山路愛山 Yamaji Aizan

              Yamaji Yakichi – Aizan was a pen name he adopted when he was around twenty years old – was born in 1864 in the mansion of the Astronomical Institute of the Tokugawa shogunate located in Edo. The Yamaji were one of the four families that held the hereditary post of official astronomers to the shogunate. Following the abolition of the institute after the Meiji Restoration, however, Yamaji moved to Shizuoka together with his grandparents in the spring of 1869. This move not only involved the Yamaji family but also many other former retainers of the Tokugawa, who moved there as part of the political settlement following the Restoration. As a young child Yamaji was educated by his grandparents but in 1874 he began to attend a local school. By 1878 the family was no longer able to afford the tuition fees so he changed from being a student to working as a teacher at the same school. In 1881 he became a clerk in the police department and in 1882 he started to attend a local English school part-time where he studied the work of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. In 1884, with a group of friends, he began to study English conversation at the local Methodist church, and in 1885 the entire group converted to Christianity. Yamaji himself was baptised in March 1886.

The Astronomical Institute in Asakusa, Tokyo