Yuasa Takejirō

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

Yuasa Takejirō (ca.1904)

Yuasa Takejirō ( Japanese 湯 浅 竹 次郎 ; * October 9, 1871 in Ushigome , Tokyo ; † May 3, 1904 at sea in front of the port of Lüshunkou / Port Arthur) was a Japanese naval officer , "deified war hero " and judoka .

biography

education

Yuasa Takejirō was raised by Kanō Jigorō , the founder of judo , and his wife at the Kōdōkan judo school , whom he joined when it was founded in September 1883 as a student of literature and judo. In 1889 he was accepted into the Naval Academy , which he graduated in July of 1892. He then worked in the Navy.

Russo-Japanese War

During the Russo-Japanese War (1904/1905) the Japanese fleet operated at the entrance to the port of Lüshunkou / Port Arthur to encircle the Russian fleet in the port. Lieutenant Yuasa initially took part as a fire control officer on the cruiser Itsukushima , then took part in the third attack on the Russian fleet as commander of the Sagami-maru, which was supposed to block the port entrance. He replaced the late corvette captain ( kaigun shōsa ) Hirose Takeo . His address to his team shortly before the mission has been handed down. On May 3, 1904, he was killed by enemy cannon fire while advancing into the mouth of the port. He was then celebrated as a war hero, posthumously promoted to corvette captain and promoted to Shinto Kami of the war ( 軍 神 , gunshin ).

Judo

Yuasa was one of the most important protagonists of judo in his time. In 1897 he was on duty in Melbourne , where he gave the first judo demonstration on Australian soil. The event was well received in the Australian press.

On April 8, 1904, Kanō Jigorō Yuasa raised posthumously to the degree of a fifth dan and on December 2, 1905, after verification of his war death, to the sixth dan.

family

Yuasa's daughter was the soprano and opera singer Yuasa Hatsue , who had lived in Berlin since 1923 and was celebrated in Germany and other European countries .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brian N. Watson: Judo Memoirs of Jigoro Kano , Bloomington 2014, pp. 29, 33, 48 and 187
2. ^ Kodokan hall of fame. In: judo-ch.jp. Retrieved January 22, 2017 (English). 
3. ^ Alfred Stead: Great Japan: A Study of National Efficiency . cit. 1906, p. 31 .
4. ↑ Sharalyn Orbaugh: Japanese fiction of the Allied Occupation: Vision, Embodiment, Identity . Leiden / Boston 2007, p. 232 .
5. ^ Brian N. Watson: Il padre del judo. Una biografia di Jigoro Kano . Rome 2005, p. 103 .
6. ↑ The only reference work with biographical information on Hatsue Yuasa is Erich H. Müller: German Musicians Lexicon . Dresden 1929. As the author announced, the information comes from the artists themselves, to whom he sent questionnaires. The comment about her father is "Takejiro Y. Captain 70-03". It is unlikely that any Takejiro Yuasa other than that of this article was her father. The discrepancy between the year of birth and year of death by one year is likely to be based on a calculation error. While for the father, who died at an early age, Hatsue Yuasas only dates and months are given in the vital dates, for the mother Sakae Yushisaki (April 1, 1885 - September 21, 1923) there are also dates and months.