Dendrologist. Son of an official Confucian teacher of the Takato clan. He entered the Daigaku Nanko (later the University of Tokyo) in 1870. After working as German teacher and at the Home Ministry, he went to Germany to study forestry in 1879. After returning to Japan, he served as professor at Tokyo Sanrin Gakko (Tokyo Dendrological College) (later the Department of Dendrology of the University of Tokyo) and engineer of the Forestry Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. He was elected a member of the House of Representatives (elected eight times in total) in 1890 and got involved in the examination of forestry-related bills to build a prototype of the Forest Act. He served as the Vice-Minister of Justice in the first Okuma Cabinet in 1898. He received his Doctor of Dendrology degree in 1899. He got involved in the "Nunobiki-maru Incident", an (attempted) arms smuggling incident aimed to support the Philippines Independent Movement of 1899 advocating for the unity of East Asia. He assumed the presidency of Teikoku Rinsei Kenkyukai in 1921 and served as advisor to the Japan Forestry Association in 1927.