Matasaburō Watanabe

Who They Were

Matasaburō Watanabe (渡辺又三郎, Watanabe Matasaburō) was a Japanese lawyer and politician of the late Edo and Meiji eras. Born in 1850 and dying in 1910, he lived through the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the entire transformation of Japan into a modern state. He built his career in Hiroshima Prefecture, where he practised law and entered politics, serving in the Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly and later in the national House of Representatives. At the end of his life he became Mayor of Hiroshima, holding the office from 9 September 1909 until his death on 3 July 1910.

Life and Career

Watanabe was born in 1850, in the third year of the Kaei era (嘉永, Kaei), during the Edo period. The Edo period ran from 1603 to 1868, a span of more than two and a half centuries during which Japan was governed by the Tokugawa shogunate from Edo, the city now called Tokyo. A child born in 1850 would have been eighteen years old when the shogunate fell in 1868 and the Meiji Restoration returned formal power to the emperor. Watanabe's adult life therefore unfolded entirely within the Meiji period's project of building modern institutions — a parliament, a legal profession, a press, and elected local government.

He trained as a lawyer and practised in Hiroshima Prefecture, in the western part of Japan's main island. He served as Vice President of the Hiroshima Lawyers' Club, a position that placed him among the senior figures of the prefecture's legal community. He was also among the owners of the Chugoku Shimbun (中国新聞, Chūgoku Shinbun), the Hiroshima-based newspaper whose name refers to the Chūgoku region, the western district of Honshu in which Hiroshima sits. Ownership of a regional newspaper in this period meant influence over how local politics and commerce were reported, and it tied Watanabe to the commercial as well as the professional elite of the city.

Watanabe entered elected politics at the prefectural level, serving as a member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly. He later won election to the House of Representatives (衆議院, Shūgiin), the lower chamber of the national parliament, the Imperial Diet. The Diet had been established under the Meiji Constitution, which took effect in 1889, and its first general election was held in 1890. Members of the House of Representatives were elected by a restricted franchise of male taxpayers, so a seat in the chamber represented a substantial political base in a district.

His final public office was the mayoralty of Hiroshima. He took office on 9 September 1909 and served until 3 July 1910, when his tenure ended with his death. He was sixty years old.

Why They Matter

Watanabe belongs to the generation that carried Japan from samurai rule to parliamentary government, and his career traces the path that many men of that generation followed: professional training in the new legal system, local elective office, a national seat, and finally a senior municipal post. His membership in the House of Representatives places him among the early cohorts of Japanese legislators who made the Imperial Diet a working institution rather than a decorative one.

His association with the Chugoku Shimbun ties him to one of the enduring institutions of western Japan. A regional newspaper in the Meiji era was not merely a business; it was a channel through which local notables shaped public opinion and coordinated with national parties. That Watanabe combined law, newspaper ownership, and elected office in a single career shows how tightly interwoven those spheres were in provincial Japan.

His mayoralty of Hiroshima, though it lasted less than a year, put him at the head of a city that was rapidly becoming a major military and administrative centre. He died in office, and the brevity of his term means his record as mayor is defined by the fact of holding the post rather than by a long programme of reform.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 渡辺又三郎. In kana it is わたなべ またさぶろう, and in romaji it is Watanabe Matasaburō. Japanese names are conventionally written family name first, so 渡辺 is the surname and 又三郎 is the given name.

渡 (わた, wata) — to cross, to ferry across water. This is the first character of the surname.

辺 (なべ, nabe) — area, vicinity, border, surroundings. Together, 渡辺 (Watanabe) is one of the most common surnames in Japan. The reading is not the ordinary one for either character in isolation; 渡辺 is a name-specific reading, which is typical of Japanese surnames. The name is associated historically with the Watanabe clan, and variant spellings such as 渡部 exist.

又 (また, mata) — again, also, furthermore. In the given name it functions as a conventional element rather than carrying its everyday adverbial sense.

三 (さぶ, sabu) — three. Here it takes the reading sabu, not the usual san or mitsu.

郎 (ろう, rō) — son, young man, male. This character ends a great many traditional male given names.

又三郎 (Matasaburō) is therefore a classic pre-modern male name: a numeral element, 三, combined with the masculine suffix 郎. Names of this shape — 一郎 (Ichirō), 二郎 (Jirō), 三郎 (Saburō) — traditionally indicated birth order among sons, with 三郎 suggesting a third son. The 又 at the front adds a further "again" or "also" sense, giving a name that reads as a compound of conventional name elements rather than a phrase with a literal everyday meaning.

For learners, the practical points are these: the surname 渡辺 has an irregular reading that must simply be memorised; the given name uses the sabu reading of 三, which appears in names but not in ordinary counting; and the final 郎 is a reliable signal that a name is masculine and traditional.

Legacy

Watanabe's legacy rests on the offices he held rather than on institutions he founded. He was a member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly, a member of the House of Representatives of Japan, Vice President of the Hiroshima Lawyers' Club, a part-owner of the Chugoku Shimbun, and Mayor of Hiroshima from 9 September 1909 until his death on 3 July 1910. His career is a compact record of how law, the press, and elected politics combined in Meiji-era Hiroshima.