador Wilhelm Solf , Gotō arranged for Hoshi to donate to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for German science in need in the post-war period . A total of two million Reichsmarks (approx. 80,000 yen) were distributed from 1919 to 1925 by the Hoshi Committee chaired by Fritz Haber . He was an active member of the German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia and President of the Japanese-German Cultural Institute, but also of the Japanese-Russian Society ( Nichi-ro kyōkai ).

Between 1919 and 1929 he was president of the private colonial university . The appointment as mayor of Tokyo took place on December 17, 1920 (until April 20, 1923). He conducted negotiations with the representative of the Soviet government, Adolf Joffe , who visited Japan on an unofficial mission in 1922. Even later he took a position of understanding with Russia. In the same year, the rank was raised to Shishaku (vice count).

On September 1, 1923, the great Kanto earthquake occurred . Much of Tokyo was destroyed in the fires that followed. The hastily formed government under Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe , with Gotō again as Minister of the Interior, proclaimed martial law on the 2nd. He resigned from this office on January 7, 1924. At the same time he was chairman of the reconstruction commission for the capital ( 帝都 復興 院 , Teito fukkōin ). Much of the foundations of Tokyo's modern transport infrastructure can be traced back to Gotō. Its road widening and the construction of radial main roads were viewed as excessive at a time before automobile traffic began to develop. When the construction of a subway under the Shōwa-dōri began, nobody could imagine the frequent traffic jams. Since the establishment of the Tokyo radio company ( 東京 放送 局 , Tōkyō Hōsō Kyoku ) in 1924 he was its president. In 1925 the first radio broadcast in Japan took place. The society merged with those in Nagoya and Osaka on the New Year of 1926 to form the NHK , which still exists today . The end of his active political career came in 1925 with the fall of the Yamamoto cabinet after the Toranomon Incident ( 虎 ノ 門 事件 , Toranomon jiken ).

Gotō Shimpei's grave in Tokyo

From December 1927 to February 1928 Gotō traveled to the Soviet Union , where he was treated like a state guest and received by Stalin on January 7th . At times he was traded as a candidate for the office of prime minister, but the time of constitutional government came to an end. In 1928 he was awarded the rank of Hakushaku (count) as part of the enthronement ceremonies of Shōwa-Tennō .

Gotō died on April 13, 1929 after a brain haemorrhage in a Kyoto hospital. Posthumously he was awarded the ceremonial upper second rank ( 正 二 位 , jō-ni-i ) by the court. At his birthplace, today's Ōshū , there is a museum in his honor.

literature

• Takekoshi Yosaburō, George Braithwaite (Ex.): Japanese Rule in Formosa . Longmans, Green & Co., London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, 1907 (preface by Gotō).
• Mikuriya Takashi: Jidai no bekakusha, Gotō Shimpei 1857–1929 . Fujiwara Shoten, Tōkyō 2004 (biography).
• Wilhelm Solf : Obituary in: Yamato Vol. I (1929).

Web links

Commons : Gotō Shimpei  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• 後 藤 新 平 の 会 goto-shimpei.org
• Newspaper article about Gotō Shimpei in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dictionnaire historique du Japan . Kodansha, Tokyo 1981.
2. ^ ^{A b} Biographical Dictionary of Japanese History. T. 1978.
3. ↑ Japan Handbuch 1941; the dissertation mentioned there is not (no longer) verifiable at the LMU .
4. ↑ ^{a b} Japan Yearbook 1919–20.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Japan Biographical Encyclopedia
6. ^ "The Moltke of Japan." Christian Spang, RH Wippich: Japanese-German Relations 1895-1945 . Abington 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-34248-3 , p. 23.
7. ↑ Japan Biographical Encyclopedia & who is who, T. 1961 (Rengo Press).
8. ^ Asian Review 1920
9. ↑ Spang; Wippich: Japanese-German Relations , therein Katō, p. 127.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Gotō is the family name, Shimpei the first name.