Viscount Suematsu Kencho, a Japanese politician, philosopher, and author, lived during the Meiji and Taisho periods. Aside from his employment in the Japanese government, he produced several notable works about Japan in English. He is represented negatively in Ryotaro Shiba's novel Saka no ue no kumo. Suematsu was born in the village of Maeda in Buzen Province, which is now part of Yukuhashi, Fukuoka Prefecture. Suematsu Shichiemon, the village headman (shoya), had him as his fourth son. His name was originally Ken'ichiro, but he eventually altered it to the shorter Kencho. At the age of ten, he joined in a private school and studied Chinese. Suematsu traveled to Tokyo in 1871 and studied with otsuki Bankei and Kondo Makoto. In 1872, he temporarily attended the Tokyo Normal School but soon quit. Around this time, he became acquainted with Takahashi Korekiyo. Suematsu started writing editorials for the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun newspaper (predecessor to the Mainichi Shinbun) in 1874, when he was 20 years old. Fukuchi Gen'ichiro, the newspaper's editor, befriended him while he was there.
