Youth Machida Hisanari was born in 1838 in Shinshōin, an ancient village of the old
Satsuma Province which became a district of
Kagoshima in 1883. He was the eldest son of Machida Hisanaga, head of a samurai family in the service of
Shimazu Narioki, the
daimyō of the
Satsuma Domain. At the age of 19, he left his hometown and moved to
Edo, the capital, in order to continue his studies. Before his return to Satsuma, he spent more than three years at the
Shōhei-zaka Gakumonjo (昌平坂学問所), a state-run academy under the control of the shogunate where
Bakufu officials were trained.
Travel to Europe In 1863, he was promoted to
Ōmetsuke and participated as a military officer in the
Anglo-Satsuma War where he had the future
admiral Tōgō Heihachirō under his command. In the following year, he led a troop of 600 men to defend the Imperial Palace against a group of insurgents. As well as frequent visits to the
British Museum his travels also took him to Paris where he visited both the
Louvre and
National Museum of Natural History. He also participated in the
International Exposition of 1867. During his European journey, he became familiar with the concept of
cultural heritage and the impact of museums and educational programs on the public. In this influential position, he strove to stop the devastation of the national historic heritage caused by the
Meiji policy of separating Shinto and Buddhism and the violent anti-Buddhist movement (
Haibutsu kishaku) it triggered.{{Cite encyclopedia|language=French|author=Christophe Marquet|title=Le Japon moderne face à son patrimoine artistique In 1874, he accepted the position of director of office of the first official
World's Fair in the United States, the
Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia. In 1882 he became the first director of the
Imperial Museum in Tokyo (now called the Tokyo National Museum), but retired from this position later that year.
Retirement and death In 1885 he joined the
Chamber of Elders. In 1889 he left the state apparatus and retired to the Buddhist monastery
Mii-dera in
Shiga Prefecture. Machida died 15 September 1897 in Tokyo. His tomb is located within the grounds of
Kan'ei-ji, a Buddhist temple in the Ueno district of Tokyo, which was the
Bodaiji of the Tokugawa dynasty during the
Edo period (1603–1868). == See also ==