Doctor and scholar of Western medicine. Born in Kokura in the Buzen domain, he moved to Edo and became a disciple of ADACHI Choshun to learn Western medicine. He went to Nagasaki to study with SATO Taizen and learned under Johannes Erdewin Niemann, the head of the Dejima Dutch Trading House. After that, he opened a clinic. First a domain doctor of the Kokura domain, he later became a medical officer of the Tokugawa shogunate. After the Meiji Restoration, he served as the deputy director of the Shizuoka domain Numazu Hospital. After joining the Meiji government, he became the principal of Osaka Medical School (later the University of Osaka College of Medicine) and a court physician to the empress dowager.