Yatarō Mishima

Mishima was born in Kagoshima Prefecture into a samurai family; his father was Mishima Michitsune, later governor of Tochigi Prefecture.

He studied English and agriculture at the Komaba Agricultural School and then abroad at the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst), where he won the Clark Gold Medal and Grinnell Gold Medal for academic excellence. He also earned a certificate from Harvard University’s summer chemistry school before returning to Japan in 1888. He later received a master’s degree in entomology from Cornell University in 1890.

Mishima entered government service with the government of Hokkaido and later worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce and the Ministry of Communications. He was elected to the House of Peers in 1897 as a viscount member and joined the Kenkyūkai faction.

From 1911 to 1913 he served as president of the Yokohama Specie Bank, overseeing the opening of branches in Calcutta, Harbin, and San Francisco, and helped establish the Franco-Japanese Bank.

On 28 February 1913, Mishima became the eighth Governor of the Bank of Japan, serving until his death in 1919. As governor he pursued monetary restraint and price-stability policies during and after World War I. He encouraged the government to use fiscal surpluses to purchase foreign currency for Bank of Japan reserves and helped establish Japan’s first inter-bank agreement on deposit interest rates.

Mishima died suddenly in office on 7 March 1919, at the age of 51. He was buried in Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

In 1893 Mishima briefly married Ōyama Nobuko, eldest daughter of Field Marshal Ōyama Iwao. She contracted tuberculosis soon after marriage and was divorced in 1895. Their relationship inspired Kenjirō Tokutomi’s 1899 novel Hototogisu (The Cuckoo). He later married Shijō Kaneko, daughter of Marquis Shijō Takataka.

According to family records, Mishima kept a small leather notebook containing a photograph of his first wife until his death.