Background
Mitsuaki Tanaka was born on November 16, 1843 in Kochi, Japan.
光顕 田中
Mitsuaki Tanaka was born on November 16, 1843 in Kochi, Japan.
Mitsuaki Tanaka began his education at the Bumbukan (clan school).
At the age of 20 he went to Kyoto and there became intimate with the loyalists of several clans, and began taking active part in politics. He was appointed judge of Hyogo Prefecture (1868) and under the Meiji Government was sent to Europe and America (1871) as secretary to Envoy Tomomi Iwakura.
Upon return he held the following posts: auditor to the Army (1874), treasurer of the Army (1877), member of the Diet and chief secretary of the Cabinet (1885), chief of the Audit Bureau (1887), chief of the Metropolitan Police (1889), member of House of Peers, created Viscount; chief of the Audit Bureau of the Imperial Household (1891), director of the Peer's School and vice-minister of the Imperial Household, Minister of the Imperial Household (1898-1901), a close confidant of Emperor Meiji, he impressed the necessity for allowing men of intelligence to visit the Shosoin (store house of national treasures in Nara) and ordered the historical documents at the Higashiyama Library at Kyoto to be copied.
He was created Count, and after resigning from government service he became an adviser of the committee that was formed to write the history of Emperor Meiji and founded the Joyo Meiji Kinenkan (a memorial museum) at Oarai (Ibaraki Prefecture), and a hall at the Renkoji Temple in Tama, Tokyo, as a memorial to Emperor Meiji.
