MASAMICHI PSUDA was a Scholar and official of the Meiji period.
Background
MASAMICHI PSUDA was born in 1829. He was the son of a samurai of the domain of Tsuyama in present-day Okayama Prefecture. His childhood name was Kikuji and his common name Shin’ichiro; after the Meiji Restoration, he changed his name to Masamichi.
Education
At first he studied Chinese and military science, but after arranging for his younger brother to replace him as family heir, he went to Edo (Tokyo) in 1850, where he studied Dutch learning under Mitsukuri Gempo and Western style military techniques under Sakuma Shozan.
In 1862 he was ordered by the shogunate to go to Holland for further study and, along w'ith Nishi Amane, attended Leyden University, concentrating upon the study of law. He returned to Japan in 1865 and the following year.
Career
From 1857 on, he served in the Bansho Shirabesho, an organization for the study and teaching of Western learning set up by the shogunate.
He became a teacher-official in the Kaiseijo, a school that had grown out of the Bansho Shirabesho and the forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1868 he advanced to the office of metsuke (overseer) in the shogunate bureaucracy. The same year, he published a work entitled Taisei kokuhoron, a work oil legal theory based on the lectures of one Professor Vissering of Leyden University and the first work of its kind to appear in Japan.
At the time of the Meiji Restoration, he accompanied the Tokugawa shogunate family when it moved from Edo to Shizuoka, but the following year, 1869, returned to Tokyo, where he was ordered to act as a penal official and to conduct a survey of different types of deliberative bodies. In 1870 he was summoned to join the newly formed Meiji government, being appointed an official in the Ministry of Justice. He participated in the drawing up of a new legal code. From 1871 on, he also worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, being dispatched to China in connection with his duties in that capacity. From 1873, he took on duties related to the army as well, participating in the drawing up of a criminal code for the army. While carrying out these activities as an official and investigator of legal matters, he was also active as a scholar. In 1873 he joined with Mori Arinori, Nishimura Shigeki, and other intellectual leaders to form the Meirokusha, an organization designed to promote the spread of culture and Westernization, and helped to found the magazine Meiroku Zasshi, which served as its mouthpiece.
He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law in 1903 and died the same year. Although he did not publish many book-length works, a number of articles by him appeared in Meiroku Zasshi and Tokyo Gakushi Kaiin Zasshi.