A retainer of the shogunate and a statesman at the end of the Edo period. Kaishu was his art name; his childhood name was Rintaro, and he later took the names Yoshikuni and Yasuyoshi. He trained in swordsmanship and also took up Dutch learning, studying navigation and gunnery at the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre. He argued that Japan should open relations with foreign countries at once, absorb their culture, and make itself strong. Though the son of a poorly-off bannerman, he stood out from a young age, submitting a memorandum to the shogunate at the time of Perry’s arrival. This made him a target of the anti-foreign party; Ryoma Sakamoto came to assassinate him, and instead was persuaded and became his pupil. In 1860 he crossed to America and back as captain of the Kanrin Maru. The success of that mission gave him a strong voice within the shogunate, and he was appointed commissioner of warships. He was later placed under house arrest over the Ikedaya incident, but when the shogunate’s second Choshu expedition failed he was made plenipotentiary for the peace and brought it about. After the restoration of imperial rule, when the imperial army advanced east along the Tokaido, he made contact with Takamori Saigo, a senior officer of that army and an old acquaintance, and after three days of talks achieved the bloodless surrender of Edo, saving the city from fire. After the Meiji Restoration he held high office several times — councillor, Minister of the Navy, privy councillor — but stood apart from the struggle for power and seems rather to have lived at ease.