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Concept
Maejima Hisoka
Summary
Baron Maejima Hisoka, born 上野 房五郎, was a Japanese statesman, politician, and businessman in Meiji-period Japan. Maejima founded the Japanese postal service, and is known as 郵便制度の父, or "Father of the Postal System".
Maejima was born as Ueno Fusagorō, in the village of Shimoikebe, Echigo Province (present-day the city of Jōetsu, Niigata Prefecture). In 1866 he was adopted into the Maejima family. He was sent to Edo to study rangaku, medical science and English. In the Bakumatsu period he was considered a radical reformer and proponent of westernization. In 1866, he submitted an unsolicited proposal to shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu that Japan abolish the use of kanji (Chinese characters) in its writing system. In 1868, shortly after the Meiji Restoration, he also proposed to Ōkubo Toshimichi that the capital of Japan be moved from Kyoto to Edo.
Ōkubo liked the gall of the upstart Maejima, and appointed him to the new Minbu-shō (Ministry for Popular Affairs) in the new Meiji government, where his outspoken attitude caught the attention of Itō Hirobumi and Ōkuma Shigenobu. He was sent to Great Britain in 1870 to study the workings of the General Post Office, and upon his return to Japan in 1871, his proposals for the creation of a similar system in Japan were quickly approved.
The Japanese post office began operation in April 1871 with a daily service linking Tokyo with Osaka, with 65 post offices in between. Maejima personally coined the Japanese word for postage stamp (kitte). To make the system self-supporting, and to extend the modern economic system into the Japanese countryside, Maejima also created a system of postal savings banks in 1874. This system expanded to include money orders in 1875.
In 1874, Maejima hired a foreign advisor, Samuel M. Bryan, to negotiate a postal treaty with the United States, and to assist in the admission of Japan into the Universal Postal Union in 1877.
In 1878, Maejima was appointed to the Genrōin, and in 1879, he was appointed Vice Minister for Home Affairs.
Official source
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