Gotō Shinpei

Gotō was born in Isawa, Mutsu Province (present-day in Iwate Prefecture) to Gotō Sanetaka, a retainer of the Rusu clan, itself vassal to the warlord Date Masamune of the Sendai domain. Though distinguished with samurai status, the Gotō family was not an affluent one, and ranked somewhere between fifth and twentieth in the Rusu clan hierarchy. In 1868, the Sendai domain joined the alliance of domains in north-eastern Japan (present-day Tohoku) opposed to the Meiji Restoration and was defeated in the Boshin War. As a result, the Gotō family surrendered their samurai status and remained on their native soil as farmers. With the re-organization of Isawa into a prefecture under direct control of the newly formed Meiji government in September 1869, Gotō came to the notice of government officials and was selected to run errands and aid in administration of the new territory. This gave Gotō the opportunity to visit Tokyo in 1871 under the auspices of Kaetsu Ujifusa, who had succeeded Yasuba Yasukazu as senior counselor of Isawa. The trip was largely unproductive, however, and he returned home in 1872.

Though initially reluctant to pursue a career in medicine, at the encouragement of an earlier acquaintance he entered Sukagawa medical school in Fukushima Prefecture aged seventeen, and became a physician at the Aichi Prefectural Hospital in Nagoya after graduation. In 1877, he served as a government medic during the Satsuma Rebellion. At the age of 25, he became president of the Nagoya Medical School.

Having distinguished himself through his work at the Nagoya Medical School and at the military hospital in Osaka during the Satsuma Rebellion, Gotō joined the Home Ministry's medical bureau (衛生局) in 1883, eventually becoming its head. In 1890 Gotō was sent by the Japanese government to Germany for further studies.

While at the ministry, in 1890 he published his Principles of National Health (国家衛生原理) and took part in the creation of new sewage and water facilities in Tokyo. This recommended him to Army Vice-Minister Kodama Gentarō (1852–1906), who made Gotō chief of the Army Quarantine Office looking after the return of more than 230,000 soldiers from the First Sino-Japanese War (1895–95). After the war, Gotō returned to the Home Ministry, but remained involved in overseas affairs, advising the new Japanese administration on Taiwan about health issues. In 1896, Kodama, now governor-general of Taiwan, asked Gotō to join him there, eventually making him the first civilian governor of the island in 1898.

In 1906, Gotō became the first director of the South Manchuria Railway Company. In 1908, he returned to Japan as Minister of Communications and the head of the Railway Bureau (Tetsudōin), under the second Katsura administration. In 1912, Gotō became director of the Colonization Bureau (拓殖局総裁, Takushokukyoku). A close confidant of Prime Minister Katsura, he assisted in the formation of the Rikken Dōshikai political party after the Taishō political crisis in 1912. Following Katsura's death, he allied with Yamagata Aritomo and became Home Minister in 1916, and Foreign Minister in the Terauchi administration in 1918.

A strong believer in Pan-Asianism, Gotō pushed for an aggressive and expansionist Japanese foreign policy during World War I, and strongly endorsed the Japanese intervention in Siberia.

In April 1919, after the March First Movement protests in Korea, Gotō gave a speech in which he defended the violent suppression of the protests and Japan's colonization of Korea. He argued that Korea was uncivilized and that Japan was on a noble civilizing mission.

Gotō served as Mayor of Tokyo City in 1920, and again as Home Minister in 1923, contributing to the reconstruction of Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

In 1924, Citizen Watch's forerunner, the Shokosha Watch Research Watch Institute, produced its first pocket watch, and presented it to mayor Gotō. Gotō named the watch "Citizen" with the hope that the watch, then a luxury item, would one day become widely available to ordinary citizens.

Gotō died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1929 while on a visit to Okayama. His papers are preserved at the Gotō Shinpei Memorial Museum, which is situated in his birthplace, Mizusawa City, in Iwate Prefecture.