Background
Omura Masujiro was born in what is now part of Yamaguchi city, in the former Chōshū Domain, where his father was a rural physician.
Omura Masujiro was born in what is now part of Yamaguchi city, in the former Chōshū Domain, where his father was a rural physician.
From a young age, Omura had a strong interest in learning and medicine, travelling to Osaka to study rangaku under the direction of Ogata Kōan at his Tekijuku academy of western studies when he was twenty-two. He continued his education in Nagasaki under the direction of German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, the first European to teach Western medicine in Japan. His interest in Western military tactics was sparked in the 1850s and it was this interest that led Omura to become a valuable asset after the Meiji Restoration in the creation of Japan's modern army.
After studying in Nagasaki, Omura returned to his village at the age of twenty-six to practice medicine, but accepted an offer from daimyo Date Munenari of nearby Uwajima Domain in 1853 to serve as an expert in Western studies and a military school instructor in exchange for the samurai rank that he was not born into.
He traveled to Edo in 1856 in the retinue of Date Munenari and was appointed a teacher at the shogunate's Bansho Shirabesho institute for western studies. During this time, he also continued his education by learning English under the Yokohama-based American missionary James Curtis Hepburn.
In 1861, Choshu domain hired Omura back to teach at the Choshu military academy and to reform and modernize the domainal army, they too gave him the ranking of samurai.
After the Meiji Restoration, Omura was appointed to the post of hyobu daiyu, which was equivalent to the role of Vice Minister of War in the newly created Army-Navy Ministry.
He was appointed Minister of Military Affairs (1869) and planned adoption of a conscription system, French Army system and abolition of sword-carrying by samurai. While he was in Kyoto inspecting prospective sites for military schools,he was assassinated at an inn by agents of conservatives who were dissatisfied with his reform plans.