Nitobe Inazo (1862 - 1933)

Educator, cultural interpreter, and civil servant. He spent his early years in the northern Hinshu city of Morioka. He studied agricultural economics at the new Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University), became a Christian,* and in 1883 entered Tokyo University for further instruction in English literature and economics. Desiring to become a "bridge" between Japan and the West, he studied in the United States for three years and in Germany for another three years. By the time he returned to Japan he had published one book in English and German and had earned the first of five doctoral degrees (two of them honorary) As a professor at his alma mater in Sapporo, Nitobe lectured widely, reorganized the curriculum, and helped administer two private schools. In 1897 he resigned because of poor health and went with his American wife to the United States, where he wrote his famous Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1899) He was head of the first Higher School in Tokyo from 1906 to 1913, when he became a professor of colonialism policy at Tokyo University. In 1918 he attended the Versailles Peace Conference and remained in Geneva as the under-secretary-general of the League of Nations. He returned to Japan in 1926 and became chairman of the Institute of Pacific Relations. Nitobe's numerous writings in English made him the best known Japanese writer in the west during his lifetime. He also wrote widely on moral cultivation, the subject of his work Shuyo (1911, Self Cultivation). From Kodansha's Japan An Illustrated Encyclopedia