Yamakawa Kenjirō


Baron Yamakawa Kenjirō was a Japanese samurai of the late Edo period who went on to become a noted physicist, university president, and author of several histories of the Boshin War. Though his name is commonly written "Yamakawa," he himself wrote it as "Yamagawa" in English.

Biography

Yamakawa was born as the third son to Yamakawa Naoe, a senior samurai of the Aizu Domain. He became a member of the Byakkotai, a unit of the newly reorganized Aizu domain army composed mostly of boys aged 15 to 17 years, who fought in defense of Aizu during the Boshin War.
After the Meiji Restoration, through the mediation of the Zen monk Kawai Zenjun, Yamakawa was placed in the care of Chōshū retainer Okudaira Kensuke. Yamakawa was sent by the new Meiji government to study physics at Yale University, where he was the first student from Japan to graduate. On his return to Japan, he was posted to Tokyo Imperial University working as an assistant and interpreter, and became Japan’s first Japanese professor of physics in 1879.
During the Meiji and Taishō periods he helped found the Kyushu Institute of Technology in 1907 and served as president of Tokyo Imperial University, Kyushu Imperial University, and Kyoto Imperial University. He was later ennobled with the title of danshaku under the kazoku peerage system. Later in his life he was also a Privy Councilor and a member of the House of Peers.
He and his brother Yamakawa Hiroshi are known amongst historians of the late Edo period as authors of two monumental texts-- Kenjirō's being "Aizu Boshin Senshi," which catalogues the actions of his home domain during the war. He also authored several other history texts, including "Hoshū Aizu Byakkotai Jūkyūshi-den," which he wrote with fellow Aizu native Munekawa Toraji.
Yamakawa's sisters, Yamakawa Futaba and Yamakawa Sutematsu, later Princess Ōyama Sutematsu, are also well-known. Futaba, who fought in the Battle of Aizu during the Boshin War, later worked at the Tokyo Women's Normal School, the forerunner of Ochanomizu University. Sutematsu was one of five Japanese girls sent to the United States as part of the Iwakura Mission; she was the first Japanese graduate of Vassar University, and later became the wife of Imperial Japanese Army general Ōyama Iwao.

Honours

From the Japanese Wikipedia article

Titles