Matsuura Takeshirō

Name The fourth child of , this is reflected in the or "son and fourth child" component of his given name. Born at the Hour of the Tiger in the Year of the Tiger, the Take element of his name comes from the Japanese for bamboo, with which the tiger is closely associated. Later he switched the character for with that for (as in ).

Life Matsuura Takeshirō was born on the sixth day of the second month of Bunka 15 (1818) in the village of Sugawa , later , now Matsusaka, in what was then Ise Province, now Mie Prefecture.

The young Takeshirō began calligraphy lessons at the local Sōtō Zen temple of at the age of seven.

In Tenpō 4 (1833) he abruptly set out from home, seemingly spurred on not only by wanderlust but also financial indiscretion, having been obliged secretly to sell some family heirlooms to settle debts run up buying books and antique curios. His house began to be frequented by the shishi or "men of high purpose" and he was in contact with sonnō jōi thinkers Aizawa Seishisai and Fujita Tōko, as well as , , , and .

Under the new shōgun Tokugawa Iesada, and with the situation in Ezo in light of Russian activity increasingly a priority, the significance of his endeavours began to receive recognition from the top: in 1855 he was given ten ryō of gold by the bakufu, with twice as much arriving in the next few days from Tokugawa Nariaki, daimyō of Mito Domain, and Date Yoshikuni, daimyō of Sendai Domain. the government chose , substituting the character for for the two characters for , which he had drawn from , the repository of the sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi, one of the Three Sacred Treasures, having first heard of kai as an old Ainu endonym for the Ainu people from an elder encountered during his journey up the Teshio River in 1857; thus was "Hokkaidō" born. Indeed, since he went by the art name , it could even be said his alias became the island's name, and Matsuura Takeshirō is sometimes referred to for these reasons as "the Godparent of Hokkaidō". Some eighty-nine items are catalogued with illustrations and detail as to their provenance in his .

Select writings

(1843) (1844) (1850) (12 volumes) (1850) (14 volumes) (1850) (8 volumes) (1850) (1853) (1859) (32 volumes) (on the 1856 expedition) (1859) (23 volumes) (1859) (62 volumes) (1859) (1860) (1861) (1862) (1863) (1863) (1863) (1865) (8 volumes) (1865) (6 volumes)

Hokkaidō Heritage

In 2018 a series of sixty-nine stelai inscribed with Matsuura Takeshirō's poems, markers denoting places he stayed, and other inscriptions and monuments in his honour was jointly designated Hokkaidō Heritage, an initiative aimed at valorization of the island's natural and cultural heritage, as Traces of Matsuura Takeshirō's Exploration of Ezo. These include: Atsuma: a stele in erected in 1957 in relation to the hundredth anniversary of his two night stay in the vicinity in Ansei 5 (1858) (Municipal Tangible Cultural Property) a marker of the place he stayed, referred to as , on the first night of his exploration of the Teshio River in Ansei 4 (1857), as recorded in his Teshio Diaries; Tsubo no ishi by Matsuura Takeshiro (Sapporo Municipal Central Library).jpg|Tsubo no ishi (1858), a table of distances in Ezo compiled by Matsuura Takeshirō Map of the Oshima Peninsula by Matsuura Takeshio (Hokkaido University Library).jpg|Map of the Oshima Peninsula (1859) by Matsuura Takeshirō (Hokkaido University Library) 実験北蝦夷山川地理取調図 松浦武四郎.jpg|From Experimental Investigations into the Montane and Fluvial Geography of North Ezo (1860) by Matsuura Takeshirō (Hakodate City Central Library) (Municipal Tangible Cultural Property) Hokkai Dōjin juka gosui zu by Kawanabe Kyōsai (Matsuura Takeshirō Memorial Museum).jpg|Hokkai Dōjin Taking a Nap Under the Trees (1886), by Kawanabe Kyōsai (Matsuura Takeshirō Memorial Museum)