Tetchō Suehiro

Tetchō Suehiro (末広 鐵腸, Suehiro Tetchō, March 15, 1849 – February 5, 1896), born Yūjirō Suehiro (末広 雄次郎, Suehiro Yūjirō), was a Japanese politician, novelist, and journalist.^[1][2] He was proponent of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement.^[3]

Tetchō Suehiro
Tetchō Suehiro.
Born	Yūjirō Suehiro (1849-03-15)15 March 1849 Uwajima, Ehime, Japan
Died	5 February 1896(1896-02-05) (aged 46) Japan
Occupation	Politician, novelist, journalist
Genre	Novels
Notable works	Setchūbai Kakan'ō

Born of samurai lineage in what is now Ehime Prefecture, he was the second son of the family. His father, Teisuke, was an accountant. He graduated from a local samurai school and became a teacher in 1869. Thereafter, he moved to Tokyo and worked for the Ministry of Finance for six years before going into the newspaper business. He was imprisoned twice for challenging the existing free press laws and was instrumental in forming the first national political party. ^[3] He wrote a political, proto-science fiction novel Setchūbai (Plum Blossoms in the Snow, 1886). The income from his books allowed him to travel to the United States and Europe in 1888, around which time he became the temporary travelling companion of Filipino propagandist and patriot Jose Rizal. He would later acknowledge Rizal's influence in another novel, Nanyo no daiharan (The Great Wave in the South Seas).^[4]

In 1890 he was elected in the first national election, but was later ousted because he left the Liberal Party. Suehiro died in 1896 of tongue cancer and was buried in Ehime.^[3]

Major works

Suehiro's major works include:

• Setchūbai (Plum Blossoms in the Snow, 1886)
• Kakan'ō (Songbirds Among Flowers, 1889)

See also

• Japanese literature
• List of Japanese authors
• Bungou Stray Dogs, appears as an antagonist and a part of military police force the "Hunting Dogs"

References

1. Pan-Asianism in modern Japanese history. Saaler, Sven, 1968-, Koschmann, J. Victor. London: Routledge. 2006. ISBN 9781134193806. OCLC 1100434229.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
2. Antony Best; Oliviero Frattolillo (5 October 2015). Japan and the Great War. Springer. pp. 87–. ISBN 978-1-137-54674-6.
3. "Biography of Tetchō Suehiro". japan Literature Enacademic. Retrieved August 15, 2019.
4. Saniel, Josefa (1964). "Jose Rizal and Suehiro Tetcho: Filipino and Japanese Political Novelists" (PDF). Asian Studies. 2 (3): 353–371. Retrieved 30 November 2020.