Born sixty-four years ago at Kagoshima, the chief town of the famous province of Satsuma, in Kiu-shiu, Marshal Iwao Oyama is a nephew of the renowned Marshal Saigo Takamori, and a type of the _bushi_ of which the nucleus of the army of Japan was largely composed. He was in his twenty-fifth year when the war of the Restoration took place, a contest that it will be remembered arose between the followers of the Sho-gun and those of the Dai-mios or feudal chieftains who had practically ruled their own provinces in the south and west. On the side of the Sho-gun were ranged the Tokugawa barons, and the northern clans generally, while for the south and progress there stood the men of Satsuma, Nagato, Hizen, and Tosa. By Japanese Nagato is commonly known nowadays as Cho-shiu, and Satsuma is officially styled Sasshiu. Satsuma had taken the lead in many respects in introducing the arts and sciences of the Occident into Japan, for she had not only established a cotton mill at Kagoshima some years before, and owned several very useful steamers of small tonnage, but had drilled a body of troops on the western system. It was this foreign-drilled corps that took so prominent a part in the operations near Kioto, in which the Shogun’s adherents were signally defeated and the opposition of the northern clans finally overcome. Oyama took his share of the hard work entailed in this memorable struggle, and was head of one of the Satsuma companies that shone conspicuously in the engagement at Fushimi, a village situated midway between Osaka and Kioto, close to the existing main line of railway. When the civil war was over, and the reign of Mei-ji had fairly begun under the beneficent auspices of the present occupant of the throne, the organisation of a regular army on an Occidental model occupied the attention of all who were interested in the rise of their country to power and wealth. If she would take her place among the nations of the West, skilled as they were in all the arts of modern warfare, Japan must provide herself, it was seen, with the means of securing peace within her borders to develop her energies and call up all her resources. Peace, as no people were better able than the Satsuma clansmen to perceive, was only to be attained by making the most complete preparations for war. Satsuma was foremost in advocating the adoption and assimilation of every improvement in the mechanical arts and the earnest study of every science that would be likely to promote the welfare of the nation, more especially those that might lead to military success if ever the country should be plunged into hostilities with either an Eastern or a Western Power. [Illustration: MARQUIS OYAMA]