29 Facts About Nogi Maresuke

Nogi Maresuke was a national hero in Imperial Japan as a model of feudal loyalty and self-sacrifice, ultimately to the point of suicide.

Nogi Maresuke's example brought attention to the concept of bushido and the controversial samurai practice of junshi.

Nogi Maresuke's father served the Chofu Domain, a subsidiary domain of the Choshu Domain, and held land worth 80 koku.

Nogi Maresuke was briefly known as Bunzo, after which he was renamed Maresuke.

In 1871, Nogi Maresuke was commissioned as a major in the fledgling Imperial Japanese Army.

Around this time, he renamed himself Nogi Maresuke taking a kanji from the name of his father.

The next year, Nogi Maresuke was named as the Kumamoto regional troop's Staff Officer, and transferred to command the 1st Infantry Regiment, and for his service in the Satsuma Rebellion, against the forces of Saigo Takamori in Kyushu, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 22,1877.

Nogi Maresuke considered this such a grave mistake that he listed it as one of the reasons for his later suicide.

Nogi Maresuke was promoted to colonel on April 29,1880.

Nogi Maresuke was posted to Nagoya during the early Meiji era.

In 1894, during the First Sino-Japanese War, Major-General Nogi Maresuke commanded the First Infantry Brigade which penetrated the Chinese defenses and successfully occupied Port Arthur in only one day of combat.

Nogi Maresuke remained with the occupation forces in Taiwan until 1898.

Nogi Maresuke was appointed as the third Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan from October 14,1896, to February 1898.

However, unlike many of his contemporaries as officers, Nogi Maresuke expressed no interest in pursuing politics.

In 1904, Nogi Maresuke was recalled to active service on the occasion of the Russo-Japanese War, and was promoted to army general in command of the Japanese Third Army, with an initial strength of approximately 90,000 men and assigned to the capture of the Russian-held Port Arthur on the southern tip of Liaodong Peninsula, Manchuria.

Nogi Maresuke's forces landed shortly after the Battle of Nanshan, in which his eldest son, serving with the Japanese Second Army, was killed.

However, in an unprecedented action, Emperor Meiji spoke out during the Supreme War Council meeting, defending Nogi Maresuke and demanding that he be kept in command.

Nogi Maresuke led his Third Army against the Russian forces at the final Battle of Mukden, ending the land combat phase of operations of the war.

Nogi Maresuke was hit in the abdomen at the Battle of Nanshan and died of blood loss while undergoing surgery at a field hospital.

Emperor Meiji told him that suicide was unacceptable, as all responsibility for the war was due to imperial orders, and that Nogi Maresuke must remain alive, at least as long as he himself lived.

Nogi Maresuke spent most of his personal fortune on hospitals for wounded soldiers and on memorial monuments erected around the country in commemoration of those killed during the Russo-Japanese War.

Nogi Maresuke successfully petitioned the Japanese government to erect a Russian-style memorial monument in Port Arthur to the Russian dead of that campaign.

All four members of the Nogi Maresuke family are buried at Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Nogi Maresuke's memory is honored in other locations such as the Nogi Shrine in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, where the mausoleum of Emperor Meiji was established.

In either case, Nogi Maresuke's suicide marked the end of an era, and it had a profound impact on contemporary writers, such as Mori Ogai, Kuroiwa Ruiko and Natsume Soseki.

The epic historical novel Saka no Ue no Kumo portrays Nogi Maresuke as floundering at the Siege of Port Arthur and having to be relieved by Kodama Gentaro.

Several books have been released in recent years rehabilitating Nogi Maresuke's image and showing he was a competent leader.

Nogi Maresuke was portrayed by Tatsuya Nakadai in the 1980 Japanese war drama film The Battle of Port Arthur.

Deniz makes reference to an incident wherein General Nogi Maresuke saved an Ottoman fleet of the Turkish Navy that had run aground in the Pacific.