Baron Dairoku Kikuchi

Abstract

BARON KIKUCHI, whose death took place on August 19, was one of the most conspicuous among the band of men who modernised education in Japan. He was born in Yedo (now Tokyo) on March 17, 1855, and came of a family of noted scholars. Both his father and grandfather were specially interested in Western learning, and Kikuchi himself early received a strong bias in the direction of scientific study. He was the youngest member of a small group of promising students whom the old Shogunate Government sent to Europe in 1866. Owing to the revolutionary change of government which occurred in Japan in 1868, Kikuchi was recalled home; but two years later he was again ordered abroad, this time to England. After some years spent at school he entered, the London University College in 1873, but ere long passed on to Cambridge, where he graduated as nineteenth wrangler in 1877.