Tōgō Heihachirō

Togo Heihachiro was a Japanese naval officer who rose to gensui, or admiral of the fleet, in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Born in 1848 in Kagoshima in the Satsuma domain, he first saw action as a teenager during the British bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863 and served in the naval battles of the Boshin War, then spent seven years studying in Britain. In 1894, at the start of the First Sino-Japanese War, he sank the transport Kowshing, and in 1903 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet. In the Russo-Japanese War he confined the Russian Pacific naval forces to Port Arthur and then won a decisive victory over the relieving fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, which led Western journalists to call him the Nelson of the East. He died in 1934 and was given a state funeral.