Yoshihara Shigetoshi
| Yoshihara Shigetoshi 吉原重俊 |
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|---|---|
 |
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| 1st Governor of the Bank of Japan | |
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In office October 6, 1882 – December 19, 1887 |
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| Monarch | Meiji |
| Prime Minister | Itō Hirobumi |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Tomita Tetsunosuke |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
May 15, 1845 Kagoshima, Japan |
| Died | December 19, 1887 (aged 42) |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Occupation | diplomat, banker |
Yoshihara Shigetoshi (吉原重俊?, May 15, 1845-December 19, 1887) was a Japanese diplomat and first Governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ).
Yoshihara was born in Satsuma Domain (modern Kagoshima Prefecture as the son of a samurai retainer to the Shimazu clan. As a youth, he was the youngest of the Sonnō jōi samurai to participate in the "Terada-ya Incident", an assassination attempt against Sakamoto Ryōma at the Terada-ya inn in Kyoto. During the Anglo-Satsuma War of 1863, he fought alongside Ōyama Iwao and Saigō Tsugumichi. After the end of the conflict, he was sent to Edo, and then to Hakodate, where he was ordered to study rangaku and western customs under Takeda Ayasaburō. He then went to Yokohama to learn English from Samuel Robbins Brown.
In May 1866, with the assistance of Thomas Blake Glover, Yoshihara was one of five Satsuma samurai smuggled out of Japan on a Portuguese cargo ship to England, in violation of the national seclusion laws of the Tokugawa shogunate. Nire Kagenori was another of the five samurai in this mission. The five travelled via the Cape of Good Hope to London, where they met with the members of the first Satsuma delegation to England, which had arrived a year earlier. These included Mori Arinori, Terashima Munenori and Godai Tomoatsu. Yoshihara continued on to the United States, where he studied at the Wilbraham & Monson Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts (per a recommendation from Samuel Robbins Brown) in 1867. The same year, he met with Niijima Jō, who was studying near Boston. In January 1869, Yoshihara was baptized as a Christian at the Owasco Outlet Dutch Reformed Church shortly before he was accepted into Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut in 1869, where he studied political science and law.
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