He was born in Nezu, Edo, the eldest son of the shogunal retainer Tanabe Magojirō, who had studied Western-style gunnery. His father died of illness when he was nine months old, and he inherited the house as an infant. His uncle Tanabe Taichi, a shogunal diplomat, became his guardian and had him study Chinese classics and Western learning from early childhood.
After the shogunate fell, his uncle Taichi became a professor at the Numazu military academy of the Shizuoka domain, and the family moved to Numazu. The next year he entered the academy's attached primary school. When his uncle later entered the Foreign Ministry they returned to Tokyo, where he studied English, mathematics and Chinese classics at a nearby school. His uncle's career opened Sakurō's path of learning.
His uncle returned from touring the West with the Iwakura Mission, and Sakurō went to meet him at Yokohama harbor. Seeing a steam engine in the engine room of a foreign steamship, he was strongly drawn to it, became interested in engineering and resolved to become a scientist. This chance encounter set the course of his life as an engineer.
After entering a preparatory school for engineering on his uncle's advice, this year he enrolled in the civil engineering department of the Imperial College of Engineering, which trained Japan's engineers. He studied hard, learning the latest civil engineering from foreign teachers. On completing his fourth year he earned results good enough to be honored as an exceptional student.
He learned that Kyoto governor Kitagaki Kunimichi was planning a canal to bring water from Lake Biwa to Kyoto, to revive a city that had lost vigor after the capital moved to Tokyo. For his graduation research Sakurō traveled to Kyoto to survey and wrote up a plan for the project as his thesis. This thesis would greatly change his fate.
On graduating, on the recommendation of principal Ōtori Keisuke and at Governor Kitagaki's request, he was hired by Kyoto Prefecture. A young man just out of school became chief of the Lake Biwa Canal, a great project without precedent in the country. He tackled the difficult work of tunneling through mountains together with the workers on site.
In the middle of construction he went to America, visiting a town that prospered on canal water power and the mining town of Aspen, which used hydroelectric power. There he decided to change the plan, which had first intended to draw power from waterwheels, to generating electricity from water. This decision later greatly advanced Kyoto's industry.
The Lake Biwa Canal was completed, and the waters of Lake Biwa flowed into Kyoto. For this achievement he was appointed a professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo. That same year, with Enomoto Takeaki as go-between, he married Shizuko, eldest daughter of Kitagaki Kunimichi. The governor with whom he had built the canal also became his father-in-law.
The Keage power station, using canal water, was completed as Japan's first commercial hydroelectric plant. Its electricity ran streetcars through Kyoto and powered factories. That same year he received a doctorate in engineering. His name became widely known as the engineer who supported Kyoto's modernization.
His graduation thesis on the Lake Biwa Canal plan was published in a foreign journal, and the British Institution of Civil Engineers awarded him its highest honor, the Telford Medal. Research from his student days had won world recognition. Meanwhile, this year he caught typhoid fever and was hospitalized, going through a time of battling illness.
At the request of his father-in-law Kitagaki Kunimichi, now governor of Hokkaido, he left the university to head railway construction in Hokkaido. He began surveying a plan for some 1,600 kilometers of trunk lines across Hokkaido and moved there with his family. He named the pass between Tokachi and Ishikari the Karikachi Pass.
As railway chief of the Hokkaido government, he opened the Kamikawa Line connecting Takikawa and Asahikawa. Building railways across vast, bitterly cold land was a string of hardships, but it was a big step in developing Hokkaido's interior. He later inspected the Trans-Siberian Railway and wrote a book on what he saw.
Now a professor at the Imperial University in Kyoto, Sakurō surveyed an undersea tunnel at the government's request, work that led to the later Kanmon Tunnel project. That same year he attended the international road congress in London, the first in which Japan took part, and toured civil engineering works in Europe and North America.
He became dean of the College of Engineering at the Imperial University in Kyoto and trained many engineers. This year his father-in-law Kitagaki Kunimichi, with whom he had built the canal, died. The year before he had lost his uncle Taichi, who raised him, and the year before that his eldest son, a time of successive farewells.
Even after retiring from the university, he remained involved in railway plans across the country, such as the Osaka subway. Kyoto Prefecture erected a monument honoring his achievements while he was still alive. He died this year and was buried at Dainichiyama in Kyoto and Aoyama in Tokyo. The Lake Biwa Canal still sends water to Kyoto today.
Tsubouchi ShōyōKanō JigorōŌyama SutematsuUchimura KanzōMori ŌgaiNitobe InazōOkakura Kakuzō (Tenshin)Tsuda Umeko
People of the Meiji period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.