When a family member hurriedly arrived to announce the birth of a son, Hankurō was overjoyed and rushed straight home to raise a toast.

[1] Kodama began his military career by fighting in the Boshin War for the Meiji Restoration against the forces of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868.

As a soldier in the fledgling Imperial Japanese Army, he saw combat during the suppression of the Shinpūren and Satsuma Rebellions.

However, he was asked by Marshal Ōyama Iwao to be Chief of General Staff of the Manchurian Army during the Russo-Japanese War.

[4][6] The postwar historian Shiba Ryōtarō gives him complete credit for Japan's victory at the Siege of Port Arthur, but there is no historical evidence for that, and Kodama kept quiet about his role in the battle.

Kodama was raised in rapid succession to the ranks of danshaku (baron) and shishaku (viscount) under the kazoku peerage system, and his death in 1906 of a cerebral hemorrhage was regarded as a national calamity.