Doctor, statesman. The second son of SATO Taizen, a doctor who served the Sakura Clan. He was adopted as a child by Ryoho Matsumoto, a doctor who served the shogunate government. In 1857, by order of the shogunate government, he devoted himself to running Nagasaki Yojosho (a Western-style hospital) and Medical School as J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort's medical trainee. In 1862, he returned to Edo and, as the third president of the shogunate government's medical school, introduced the modern medical education methods he had learned directly from Pompe. During the Boshin War, as a member of the shogunate, he treated the war wounded and sick in Aizu. After the war, he was briefly imprisoned, but was released in 1869. He then started serving at the Hyobusho (Army-Navy Ministry) and in 1873 became the first head of the Medical Division of the Army Ministry. Member of the House of Peers and danshaku (baron).