Nogi Maresuke (redirected from General Nogi)

Nogi Maresuke

(born December 1849, Edo [Tokyo], Japan—died Sept. 13, 1912, Tokyo) General in Meiji-period Japan. He served as governor of Taiwan (then occupied by Japan) and fought in the Russo-Japanese War. On the death of the Meiji emperor, Nogi and his wife committed ritual suicide by seppuku (self-disembowlment), considered the ultimate samurai act of loyalty. This action affected such Meiji-period writers as Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai (1862–1922) and illuminated the contrast between Japan's feudal past and rapidly modernizing present.

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Nogi Maresuke 

Born Nov. 11, 1849, in Yamaguchi Prefecture; died Sept. 13, 1912, in Tokyo. Count (1907); Japanese army officer; general (1904). Descendant of an ancient samurai family.

Nogi graduated from a military school in 1871. During the war between Japan and China in 1894–95, he commanded a brigade, was promoted to lieutenant general, and was made a baron; he subsequently served as governor-general of Taiwan and a division commander. He was in retirement from 1900 to 1904. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, Nogi was placed in command of the Third Army in June 1904. His army conducted the siege of Port Arthur, which ended in the capitulation of the city, and then played a decisive role in the Mukden battle of 1905. After the war, Nogi served as a member of the emperor’s Supreme War Council and honorary president of a school for the children of aristocrats. At the death of Emperor Mutsuhito, Nogi, true to samurai tradition, committeed hara-kiri.