Background
Takamine Jōkichi was born on November 3, 1854 in Toyama, Japan. His father was a doctor, his mother a member of a family of sake brewers. He spent his childhood in Kanazawa, capital of present-day Ishikawa Prefecture in central Honshū.
Bronx, New York
The mausoleum of Jokichi Takamine in Woodlawn Cemetery
譲吉 高峰
Takamine Jōkichi was born on November 3, 1854 in Toyama, Japan. His father was a doctor, his mother a member of a family of sake brewers. He spent his childhood in Kanazawa, capital of present-day Ishikawa Prefecture in central Honshū.
He learned English as a child from a Dutch family in Nagasaki and so always spoke English with a Dutch accent.
Jokichi Takamine was educated in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, graduating from the Tokyo Imperial University in 1879. He did postgraduate work at University of Glasgow and Anderson College in Scotland. He returned to Japan in 1883 and joined the division of chemistry at the newly established Department of Agriculture and Commerce.
Takamine continued to work for the department of agriculture and commerce until 1887. He then founded the Tokyo Artificial Fertilizer Company, where he later isolated the enzyme takadiastase, an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of starch. Takamine developed his diastase from koji, a fungus used in the manufacture of soy sauce and miso. Its Latin name is Aspergillus oryzae, and it is a "designated national fungus" (kokkin) in Japan. In 1899, Takamine was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Engineering by what is now the University of Tokyo.
Takamine went as co-commissioner of the Cotton Exposition to New Orleans in 1884, where he met Lafcadio Hearn and Caroline Hitch, his future wife. He later emigrated to the United States and established his own research laboratory in New York City but licensed the exclusive production rights for Takadiastase to one of the largest US pharmaceutical companies, Parke-Davis. This turned out to be a shrewd move - he became a millionaire in a relatively short time and by the early 20th century was estimated to be worth $30 million.