Viscount Enomoto Takeaki (榎本 武揚, 5 October 1836-26 October 1908) was a Japanese Navy admiral faithful to the Tokugawa Shogunate who fought against the new Meiji government until the end of the Boshin War, but later served in the government as one of the founders of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Enomoto was born as a member of a samurai retainer family of the Tokugawa clan in the Shitaya district of Edo (modern Taito, Tokyo). Enomoto started learnin...
more
Viscount Enomoto Takeaki (榎本 武揚, 5 October 1836-26 October 1908) was a Japanese Navy admiral faithful to the Tokugawa Shogunate who fought against the new Meiji government until the end of the Boshin War, but later served in the government as one of the founders of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Enomoto was born as a member of a samurai retainer family of the Tokugawa clan in the Shitaya district of Edo (modern Taito, Tokyo). Enomoto started learning Dutch in the 1850s, and after Japan's "opening" by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, he studied at the Tokugawa bakufu's Naval Training Center in Nagasaki and at the Tsukiji Warship Training Center in Edo.
At the age of 26, Enomoto was sent to the Netherlands to study western techniques in naval warfare and to procure western technologies. He stayed in Europe from 1862 to 1867, and became fluent in both the Dutch and English languages.
Enomoto returned to Japan onboard the battleship Kaiyō Maru, a steam warship purchased from the Netherlands...
less
