Hasegawa Yoshimichi

Count Hasegawa Yoshimichi

Count Hasegawa Yoshimichi ( Japanese 長谷川 好 道 ; * October 1, 1850 in Iwakuni , Japan , † January 27, 1924 in Tokyo ) was a Field Marshal ( Gensui ) of the Imperial Japanese Army and Governor General of Japanese-occupied Korea .

Life

Hasegawa was born in 1850 into a samurai family in what was then the province of Suō in the south of the Japanese main island of Honshū . During the Meiji Restoration , he sided with the Tennō with the troops of his home province and fought in the Boshin War in 1868 , in which the Tokugawa Shogunate was defeated and abolished.

After the establishment of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1871, Hasegawa joined it first with the rank of captain , but was soon promoted to major . During the Satsuma rebellion he was given command of a regiment with which he participated in the relief of Kumamoto Castle on April 14, 1877.

In 1885 he was sent to France as a military attaché to analyze current European military strategies and tactics. Before returning the following year, he was promoted to major general in absentia .

In the First Sino-Japanese War he was recognized for his bravery when he led his 12th Infantry Brigade in the Battle of Pyongyang on September 15, 1894 and the Haicheng Skirmishes from December 1894 to January 1895. After the end of the war, he was awarded the title of baron ( Danshaku ) in the Japanese hereditary system ( Kazoku ) .

During the Russo-Japanese War Hasegawa led the units of the Imperial Guard , which were assigned to the 1st Army under General Kuroki Tamemoto . With this he took part in the battle of the Yalu . As a reward for his good unit leadership in this battle, he was promoted to full general in June 1904. After the end of the war he was raised to the rank of Vice Count ( Shishaku ).

After serving as commander of the garrison army in Korea from September 1904 to December 1908, he became chief of staff of the Japanese General Staff in 1912 . In this position he urged Army Minister Uehara Yūsaku to resign to protest against Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi's tax policy . He also tried to reverse the new regulation, according to which only active officers could be appointed army or naval ministers. This led to the collapse of the Saionji government.

In 1915 Hasegawas was promoted to field marshal (Gensui) and in 1916 he was appointed count ( Hakushaku ).

Also in 1916 he became the second governor general of the meanwhile annexed and renamed in Chosen Korea. In this position he was later criticized for his military action against the peaceful movement of March 1st.

After his death in 1924, Hasegawa was buried in Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

literature

• Albert M. Craig: Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1961.
• Trevor N. Dupuy : The Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography , HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, 1992 ISBN 0-7858-0437-4 .
• Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman: Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji , Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986.
• Marius B. Jansen: The Making of Modern Japan , The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000.

Web links

• Portrait of Hasegawa Yoshimichi in the National Diet Library

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Hasegawa is the family name, Yoshimichi the first name.