14 Facts About Yamakawa Hiroshi

Baron Yamakawa Hiroshi was a Bakumatsu period Aizu samurai who subsequently became a general in the early Meiji period Imperial Japanese Army, and a noted politician and educator.

Yamakawa Hiroshi was one of the first persons to write a history of the Aizu War from the Aizu perspective.

Yamakawa Hiroshi's brother-in-law was noted general Oyama Iwao, who married his sister Sutematsu.

Yamakawa Hiroshi, or, as he was first known, Yoshichiro, was born in Aizu-Wakamatsu, in 1845.

Yamakawa Hiroshi's father, Yamakawa Shigekata, was a karo of the Aizu clan with revenues of 1000 koku, and his mother, Toi, was the daughter of another karo family, the Saigo.

Yamakawa Hiroshi's siblings included Yamakawa Kenjiro and Oyama Sutematsu.

In 1866 Yamakawa Hiroshi was allowed to accompany the Shogunate's Foreign Affairs Magistrate Koide Hidezane to Imperial Russia, where he assisted in negotiations concerning the drawing of international borders in Karafuto.

The forces of the Tokugawa shogunate were defeated, but Yamakawa Hiroshi survived and escaped to Edo, and from there to Aizu.

Yamakawa Hiroshi was placed in charge of the domain's postwar liaison office with the new Meiji government, and when the government issued a pardon, he supervised the move of the Aizu samurai to the new landholding called Tonami Domain, which had been assigned by the government in northern Mutsu Province.

In 1873, Yamakawa Hiroshi was commissioned a major in the Imperial Japanese Army and assigned to the garrison at Kumamoto.

Yamakawa Hiroshi was trapped in Kumamoto Castle by Satsuma forces, and in the battle saved the life of Tani Tateki.

Yamakawa Hiroshi ran in the 1890 Japanese general election for a seat in the lower house of the Diet of Japan.

Yamakawa Hiroshi was elevated to the peerage with the title of danshaku under the kazoku system on January 26,1898.

Yamakawa Hiroshi died in Tokyo eight days later, and was buried at the Aoyama Cemetery.