Family Background
Yamamoto was born as Isoroku Takano (高野 五十六, Takano Isoroku?) in Nagaoka, Niigata. His father was Takano Sadayoshi (高野 貞吉, Takano Sadayoshi?), an intermediate samurai of the Nagaoka Domain. "Isoroku" is an old Japanese term meaning "56"; the name referred to his father's age at Isoroku's birth.
In 1916, Isoroku was adopted into the Yamamoto family (another family of former Nagaoka samurai) and took the Yamamoto name. It was a common practice for Japanese families lacking sons to adopt suitable young men in this fashion to carry on the family name. In 1918 Isoroku married Reiko Mihashi, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.
Read more about this topic: Isoroku Yamamoto
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or background:
“Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)