As cliché as it sounds, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and one of the greats of naval history was indeed born into the ancient Takano samurai family in 1884. He was the child of his father's second marriage, and the proud Mr Takano, who was already 56 when his son was born, called him "sixty-six" - isoroku in Japanese. The Takano family were in disfavor as Isoroku's father fought on the side of the shogunate against the new Meiji government that opened Japan wide open to Western technology and modernization in the late 19th century. He was left with no choice but to earn a modest living as a swordsman in Nagaoka, in the north of Honshu.
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