Hattori Ichizo was born 1851 in the Choshu Clan in the Yamaguchi prefecture. He came to Rutgers College to study the sciences, and was a member of the graduating class of 1875 with honors. During his time at the Rutgers, he was an active member of the community and was a brother of Beta Theta Pi and Epsilon Chi fraternities. In fact, he was the Beta Theta Pi’s first non-Caucasian member of the fraternity, amongst all its chapters around the United States.

Later after graduating from Rutgers, he worked for the Ministry of Education, where he claimed, specifically to foreign audiences, that the Japanese had the highest levels of education. He seemed to want to emphasize the Japanese people’s level of intelligence, and depict that they were more advanced than other east Asian countries. He eventually became the general manager of one of Japan’s most renowned universities, the University of Tokyo.

Around 1884-85, Hattori Ichizo became the governor of Nagasaki and Hyogo prefectures, as well as the Iwate prefecture after it was damaged by a tsunami in 1896 in efforts to make repairs. He also was an active member of the House of Peers and Japanese Commissioner to the International Congress at Brussels. For all his hard work, in 1918, he was awarded with the first decoration of the Rising Sun by emperor Taisho, one of the highest recognitions in Japan. He died in 1929.

Romano, Camille D. “Hattori Ichizo – Rutgers Meets Japan: Early Encounters,” January 31, 2020. https://sites.rutgers.edu/rutgers-meets-japan/hattori-ichizo/

References:

Ichizo Hattori. 1875. RUcore: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3TD9XT1

Nakagawa, Tomomi. (2014). Lafcadio Hearn and Ichizo Hattori. Japanese Association for the History of Geology.