Oku Yasukata

Oku Yasukata in 1909.

Hakushaku Oku Yasukata ( Japanese 奥 保 鞏 ; born January 5, 1847 in Kokura-han , Buzen Province , Japan ; † July 19, 1930 in Tokyo , Japanese Empire ) was a gensui and an important person in the early history of Imperial Japanese Army .

Life

Oku Yasukata was born on January 5, 1847 into a samurai family of Kokura-han in Buzen Province. In the Boshin War of 1868 he joined the forces of Chōshū-han in their fight against the Tokugawa shogunate . The war led to the so-called Meiji Restoration , the seizure of power by the Tennō. In 1871 he joined the new imperial army as a captain and took part in the suppression of the Saga rebellion and the punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874 . During the Satsuma rebellion he commanded the 13th regiment as a major in the enclosed Kumamoto Castle . Mostly unexpectedly, he was able to break through the siege ring with his units twice. The first time it was possible to get supplies to the castle, the second time he and his troops managed to get through to the troops loyal to the emperor at Kawashiri.

During the First Sino-Japanese War , he took command of the 5th Division of the 1st Army from General Nozu Michitsura . He later held prestigious commands such as that of the 1st Division , the Imperial Guard and as Governor General of the Defense of Tokyo. According to the kazoku nobility system , he was raised to the rank of danshaku (baron) in 1895. In 1903 he was promoted to full general.

At the turn of the year from 1902 to 1903, Oku took part as head of the delegation at a meeting in honor of the new British monarch Edward VII and maneuvers by the British Indian Army in British India . The invitation was issued by the British Viceroy of India , George Curzon, as part of the newly concluded Anglo-Japanese alliance .

During the Russo-Japanese War he was given frontline command of the 2nd Army , where he was praised for his commanding services during the battles of Nanshan , Sha-ho and Mukden . After the war he received the Order of the Golden Consecration in 1906 and was raised to the rank of hakushaku (count) the following year. In 1911 he received the mainly honorary rank of gensui of the army, which roughly corresponded to that of a marshal.

From July 1906 to January 1912 he was Chief of the Army General Staff before he resigned from the post and was replaced by the more politically active Hasegawa Yoshimichi . He then retired.

Oku's reluctance to attend staff meetings earned him the reputation of a lone wolf with great talent in performing independent operations. He was not interested in politics and withdrew completely after his retirement. His death in 1930 came as a surprise to many people who assumed that he had died years ago because he was no longer public.

Remarks

1. ↑ Stephen R. Turnbull and Angus McBride: Samurai. The World of the Warrior. 2006, p. 200.
2. ^ Ian Hill Nish: Collected Writings of Ian Nish. 2001, p. 102.
3. ^ Leonard A. Humphreys: The Way of the Heavenly Sworld. The Japanese Army in the 1920's. 1995, p. 19.

literature

• Albert M. Craig: Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1961, ISBN 978-0-674-12850-7 , OCLC 413558 .
• Trevor N. Dupuy : The Encyclopedia of Military Biography. IB Tauris, London 1992, ISBN 978-1-85043-569-3 , OCLC 59974268 .
• Meirion Harries: Soldiers of the Sun. The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Random House, New York 1994, ISBN 978-0-679-75303-2 , OCLC 475858000 .
• Leonard A. Humphreys: The Way of the Heavenly Sworld. The Japanese Army in the 1920's. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 1995, ISBN 978-0-8047-2375-6 , OCLC 30400256 .
• Geoffrey Jukes: The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. Osprey, Oxford 2002, ISBN 978-1-84176-446-7 , OCLC 50101247 .
• Donald Keene: Emperor of Japan. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. Columbia University Press, New York and Chichester 2005, ISBN 978-0-231-12341-9 , OCLC 228136992 .
• Ian Hill Nish: Collected Writings of Ian Nish. Routledge, 2001, ISBN 978-4-931444-36-2 , OCLC 47438806 .
• SCM Paine: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Perception, Power, and Primacy. Cambridge University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-81714-1 , OCLC 49875161 .
• Stephen R. Turnbull and Angus McBride: Samurai. The World of the Warrior. Osprey, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-1-84176-951-6 , OCLC 225642148 .

Web links

Commons : Oku Yasukata  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• National Parliamentary Library : Oku's short biography on the Japanese Parliamentary Library website. (Engl.) Accessed August 7, 2012.

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