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カテゴリー1： 8. Schools, Groups, and Personalities
カテゴリー2： Personalities
Title
Yamada Akiyoshi
Text (1844-1892)
A patriot (shishi) of the Restoration period and a Meiji military man and politician. Born in 1844 in present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture's Hagi City as the son of a retainer of the Chōshū Domain. His childhood name was Ichinojō and his epistolary name was Kūsai. He studied at the academy Shōkason-juku and also under Ōmura Masujirō. He later joined Takasugi Shinsaku and others in the movement for advocating "reverence for the emperor and the expulsion of foreigners (sonnō jōi)" and distinguished himself in the Boshin civil war of 1868. He took part in the Iwakura Mission of 1871-73, in which he visited Europe and America and researched military organizations and legislation.
In 1874 Yamada was appointed Major General of the Army (rikugun shōshō) and in addition Undersecretary of Justice (shihō-taifu), then changed to the judicial administration, consecutively serving as Secretary of Justice (vshihō-gyō) and Secretary of Internal Affairs (naimu-kyō), in which capacities he was engaged in the compilation of codices such as the civil code (minpō) and commercial law (shōhō). He also stressed education, contributing to the establishment of the Institute for Research in the Japanese Classics (Kōten Kōkyūsho) in 1882, and taking the post of Director of that Institute in 1889, helping to found both Kokugakuin (1890, Institute of National Studies: today Kokugakuin University) and Nihon Hōritsu Gakkō (1892, Japan Law school, the present Nihon University).
Yamada Akiyoshi died suddenly at the age of forty-five while visiting the Ikuno silver mines.

—Ōhara Yasuo

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Yamada Akiyoshi_ Archives Section of Kokugakuin University____