Later Life
After his time in the army, Yamakawa went into education, becoming school president of the Tokyo Women's Normal School, replacing fellow Aizu native Takamine Hideo. He was also made a member of the House of Peers. In his later years he devoted himself to writing, and put together the text Kyoto Shugoshoku Shimatsu, which was one of the first texts that gave a view of the Aizu domain's actions that was not part of the Meiji oligarchs' triumphalist narrative.
Yamakawa was elevated to the peerage with the title of danshaku under the kazoku system. He died in Tokyo in 1898, and was buried there.
Read more about this topic: Yamakawa Hiroshi
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Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric’s torrid plains.
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
Hapless sire to hapless son,—
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.”
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“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
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