He was born the third son of Takashima Shigeki, a town elder of Nagasaki. His ancestors are said to have been warriors of Takashima District in Ōmi, descended from the Sasaki of the Ōmi Genji. Nagasaki was then the only town in Japan connected with foreign lands, and growing up there turned Shūhan's eyes toward the world from an early age.
He succeeded his father as town elder and later became chief inspector of the Nagasaki Kaisho, which managed Nagasaki's trade. He also studied at the Hakuen Shoin, a school of Chinese learning in Osaka. Learning in Nagasaki of the great gap between Western and Japanese gunnery, he was shocked and came to feel a strong sense of crisis that the country could not be defended as things stood.
Through the Dutch at Dejima he learned Dutch and Western gunnery, gathering guns and cannon at his own expense and studying them repeatedly. In this way he perfected his own Takashima school of gunnery. It was the fruit of efforts that drew on his wealthy family's means as officials involved in trade and on the advantages of Nagasaki.
He granted full mastery of his art to Nabeshima Shigeyoshi, lord of the Takeo territory of the Saga domain, who had become his pupil the previous year. He also presented him with the first cannon he had made, a bronze mortar. Shigeyoshi later became a forerunner of Saga's adoption of Western-style armament, and Shūhan's teaching spread to many places.
Learning that Qing China was losing the Opium War to Britain, he submitted out of a strong sense of crisis a memorial urging the shogunate to modernize its artillery, known as the Tenpō memorial. For Shūhan, the great Qing empire yielding to Western military power was a warning that Japan might meet the same fate.
At Tokumarugahara in Musashi Province he held Japan's first public drill of Western-style artillery and musket units. The soldiers' unfamiliar dress of narrow-sleeved jackets, slim trousers and black conical hats astonished the officials who came to watch. With this success Shūhan was valued by the shogunate as a gunnery expert and was also praised by the senior councillor Abe Masahiro.
By shogunal order he taught Western gunnery to Egawa Hidetatsu, intendant of Nirayama in Izu, and to the hatamoto Shimosone Nobuatsu. The two trained many more pupils, and the Takashima school spread across the country. Egawa later devoted himself to building reverberatory furnaces and coastal batteries, and Shūhan's teaching became a force underpinning coastal defense in the late Edo period.
Held responsible for years of lax management of the Nagasaki Kaisho, he was arrested by the Nagasaki magistrate and imprisoned, and the Takashima house was abolished. The common view is that Torii Yōzō, envious of Shūhan's wealth and fame, accused him of smuggling, but there are other theories. He was placed in the custody of the Okabe domain in Musashi, yet domains secretly sought his teaching.
With Perry's arrival, the situation changed and Shūhan was pardoned and released. During his confinement he had realized that a policy of simply closing the country and guarding the coasts was wrong, and had come to believe Japan should open itself and trade with foreign countries. He therefore submitted to the shogunate a memorial urging opening and trade, known as the Kaei memorial.
He taught gunnery at the Kōbusho, which the shogunate established for training in martial arts and Western-style gunnery. Even amid strong calls to drive away foreigners, he devoted himself to training shogunal gunners. Shūhan, once treated as a criminal, again became the teacher of those charged with defending the country.
He compiled drill manuals such as the Hosō shinshiki, showing Western-style infantry movements. Because the Dutch had required, as a condition of teaching him, that military terms always be given in Dutch, Shūhan is said to have given all commands in Dutch. His pupils later replaced the commands with Japanese.
He died without seeing the Meiji Restoration. The commands his pupils rendered into Japanese are said to have spread, gradually changing form, as the commands of Japan's later army and schools. Tokumarugahara, the site of his drill, was later named Takashimadaira after Shūhan, and the name still preserves his memory today.
Abe MasahiroMatthew C. PerryEgawa Hidetatsu
Matthew C. PerryPhilipp Franz von SieboldUtagawa HiroshigeUtagawa KuniyoshiUdagawa YōanTokugawa NariakiEgawa HidetatsuKawaji Toshiakira
People of the Edo period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.