Takaki Kanehiro Baron was a Japan ese naval physician . Early life . Born in Hyūga Province ( present - day Miyazaki Prefecture ) as the son of a " samurai " retainer to the Satsuma domain , Takaki studied Chinese medicine as a youth and served as a medic in the Boshin War . He later studied western medical science under British doctor William Willis ( in Japan 1861 – 1881 ) . Takaki entered the Imperial Japanese Navy as a medical officer in 1872 . He was sent to Great Britain for medical studies in 1875 , and interned at St Thomas ' s Hospital Medical School now part of King ' s College London in London . He returned to Japan in 1880 . Work on beriberi . At the time , beriberi ( considered endemic to Japan ) was a serious problem on warships and was affecting naval efficiency . Takaki knew that beriberi was not common among Western navies . He also noticed that Japanese naval officers , whose diet consisted of various types of vegetables and meat , rarely suffered from beriberi . On the other hand , the disease was common among ordinary crewmen , whose diet consisted almost exclusively of white rice ( which was supplied free , whereas other foods had to be purchased ) . Many crewmen from poor families , who had to send money back home , often tried to save money by eating nothing but rice . In 1883 Takaki learned of a very high incidence of beriberi among cadets on a training mission from Japan to Hawaii , via New Zealand and South America that lasted for 9 months . On board , 169 men out of 376 developed the disease and 25 died . Takaki made a petition to Emperor Meiji to fund an experiment with an improved diet for the seamen that included more meat , milk , bread and vegetables . He succeeded , and in 1884 , another mission took the same route , but this time only sixteen beriberi cases among 333 seamen were reported . This experiment convinced the Imperial Japanese Navy that poor diet was the prime factor in beriberi , and the disease was soon eliminated from the fleet . Takaki ' s success occurred ten years before Christiaan Eijkman , working in Batavia , advanced his theory that beriberi was caused by a nutritional deficiency , with his later identification of vitamin B earning him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ) . Although Takaki clearly established that the cause was due to nutritional issues , this conflicted with the prevailing idea among medical scientists that beriberi was an infectious disease . The Imperial Japanese Army , which was dominated by doctors from Tokyo Imperial University , persisted in their belief that beriberi was an infectious disease , for decades refused to implement a remedy . In the Russo - Japanese War of 1904 – 1905 211 , 600 soldiers suffered from beriberi — 27 , 000 fatally , compared to 47 , 000 deaths from combat . In 1905 , Takaki was ennobled with the title of " danshaku " ( baron ) under the " kazoku " peerage system for his contribution of eliminating beriberi from the Imperial Japanese Navy , and also awarded the Order of the Rising Sun ( first class ) . He was later affectionately nicknamed " Barley Baron " . Takaki founded the Sei - I - Kwai medical society in January 1881 . In May , 1881 , he founded the Sei - I - Kwai Koshujo ( Sei - I - Kwai Medical Training School ) , now the Jikei University School of Medicine . Takaki ' s school was the first private medical college in Japan , and was the first in Japan to have students dissect human cadavers . Takaki was posthumously honored by having a peninsula in Antarctica at named " Takaki Promontory " in his honor . It is the only peninsula in Antarctica named after a Japanese person .