Sakuma Samata

Sakuma Samata

Sakuma Samata ( Japanese 佐 久 間 左 馬太 ; born November 19, 1844 in Hagi , Chōshū , Tokugawa Shogunate ; † August 5, 1915 ) was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army and from 1906 to 1915 the 5th Governor General of the Japanese colony of Taiwan .

Life

Sakuma was born the son of a samurai of the Chōshū fief in the historic Nagato Province . He studied under Ōmura Masujirō Western military science and led a company of soldiers in 1866 in defense of the fiefdom against troops of the Tokugawa shogunate . In the Boshin War , which broke out two years later , he fought on the side of the victorious troops loyal to the emperor . In 1872 he joined the newly established Imperial Japanese Army with the rank of captain and in February 1874 led troops from Kumamoto Castle against the rebellious fiefdom of Saga . In the same year he took part in the Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan . During the Satsuma Rebellion , he commanded the 6th Infantry Regiment. In February 1881, Sakuma was promoted to major general and given command of the Sendai Military District .

In May 1885 he received command of the 10th Infantry Regiment and was promoted to lieutenant general the following year . Also in 1887 he was raised to the rank of Danshaku according to the Japanese nobility system of Kazoku .

When the First Sino-Japanese War broke out , he was given command of the 2nd Division which he led in the Battle of Weihaiwei . After the end of the war, he was briefly the military governor of Weihaiwei city . When the war ended he was already elevated to the rank of nobility Shishaku and the Order of the Rising Sun excellent.

In 1898, after being promoted to full general, he was given command of the division of the Imperial Guard . After a short vacation, he became the commander of the Tokyo garrison. On April 11, 1906 he was awarded the 5th Governor General of Taiwan, which was annexed by Japan after the Sino-Japanese War, and was awarded the highest degree of the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers. The following year he was raised to the rank of nobility of Hakushaku.

With the end of the organized resistance of the Han Chinese population in Taiwan, the colonial authorities turned to the submission of the indigenous tribes of Taiwan who settled in the mountains . Sakuma had also been selected as governor general because of his participation in the punitive expedition to the island of 1874 and was supposed to expand Japanese control into the mountainous regions. During his tenure, he conducted several military operations against the Atayal and Bunun tribes . At just over nine years of age, Sakuma was Taiwan's longest-serving governor-general when he resigned from his post on April 30, 1915 after seeing his task of pacifying and controlling Taiwan as fulfilled. The infrastructural development of the east coast of Taiwan is mainly attributed to him. So he had the area around the Taroko Gorge developed and the port of Hualien expanded. He is also said to have introduced baseball on the island in 1910 .

Sakuma Shrine in Taihoku, around 1930

After his early death, Sakuma was declared a Kami according to the state Shinto and Sakuma shrines ( 佐 久 間 神社 , Sakuma-jinja ) were built in his honor in Sagamihara and Taihoku .

literature

• Leo TS Ching: Becoming Japanese. Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. University of California Press, Berkeley 2001, ISBN 0-520-22553-8 .
• Denny Roy: Taiwan. A Political History. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2003, ISBN 0-8014-8805-2 .
• Gennifer S. Weisenfield: Visual Cultures of Japanese Imperialism. Duke University Press, Durham 2000, OCLC 810335785 .

Web links

• Page with pictures of the Sakumas shrine in Sagamihara. (Japanese) Retrieved March 15, 2014.
• National Parliamentary Library : Brief biography of Sakuma on the website of the Japanese Parliamentary Library. (English) Retrieved March 15, 2014.

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