Shiro Shiba was a famous political activist and novelist during the Meiji period. He is best known for writing Strange Encounters with Beautiful Women, which revolves around a Japanese man from Aizu who goes by the quasi-Chinese pseudonym of Tōkai Sanshi, a Chinese man, a Spanish woman named Yolanda and an Irish woman named Colleen.
Background
Shiro Shiba was born on January 11, 1858 Chiba, Japan. During the siege of Aizu castle, his grandmother, mother, and two sisters committed suicide so that the men in the family could do battle without distractions. Aizu castle fell to the forces of the new Meiji government and the domain surrendered.
Education
Shiba studied at Toogijuku, a private academy in Hirosaki that trained talented young man for government service and attracted many former samurai from the northeastern domain.
From 1879 to 1885, Shiba Shirō received funds from the Iwasaki family to pursue further education in the United States. He remained in America for seven years, first attending Pacific Business College in San Francisco, and then went to Boston, where he briefly studied at Harvard. Finally, he went to Philadelphia and studied at the University of Pennsylvania from 1881 to 1885, obtaining a Bachelor of Finance from the Wharton School.
Career
In 1885, shortly after his return from the United States, Shiba published the first two volumes of Kajin no kigū. When the Satsuma Rebellion broke out in 1877, he was recruited by the Meiji government forces as a temporary officer.
He started the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun (newspaper) (1888) and wrote Kajinпо-Kіgy, a political novel, which was very well received by the public. The novel inspired love of independence and patriotism. The hero of the story is a retainer of the Aizu Clan who travels abroad, visiting countries which were once prosperous and hobnobbing with patriots of various countries.
In 1891, Shiba won a seat in the new national legislative assembly, to which he was reelected eight times. He was appointed Agriculture and Commerce Vice-Minister and Foreign Office counselor in the meantime.