Baron Dairoku Kikuchi was a mathematician, educator, and education administrator in Meiji period Empire of Japan.
Background
Kikuchi was born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), as the second son of Mitsukuri Shuhei, himself the adopted son of Mitsukuri Genpo, a Shogunate professor Kikuchi Dairoku changed his name from Mitsukuri upon succeeding as the heir to his father"s original family. The requisite legal procedures were completed in 1877.
Education
University of Cambridge. University of London. Street John"s College.
Career
After attending the Bansho Shirabesho, the Shogunal institute for western studies, he was sent to Great Britain, in 1866, at age 11, the youngest of a group of Japanese sent by the Tokugawa shogunate to the University College School, on the advice of the then British foreign minister Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby. Kikuchi returned to England in 1870 and was the first Japanese student to graduate from the University of Cambridge (Street John"s College) and the only one to graduate from the University of London in the 19th century. His specialization was in physics and mathematics.
In 1884 he attended the International Meridian Conference in Washington, District of Columbia and the master class of Kelvin in Baltimore.
After returning to Japan, Kikuchi later became president of Tokyo Imperial University, Minister of Education (1901–1903,) and president of Kyoto Imperial University. His textbook on elementary geometry was the most widely used textbook in Japan until the end of World World War World War II Kikuchi was made a baron under the kazoku peerage system in 1902 and was the eighth president of the Gakushūin Peers" School.
In 1917 he became the first president of Rikagaku Kenkyūsho, but died that same year. His father Mitsukuri Shuhei had taught at the Bansho-shirabesho (Institute for Investigating Barbarian Books).
Japanese students in Britain
Tokyo Imperial University
University of Cambridge
Anglo-Japanese relations
Imperial Rescript on Education
Japanese at Cambridge
Other Japanese who studied at the University of Cambridge after Kikuchi:
Inagaki Manjirō
Ōkura Kishichirō
Suematsu Kenchō
Tanaka Ginnosuke
British contemporaries at Cambridge
British contemporaries of Kikuchi at the University of Cambridge:
Donald MacAlister
Charles Algernon Parsons.
Membership
Japan Academy]
Kikuchi was a member of one of Japan"s most distinguished and outstanding families of scholars, the, at the centre of Japan"s educational system in the Meiji Era. Hayashi Tadasu — another member of the group sent to Britain in 1866, by the Bakufu.