The defender of Kumamoto Castle was the famous Japanese military general Kodama Gentaro, a famous general of the modern Japanese army, known as the first wise general in the Meiji period, and served as the Minister of War and Minister of the Interior of the Katsura Taro cabinet, and the governor of Taiwan.In the original historical summary, he was one of the main culprits of the invasion of China, and was known as the reincarnation of Toyotomi Hideyoshi because of his special emphasis on the virtuous cycle of military power and economic power.Chief of the General Staff of the Manchurian Army in the Russo-Japanese War, the actual commander of the capture of the Port of Arthur, and the three heroes of the Meiji Army along with Katsura Taro and Kawakami Soroku.The greatest contributor to Japan's rule of Taiwan, China, is a politician in military uniform.The actual founder of the Manchurian Railway.Gentaro Kodama was born in 1852 in present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture, Tokuyama Domain, Zhou Defense Province, Japan.The eldest son of the samurai Kodama Hankuro, the youngest name is Yuriruo, and later called Ken.When he was 9 years old, his father was assassinated by the old school in the domain, and his brother-in-law inherited the family business, and he inherited the family name with the support of the reformists, and his first battle was in the Eastern Crusade in the Boshin War in the first year of the Meiji era in 1868, and later served as an imperial hire of the Ministry of War.Graduated from the predecessor of the Osaka Military Academy.On April 15, 1871, he was first appointed as a second lieutenant in the army, successively served as an adjutant of the 2nd Brigade, and an adjutant of the 19th Infantry Brigade.During the Southwest War of 1877, Saigo Takamori besieged Kumamoto Castle with 35,000 men, and it was Kodama Gentaro who guarded Kumamoto Castle at that time.Seeing that the city could not be defended, some of the defenders remembered that they had bought two cannons from France, but they had never used them.At this time, the dead horse was regarded as a live horse doctor, and he set up a cannon and fired a cannon according to the instructions.Of course, I don't know where the shells have hit, but the enemy soldiers who were still attacking the city just now are hating their father and mother for missing two legs, running faster than rats, and refusing to get even closer to the city no matter what the commander ordered.I was frightened by the loud bang just now.Kodama danced happily and shouted, "Haha, the eight tooth deer ran away, all ran away".This time, Gentaro Kodama became famous in World War I, and later served as the deputy chief of staff of the guards, the commander of the 2nd Infantry Wing and the commander of the Sakura Battalion, and the director of the Kanto Bureau of the General Staff Headquarters.He accompanied the Minister of War Oyama Rock to Europe for military inspections.After returning to Japan, the Japanese Army's study object was changed from France to Germany, and he was appointed Deputy Commander of the Army, First Director of the General Staff Headquarters and Officer of the Army University, Chief of Staff of the Supervision Department and President of the Army University, and assisted the German instructor Major Mekel in training the army.On August 24, 1889, he was promoted to major general and served as chief of staff of the Ministry of Supervising the Army.He was reappointed as Under-Secretary of the Army, Director of the Military Affairs Bureau and Minister of the Ministry of Justice.After the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese War, he served as the chief of staff and temporary quarantine minister of the base camp, and actively planned the war of aggression against China, known as "Xiao He of the Sino-Japanese War".After the Japanese army captured Pyongyang and the naval battles in the Yellow Sea, because of the control of the sea, it immediately organized the Second Army of the Japanese army that invaded China.Since War Minister Oyama Iwa became the commander of the Second Army, he became the de facto Minister of War and practiced everything from the deployment of troops to the material baggage of Japan's war of aggression against China.On August 20, 1895, the Emperor of Japan conferred on him the Order of the Golden Owl and the Order of the Rising Sun, and conferred the title of Baron.Later, he was promoted to commander of the 3rd Division and Minister of the Interior.After the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and Taiwan and the Penghu Islands were ceded to Japan.At that time, in order to quickly pacify Taiwan, Japan adopted the method of suppressing and appeasing Taiwan.However, the first three governors of Taiwan, Shikinori Kayama, Katsura Taro, and Nogi Noshinori, failed to control Taiwan, and in Nogi Noshinori's view, the Japanese rulers gained more than they lost, and their military expenditures were as high as 7 million yen a year, and in addition to Taiwan's taxes, Japan also took out 12 million yuan from China's indemnity in the First Sino-Japanese War to provide military subsidies to Taiwan.As a result of the huge expenditure, Japan not only did not get actual benefits from the cession of Taiwan, but instead became a heavy burden for Japan, and the idea of betraying Taiwan was born, and then Prime Minister Matsukata was moved.After a series of behind-the-scenes activities, it was initially decided to sell Taiwan to France for 15 million francs and 100 million yen.In 1898, Ito Hirobumi re-became the prime minister of Japan, and at a meeting of military and political leaders held under his auspices, Nogi Noshinori formally put forward his theory of selling Taiwan, and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also resolutely supported Japan's idea of selling Taiwan.Gentaro Kodama stood up and spoke in disagreement, saying: "I believe that Taiwan is a barrier to southern Japan, and its military value is very great, and it cannot be sold to France.In order to get Taiwan, we spent so much effort and killed so many people.If Taiwan is sold to other countries, it will not be worth it in the long run.As for Governor Nogi's mention of Taiwan's inability to govern, I don't think it's that Taiwan is difficult to govern, but that the officials we manage are incompetent.If the Prime Minister feels that there is no governor in the government to govern Taiwan, I am willing to go. ”Immediately after Kodama took office, he implemented a series of new colonial measures in Taiwan: militarily, Kodama Gentaro brutally suppressed Taiwanese compatriots, he implemented the armor protection system, and implemented the law of joint sitting.Countless killings.However, on the other hand, Kodama adopted a soft policy of adding "sugar in addition to the whip".With regard to the bad habit of opium smoking that the common people liked, it was changed from purging to "monopoly," and it also carried out activities to respect the elderly by "feasting on the old people's classics," and the "Yangwen Society" attached importance to the commendation activities of the elites who read and did business.Economically, Kodama Gentaro implemented a monopoly system of salt, camphor, tobacco, alcohol, and opium, and wantonly exploited the Taiwanese people.In order to extract more oil and water from Taiwan's peasants, Kodama Gentaro promulgated Taiwan's cadastral rules and land survey rules, and organized a large number of people to re-measure the entire Taiwan's land.Through this measurement, Taiwan's cultivated land area has doubled, and Japan's land tax revenue to Taiwan has also doubled.What satisfies the Japanese authorities the most is that Gentaro Kodama frantically plundered all kinds of resources and materials in Taiwan, thus benefiting Japan greatly.At that time, sugar was a very scarce commodity, and the price sometimes rose several times a day, and Taiwan's soil and climate were very suitable for growing sugarcane, so Kodama Gentaro forced Taiwanese farmers to grow sugarcane.Every year after the sugar cane harvest, the Japanese colonial officials instructed the sugarcane farmers to make it into raw sugar, buy it all at a low price, and then ship it to Japan for fine processing, so that the price of sugar increased exponentially.Taiwan's jaggery has been continuously shipped to Japan, which has not only made the Japanese authorities make a lot of money, but also solved the employment problem of many unemployed people in Japan.The series of colonial policies pursued by Gentaro Kodama in Taiwan made the Japanese authorities taste the sweetness, and no one ever mentioned the matter of selling Taiwan to other countries anymore.Kodama served in Taiwan for more than eight years, almost the longest of any governor.After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Gentaro Kodama was still the governor of Taiwan, but he had returned to the military department, and Goto Shinpei, the civil affairs chief who had taken office at the same time as him, became the de facto ruler of Taiwan.Japanese political circles commented that Kodama Goto ushered in an era and laid the foundation for Taiwan's colonial rule.In September 1903, the contradictions between Japan and Russia deepened day by day, and Major General Yozuzo Tamura, who was then the deputy chief of staff, was known as the reincarnation of Takeda Shingen because of his cautious use of troops, and Lieutenant General Ogawa Masa, who was known as Uesugi Kenshin, who was bold in the use of troops, and said that he died of illness.After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, he was promoted to army general and served as chief of staff of Marshal Oyama Iwa, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Manchurian Army.On July 14, 1904, he invaded China with the Japanese army.Since then, Japan's military affairs in China have been planned and decided by Japan.During the Japanese attack on Lushun, they always paid attention to the battle situation in Lushun, and went to Lushun twice to inspect the battle situation and supervise the battle.On August 19, after the Japanese army launched a general attack on Lushun, the attack was blocked and suffered heavy losses.On September 15, Kodama Gentaro rushed from Liaoyang to Lushun, and ordered Nogi to change his original tactics, focusing on the 203 Heights, and returning to Liaoyang on October 5, but Lushun still had a long time to attack.On December 1 of the same year, Gentaro Kodama rushed from Liaoyang to Lushun with a warrant from Marshal Oyamaiwa, ordering Nogi Noshinori to hand over the command and let him personally command.Looking at Nogi's concentrated military forces to focus on attacking the 203 heights, the Russian army also transferred reserves to concentrate military forces to focus on counterattack and defense.As a result, it was a stalemate, and after Kodama intervened in the command, there were two adjustments, both in artillery.The heavy artillery team concentrated on the west front in one day, completed the concentration of artillery fire, and suddenly increased the artillery fire on the 203 heights on the west front.Nogi said worriedly, what if the artillery team in the east was withdrawn and the Russians came out to fight back.Kodama was furious, and I was worried that he wouldn't come out and fight back.The second is to change the mode of artillery infantry attack, ordering that the artillery does not stop firing when the infantry is assaulting.As mentioned above, the Russian army on the hill lost the time to occupy the position after the shelling in the usual mode to organize defensive shooting, and was unable to use reserves to support the threatened position.From Kodama's intervention in the command of the Battle of Arthur to the capture of the 203 Heights, it can be seen that his people are very good at calm calculations.On December 6, the Japanese finally captured Heights 203 and won a crucial victory in the capture of Arthur, and their firepower controlled the entire city and port of Arthur.With the victory assured, he returned to the Japanese headquarters in Liaoyang on December 10.After that, the Japanese offensive was in full swing, and after a month the Russian army was forced to surrender.On March 23, 1905, after the victory of the Japanese army in the Battle of Mukden, Gentaro Kodama was ordered to return to Japan to report on the situation of the battle.Deputy Chief of Staff of Nagaoka went to pick him up at Shimbashi Station.When Kodama saw Nagaoka's split, she asked if she had any eyebrows about the peace talks, and when she heard Nagaoka say that she didn't have eyebrows, she scolded bitterly: "Once the war starts, the biggest issue is how to end it."
You don't even understand this, what are you doing" This Nagaoka is a student he trained as the president of the Army University.Later, together with the upper echelons of the army, he withstood the pressure of the people, signed the Portsmouth Peace Treaty with Russia, and drove the Russian power out of South Manchuria.During his return to China, he proposed to the Japanese base camp to set up a general military station supervision department subordinate to the Manchurian Army, establish a civil affairs chief department subordinate to the general military station supervision department, and renovate the railway to increase transportation capacity.These suggestions were quickly adopted by the Japanese, and from then on he became the chief of the general staff of the Manchurian Army, and effectively became the chief of the Japanese army's rule in Dalian and the northeastern occupied areas.He was also the chief planner of the 5 million Japanese immigrants in Manchuria.In his opinion, Manchuria was obtained by Japan at a cost of 200 million yen and 100,000 deaths, and China had to shed blood if it wanted to recover Northeast China.In September 1906, at the "Consultation Meeting on the Manchurian Question," the Chief of Staff Kodama Gentaro said: "Is it necessary to appoint an appointment to study the sovereignty issue of Manchuria, and is it necessary to set up an official office to take charge of this issue?"
However, this suggestion was rejected by the important minister Ito Hirobumi at that time: "There is no doubt that Manchuria is not Japanese territory, and Manchuria is Qing territory."
But that didn't stop Kodama from having ambitions.At the meeting, Kodama Gentaro did not tire of expounding in detail the policy of colonial rule over Dalian, including land, harbors, industry, education, taxation, police, sanitation, roads, electricity, and even crematoriums and cemeteries.According to the Peace of Portsmouth, Japan seized the Dalian lease and the right to operate the South Manchurian Railway from Tsarist Russia.In January 1906, he was appointed chairman of the Manchurian Business Investigation Committee.On July 13, he was appointed chairman of the "Manchurian Railway" by the Japanese cabinet.On November 26, 1906, Japan established the "South Manchuria Railway Company" in Tokyo, and he called his right-hand man in Taiwan, Goto Shinpei, to appoint him as the president of the Manchurian Railway Company.After the Russo-Japanese War, Marshal Yama Youpeng was afraid, and always felt that the tsar would come back to take revenge.It was proposed to expand the current 17 divisions to 25 in peacetime and 50 in wartime.Why 50 because the divisions that Tsarist Russia can mobilize in the Far East are said to be 50.However, the chief of staff, General Kodama, resolutely opposed it, and the basis was very simple: Is there a national strength to maintain 25 divisions?
Kodama's proposal was to increase the number of divisions by two, adding the Guards Division to a total of 20, doubling the number to 40 in wartime.That's barely enough.However, the Minister of War, Terauchi Masatsuki, was adamantly opposed to Kodama's plan.In the midst of the quarrel, on July 23, 1906, Gentaro Kodama died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 55.On the day of his death, he was posthumously awarded the title of Shoji, the Order of the Golden Eagle of the First Class, and the Order of the Rising Sun.The following year, he was posthumously made an earl.There is such a No. 1 fierce general plus a wise general to command and defend the city.The Chinese army's attack on Kumamoto Castle was really the biggest challenge for the Chinese army after entering Japan.t1706231537: