Bio Godai Tomoatsu (1836-1885)

In the Anglo-Satsuma War of 1864, Godai commanded a ship and was taken prisoner by the Royal Navy. He was chosen to join the Satsuma Mission of 1865, consisting of nineteen members, including observers and students, to embark on what was allegedly a study trip to Europe, but in fact, a mission to procure arms and spinning mills. What was evident, however, was the fact that the Satsuma mission was in blatant defiance of the bakufu's ban on travel to foreign countries.

Godai studied at the University College of London and, after his return to Satsuma, was promoted to the position of the domain's treasurer. He persuaded the daimyō to arm himself in the European style and to purchase more Western weaponry.

While in Europe, the Scottish merchant and arms dealer Thomas Glover introduced Godai to English industrialists and assisted him in negotiations, leading Godai to set up the first modern factory in Japan, the Kagoshima Mill in Satsuma in 1867. As a result of earlier negotiations, the Platt Bros. of Oldham, textile machinery manufacturers from Manchester, dispatched seven of their engineers to Kagoshima to assist Godai in manufacturing and technical training.

Godai also negotiated with Comte des Cantons de Charles Montblanc, a Belgian of French origin, a controversial figure and "Japan buff", to trade natural goods from Satsuma for European arms. Montblanc had come to Japan on a scientific mission and later posed as a somewhat eccentric "Japan expert" in Paris. He studied Japanese with the help of a young Japanese student and later on was described as "nothing more than a one-man enterprise", playing the Satsuma card by pursuing a career as a sole agent for the Satsuma domain. Much to the chagrin of the Tokugawa shogunate, Montblanc managed to represent Satsuma in the Paris World Exhibition of 1867 as an independent country. In time, with the help of Glover and Montblanc, Godai was able to purchase modern warships and other military equipment that Satsuma desperately needed for its looming showdown with the bakufu.

After the Meiji Restoration, Godai became head of the Osaka Customs Department and san'yo (参与, senior counsellor), a position he used to ease tensions between the growing number of foreigners in Japan and xenophobic elements among former samurai. Many conflicts, however, were caused by foreign merchants, who engaged in unethical business practices, swindling the credulous Japanese or refusing to pay wages or rent. Godai's experience with foreigners and his excellent command of English helped to mitigate such situations. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to confront the foreign powers and their representatives, whose traders and captains often complained about his rigid customs and luggage inspections.

He resigned from his official duties in 1869 and devoted himself entirely to his industrial and trading businesses to develop Japan's economy. He founded the Osaka Chamber of Commerce in 1880, the Osaka Stock Exchange, and a business school that later became Osaka University, serving as chairman of both institutions. In 1881, Godai was implicated in the Hokkaido Colonisation Office Scandal, which brought down the administration of Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka. On 25 September 1885, at the age of 49, Godai died of diabetes and was buried in Abeno Cemetery in Osaka.

Links:

• Osaka University

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