Enomoto Takeaki

Enomoto Takeaki (Japanese榎 本 武扬, or in a respectful reading Enomoto Buyo, born October 5, 1836October 26, 1908 ) was a Japanese admiral of the navy of the Tokugawa shogunate, the beginning of the Meiji Restoration against the new government the Emperor Meiji fought until the shogunate finally went down to the end of the Boshin war. He later served in the imperial government.

Studies in Europe

Enomoto was born as a member of a family of followers of the Tokugawa. In the period of isolation of Japan ( Sakoku ) Japan had contact abroad is strictly limited to a few countries, such as Korea, China and the Netherlands. Enomoto began in the 1850s to learn Dutch. After the forced opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew made ​​Perry 1854 he studied the Dutch naval warfare at the Naval Training Center Nagasaki of the Bakufu and at Tsukiji - Warship training center in Edo. At age 26 he was sent to the Netherlands, where he studied from 1862 to 1867 sea warfare. He is said to have learned to speak fluent Dutch and English.

He returned in 1867 aboard the Japanese battleship Kaiyo Maru, a modern steam-powered warship that the shogunate had bought in the Netherlands, back to Japan. On his return he was the age of 31 Kaigun Fukusōsai (海军 副 総 裁), the second highest rank in the navy of the Tokugawa shogunate carried.

During his stay in Europe Enomoto had found that the telegraph in the future would be an important means of communication. He began to plan a telegraph system to connect Edo and Yokohama.

"The Last Loyalist "

When in 1868 the Meiji government troops defeated the forces of the Shogun and Edo took to Enomoto refused to hand over his warships. He fled with the fleet of the shogunate and a handful of former French military advisers under Jules Brunet to Hakodate on the northern island of Hokkaido. Its fleet consists of eight steam-powered warships at the time was the most powerful naval force of Japan.

She hoped to Hokkaido to establish a state under the rule of the Tokugawa family, but the Meiji government refused their consent. On December 25, they declared the founding of the Republic of Ezo and chose Enomoto president. It is therefore of the first and only president of a state on Japanese soil.

In the following year the Japanese Army and the Japanese Navy launched the invasion of Hokkaido and defeated at the Battle of Hakodate and the subsequent siege of the fort Goryōkaku the Army and Navy of the shogunate final.

On May 18, 1869 surrendered the Republic of Ezo and also in Hokkaido, the reign of Emperor Meiji was recognized.

The Meiji politicians

Enomoto was captured and accused of high treason, 1872 but pardoned by the new Meiji government. Its leaders thought that a man with Enomotos talents could be of benefit. Enomoto rose under the protection of the Satsuma leader Kuroda Kiyotaka amazingly fast in the new ruling clique, faster and higher than any other member of the former Tokugawa clan. He was one of the few former supporters of the Tokugawa, who had political influence in Meiji Japan, a time in which politics was dominated by the Tokugawa clan enemy from Chōshū and Satsuma.

In 1874, Enomoto was appointed Vice Admiral and sent as a special envoy to Russia to negotiate the Treaty of St. Petersburg, which was signed a year later. The contract was very well received in Japan and increased Enomotos prestige in the ruling circles continue. On the other hand, the appointment of Enomoto as a contribution to national unity Japan was seen.

1880 rose Enomoto on even to the Japanese Minister of Marine. He put his diplomatic skills again in 1885 abilities when he supported Itō Hirobumi at the conclusion of the Treaty of Tientsin with China.

Then Enomoto held regularly high posts in the Japanese government:

Enomoto 1887 received the rank of Shishaku ( Viscount ) and a member of the Privy Council, one of the most prestigious institutions in the Meiji period.

Even after he had successively held several ministerial posts and was particularly active in the promotion of Japanese expansionism by promoting Japanese settler colonies in the area of the Pacific, South and Central America.

In 1891 he founded against the will of the Cabinet of Matsukata Masayoshi one department for emigration ' in the State Department, whose job it was to promote emigration and to identify possible new areas for Japanese settlements overseas. Two years later, Enomoto left the government and helped establish a private, Colonial Society ', which was to promote foreign trade and emigration.

He died in 1908 at the age of 72 years.

309196
de