Botanist, poet. In 1870, he went to the United States by order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but resigned from his post after arrival. He studied botany at Cornell University. He returned to Japan in 1876. He became the first professor of the Department of Botany in the Faculty of Science of the Imperial University of Tokyo, which was set up the next year. He studied botanical classification and was involved in the collection, classification and sampling of plants in various parts of the country. He made contributions to the introduction of modern botany in Japan. In addition, he was engaged in the diffusion of Romanization. He published Shintai Sisho (A Selection of New Style Verse) (1882) in collaboration with Toyama Masakazu and Inoue Tetsujiro and was a pioneer of the Shintaishi movement.