Nitobe Inazō

Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933)

Uchimura Kanzō , Miyabe Kingo and Nitobe Inazō in the Sapporo Agricultural School (1877)

Nitobe Inazō and his wife Mary Elkinton (1890)

Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900)

German edition (1901)

Nitobe Inazō and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō (1908)

Nitobe Inazō ( Japanese 新 渡 戸 稲 造 ; born September 1, 1862 in Morioka , Japan , † October 15, 1933 in Victoria , Canada ) was a Japanese agronomist, philosopher, educator, author and an international political activist.

Life

Nitobe was born the third son of a samurai family serving the Nambu clan . One of his grandfathers was a military strategist and practiced martial arts as well as Nitobe's father, who also taught his son the techniques of kenjutsu , jiujitsu and sojutsu .

Nitobe studied from 1877 first at the Sapporo Agricultural College ( Sapporo Nōgakkō , today University of Hokkaidō ), then from 1883 at the University of Tokyo , before he finally moved to the USA in 1884 to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Here he studied economics and politics for three years. In 1886 he converted to Quakerism and joined the Baltimore Yearly Meeting , since the Japan Yearly Meeting was not founded until 1936. During these years he met his future wife, Mary P. Elkinton.

His alma mater in Sapporo promised him a professorship on the condition that he previously obtained a doctorate in Germany. He then moved to Bonn, Berlin and Halle, where he did his doctorate with a thesis on Japanese landed property . During his return trip via the United States, he married Mary Elkinton in Philadelphia in 1891.

As promised, he received a professorship at the Sapporo Agricultural School. Other positions followed as a technical officer in the General Government of Taiwan , as a professor at the Imperial University of Kyoto , rector of the First High School , professor at the (Imperial) University of Tokyo, 1918 founder and rector of the Tokyo Women's University and finally, in 1920, Vice Secretary-General of the League of Nations . In this capacity he took part in the Esperanto World Congress in 1921 as an observer and submitted a report to the League of Nations Assembly on the status of the use of Esperanto in the world. In the 1930s he tried to mediate between the United States and Japan to ease the accumulated tensions.

While working in Sapporo, he and his wife fell ill, which is why they traveled to California to heal. Here, at the age of 37, Nitobe wrote his most famous work, Bushido : The Soul of Japan . A German edition appeared as early as 1901. Further translations into French, Czech, Polish, Swedish a. a. m. followed within a few years. In this work Nitobe presents the principles of Japanese morality. He describes, among other things, seven principles according to which the Japanese, and especially the samurai, try or should try to act. It was used for their own purposes by Japanese nationalists during World War II .

Nitobe is depicted on the 5000 yen notes printed from 1984 to 2004. The Nitobe Memorial Garden in Vancouver is named after him .

Works

• A Japanese View of Quakers , Dr. Inazo Nitobe
• About the Japanese property, its distribution and agricultural exploitation . - Halle ad S., 1890. (A curriculum vitae in Latin is attached. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf )
• Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900)
• Bushido: The Soul of Japan - A representation of the Japanese spirit . From Professor Dr. Inazo Nitobe. Translated into German by Ella Kaufmann. Tokyo: Shokwabo, 1901.

literature

• Claus Bernet :  Nitobe, Inazo. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 37, Bautz, Nordhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95948-142-7 , Sp. 773-781.
• David Cope Elkinton: The Elkintons and Inazo Nitobe. Inazo Nitobe Foundation, 2002.

Web links

Commons : Nitobe Inazō  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Bushido: The Soul of Japan at Gutenberg.net (English)
• Literature by and about Nitobe Inazō in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See here to: CHURCH UNION AND AFTER. ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ 新 渡 戸 稲 造 . In: 朝日 日本 歴 史 人物 事 典 at kotobank.jp. Retrieved July 18, 2012 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ See: Quakerism in Japan. ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

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