Ōmura Masujirō
| Ōmura Masujirō | |
|---|---|
Ōmura Masujirō
|
|
| Born |
May 30, 1824 Yamaguchi, Chōshū domain, Japan |
| Died | December 7, 1869 (aged 45) Osaka, Japan |
| Nationality | Japan |
| Occupation | military theorist and leader |
| Known for | founding Imperial Japanese Army |
Ōmura Masujirō (大村 益次郎?, May 30, 1824 – December 7, 1869) was a Japanese military leader and theorist in Bakumatsu period Japan. He is regarded as the "Father of the Modern Japanese Army".
Ōmura was born in what is now part of Yamaguchi city, in the former Chōshū Domain, where his father was a rural physician. From a young age, Ōmura had a strong interest in learning and medicine, travelling to Osaka to study rangaku under the direction of Ogata Kōan at his Tekijuku academy of western studies when he was twenty-two. He continued his education in Nagasaki under the direction of German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, the first European to teach Western medicine in Japan. His interest in Western military tactics was sparked in the 1850s and it was this interest that led Ōmura to become a valuable asset after the Meiji Restoration in the creation of Japan's modern army.
After studying in Nagasaki, Ōmura returned to his village at the age of twenty-six to practice medicine, but accepted an offer from daimyō Date Munenari of nearby Uwajima Domain in 1853 to serve as an expert in Western studies and a military school instructor in exchange for the samurai rank that he was not born into. As foreign incursions into Japanese territorial waters increased, and as pressure from foreign powers for Japan to end its national seclusion policy, Ōmura was sent back to Nagasaki to study the construction of warships and navigation. He traveled to Edo in 1856 in the retinue of Date Munenari and was appointed a teacher at the shogunate's Bansho Shirabesho institute for western studies. During this time, he also continued his education by learning English under the Yokohama-based American missionary James Curtis Hepburn.
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