Inazō Nitobe
| Nitobe Inazō | |
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Nitobe Inazō
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| Born |
September 1, 1862 Morioka, Iwate, Japan |
| Died | October 15, 1933 (aged 71) Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Occupation | agricultural economist, author, educator, diplomat, politician |
Nitobe Inazō (新渡戸 稲造?, September 1, 1862 – October 15, 1933) was a Japanese agricultural economist, author, educator, diplomat, politician, and Christian during the pre-World War II period.
Nitobe was born in Morioka, Mutsu Province (present-day Iwate Prefecture). His father was a retainer to the local daimyō of the Nambu clan. His infant name was Inanosuke. Nitobe left Morioka for Tokyo in 1871 to become the heir to his uncle, Ota Tokitoshi, and adopted the name Ota Inazō. He later reverted to Nitobe when his brothers died.
Nitobe was in the second class of the Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University). He was converted to Christianity under the strong legacy left by Dr. William S. Clark, the first Vice-Principal of the College, who had taught in Sapporo for eight months before Nitobe's class arrived in the second year after the opening of the college; thus they never personally crossed paths. Nitobe's classmates who converted to Christianity at the same time included Uchimura Kanzō. Nitobe and his friends were baptized by an American Methodist Episcopal missionary Bishop M.C. Harris. Nitobe's decision to study agriculture was due to a hope expressed by Emperor Meiji that the Nitobe family would continue to advance the field of agricultural development (Nitobe's father developed former waste land in the north of the Nambu domain near present-day Towada, now part of Aomori Prefecture, into productive farmland).
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