Goto Shinpei
(1857–1929), Japanese politician. Trained in medicine, Goto made his name as a colonial administrator in imperial Japan's burgeoning empire. He was subsequently influential as a bureaucratic politician in the transition period between oligarchic and political party rule.
Of samurai lineage from the Sendai domain (present-day Miyagi Prefecture), Goto studied medicine in Fukushima and Nagoya and at age twenty-five gained public recognition as the head of Aichi Prefectural Hospital. After two years of study in Germany, he served the empire as chief of the Sanitation Bureau of the Home Ministry (1895–1898), director of the Army Quarantine Office (1895), first head of civilian administration in Taiwan (1898–1906), first president of the South Manchuria Railway Company (1906–1908), and director general, alternately, of the Railway Agency and the Colonization Bureau between 1908 and 1918.
Among Goto's political appointments were membership in the House of Peers (1903–1929), minister of communications (1908–1911, 1912–1913), home minister (1916–1918 and 1923–1924), minister of foreign affairs (1918), and mayor of Tokyo (1920–1923). In addition to his service to the empire, Goto is celebrated for work in reconstruction after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and his attempt to normalize relations with the Soviet Union in 1923.
Further Reading
Hayase, Yukiko. (1974) "The Career of Goto Shinpei: Japan's Statesman of Research, 1857–1929." Ph.D. diss. Florida State University.
Kitaoka Shin'ichi. (1988) Goto Shinpei: Gaiko to vuijon. Tokyo: Chuo koron.
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