Shiga Shigetaka

His maternal grandfather, Matsushita Kyūdai, was poor but came from a well-respected lineage of Confucian scholars that influence Shiga into adulthood.

[2] In later years, he met Michimasa Miyazaki, Kumataro Kikuchi, and Saburo Kawato, who all became members of Seikyosha [ja].

However, he resigned the following year due to trouble with the prefectural governor, Seiichiro Kinashi, at a bar, and went to Tokyo to work for Maruzen.

At the end of the same year, he boarded the naval academy's training ship HMS Malacca (1853) to explore the situation of the British occupation of Geomundo, and inspected the Tsushima area, which was tense over the territorial dispute.

After that, he taught geography at the Tokyo English School run by Shigetake Sugiura, and in April 1888, he organized Seikyosha with other members and launched the bulletin "Nihonjin" as an editor.

He advocated nationalism, but it was not an exclusive idea that praised all of Japan and rejected all foreign countries, but according to Shigetaka, it was as follows.

However, Western civilization should be chewed and digested before being adopted..” In 1889, he put up an argument to criticize the inadequacies of Ōkuma Shigenobu's bill to revise the treaties with the west, and formed the opposition movement 'Nippon Club'.

During the First Sino-Japanese War that began in August 1894, he advocated "independent diplomacy" as a representative of the more than 120 newspaper and magazine alliances.

In 1897, he assumed the post of Director General of the Forestry Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, but was dismissed on disciplinary action after criticizing the cabinet.

In 1898, he became an Imperial Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first Okuma Cabinet and worked hard to make Minamitorishima a Japanese territory, but in the fall he resigned due to the resignation of the Cabinet en masse and became a member of the Kensei Hontō.

He worked mainly as a diplomatic adviser and interpreter at the headquarters of the Third Army, and was treated by the military commander, Nogi Maresuke.

In 1905, he visited Sakhalin with the qualification of chief of theTokyo Geographic Society and secretary of the Japan Fisheries Association.

In the neighboring Higashi Park in Okazaki City, there is also 'Nanboku-tei',[7] which was relocated in 1929 from the pavilion that Shigetaka had established in his residence in Tokyo in 1911.