Kodama Gentarō

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Count Kodama Gentarō
16 March 1852 – 23 July 1906
Japanese General Count Kodama Gentarō
Place of birth	Tokuyama, Sūo province Japan
Place of death	Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Years of service	1881–1907
Rank	General
Commands	Imperial Japanese Army
Battles/wars	Boshin War Satsuma Rebellion First Sino-Japanese War Russo-Japanese War
Awards	Order of the Golden Kite (first class)
Other work	Cabinet Minister

Gentaro Kodama (兒玉源太郎, Kodama Gentarō^?) (16 March 1852 – 23 July 1906) was a Japanese general and government minister of the Meiji period. He was instrumental in establishing the modern Imperial Japanese military.

Born in Tokuyama, Sūo province (modern Yamaguchi prefecture), from a samurai class family, Kodama began his military career fighting in the Boshin War and in suppressing the Satsuma Rebellion, after which he enrolling in the Osaka Heigakuryo (大阪兵学寮）(military training school). He was commissioned in 1881.

Kodama was appointed head of the Army Staff College, where he worked with German Major Jakob Menckel to reorganize the modern Japanese military after the German system.

He studied military science in Germany, and was appointed vice-minister of war in 1892.

After his service in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5), he became Governor-General of Taiwan. During his tenure, he did much to improve on the infrastructure of Taiwan and to alleviate the living conditions of the inhabitants. Having proved himself an excellent administrator, Kodama spent the following decade serving as Minister of the Army under Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, retaining the post and taking on the concurrent roles of Minister of Home Affairs and Education under the following Prime Minister Katsura Taro.

In 1904, Kodama was promoted to full general. However, he was asked by Field Marshal Oyama Iwao to be Chief of General Staff of the Manchurian Army during the Russo-Japanese War. This was a step down for him, but he nevertheless chose to take the position; it was a sacrifice which elicited much public applause. Throughout the Russo-Japanese War it was understood that his genius guided the strategy of the whole campaign, as that of General Kawakami Soroku (川上操六) had done in the First Sino-Japanese War ten years previously. Following the war, he was named chief of the Army General Staff Office, but he died soon afterwards.

General Kodama was raised in rapid succession to the ranks of danshaku (baron), shishaku (viscount) and hakushaku (count), and his death in 1907 of a cerebral hemorrhage was regarded as a national calamity. After his death Emperor Meiji awarded him with the first-ever 1st degree of the Order of the Golden Kite; he later received the ultimate honor of being raised to the ranks of Shinto kami; shrines to his honor still exist at his home town in Shunan, Yamaguchi, and on the site of his summer home on Enoshima, Fujisawa, Kanagawa prefecture.

[edit] References

Ching, Leo T.S., Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. University of California Press (2001). ISBN: 0520225538
Duus, Peter. The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan - the Emergence of a World Power. University of California Press (1998). ISBN: 0520213610.
Hane, Mikiso. Modern Japan: A Historical Survey. Westview Press (2001). ISBN: 0813337569
Harries, Meirion. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Random House; Reprint edition (1994). ISBN: 0679753036
Mutsu, Gorō (1985). "Kodama Gentarō." Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.

edit	Japanese Governors-General of Taiwan
Kabayama Sukenori • Katsura Taro • Nogi Maresuke • Kodama Gentarō • Sakuma Samata • Ando Sadami • Akashi Motojiro • Den Kenjiro • Uchida Kakichi • Takio Izawa • Mitsunoshin Kamiyama • Takeji Kawamura • Eizo Ishizuka • Masahiro Ota • Hiroshi Minami • Kenzo Nakagawa • Seizo Kobayashi • Kiyoshi Hasegawa • Rikichi Ando