Ibuka Hikosaburo (井深彦三郎)
Hikosaburo IBUKA (1868 - 1916) was an army agent in the Meiji Period and a member of the House of Representatives later. He was a feudal retainer of the former Aizu Domain. Kajinosuke IBUKA, his older brother, was a pageboy working for Katamori MATSUDAIRA and later became a missionary and a head master of Meiji Gakuin. Yae IBUKA, his daughter, was a nurse dedicated to relief of leprosy patients.
Brief Personal History
He was from IBUKA family whose members worked as Karo (chief retainer) for the Aizu clan for generations. His father, Takuuemon IBUKA, was a head master of Nisshinkan, a hanko (domain school) of the Aizu Domain and his mother, Yayoko, was a daughter of Tanomo SAIGO, Karo of the Aizu Doman. When Hikosaburo was two, the Boshin War broke out. Aizu clan was defeated and moved to Tonami; he had an impoverished childhood.
He came to Tokyo and learned English in Tsukiji later. He was influenced by his wife's older brother, Sei ARAO, and moved to China in 1886. Afterwards he used his language skills as his advantage and worked as an officer and interpreter for a command center of First Army Division in the Sino-Japanese War; he was also engaged in a military career in the Russo-Japanese War. He was welcomed as an adviser by the Qing government after the war and worked for the development of Manchuria. He was believed to be working as a kind of an undercover agent.
He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1912.
He died in Beijing City in 1916.
Hikosaburo was deeply involved in China all his life and did not care for his family. Because of this, his daughter Yae who was diagnosed with leprosy (later determined as misdiagnose) was placed in a miserable situation at one time.