As an instructor at the Tokugawa bakufu's Bansho Shirabesho institute for researching Western science and technology from 1860–1868, he was one of the first Japanese to study German language and German philosophy.
After attending the Bansho Shirabesho, the Shogunal institute for western studies, he was sent to Great Britain, in 1866, at age 11, the youngest of a group of Japanese sent by the Tokugawa shogunate to the University College School, on the advice of the then British foreign minister Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby.