Tōgō Heihachirō (東郷 平八郎; 27 January 1848 – 30 May 1934), served as a gensui or admiral of the fleet in the Imperial Japanese Navy and became one of Japan's greatest naval heroes. As Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he successfully confined the Russian Pacific naval forces to Port Arthur before winning a decisive victory over a relieving fleet at Tsushima in May 1905. Western journalists called Tōgō "the Nelson of the East". He remains deeply revered as a national hero in Japan, with shrines and streets named in his honour.

Tōgō was born as Tōgō Nakagorō (仲五郎) on 27 January 1848 in the Kajiya-chō (加治屋町) district of the city of Kagoshima in Satsuma domain (modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture), the third of four sons of Togo Kichizaemon, a samurai serving the Shimazu daimyō as controller of the revenue, master of the wardrobe, and district governor, and Hori Masuko (1812–1901), a noblewoman from the same clan as her husband.

Kajiya-chō was one of Kagoshima's samurai housing-districts, in which many other influential figures of the Meiji period were born, such as Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi. They rose to prominent positions under the Meiji Emperor partly because the Shimazu clan had been a decisive military and political factor in the Boshin War against the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji Restoration.

As a youth, Tōgō was educated to become a samurai warrior. He changed his name to Heihachirō (meaning "peaceful son") in a religious and patriotic ceremony held when he turned 13, in which samurai tradition called for youth to adopt a change in name (genpuku).

Tōgō's first experience at war was during the Bombardment of Kagoshima in August 1863, in which Kagoshima was shelled by the Royal Navy to punish the Satsuma daimyō for the death of Charles Lennox Richardson on the Tōkaidō highway the previous year (the Namamugi Incident), and the Japanese refusal to pay an indemnity in compensation. Tōgō, who was aged 15 at the time, was part of a gun crew manning one of the cannons defending the port.

The following year, Satsuma established a navy, in which Tōgō enlisted in 1866 at age 17. Two of his brothers also enlisted. In January 1868, during the Boshin War, Tōgō was assigned to the paddle-wheel steam warship Kasuga, which participated in the Battle of Awa, near Osaka, against the navy of the Tokugawa Bakufu, the first Japanese naval battle between two modern fleets.

As the conflict spread to northern Japan, Tōgō participated as a third-class officer aboard the Kasuga in the last battles against the remnants of the Bakufu forces, the Battle of Miyako Bay and the Battle of Hakodate in 1869.

After the civil war ended in the autumn 1869, Tōgō, on the instructions of the Satsuma clan, first travelled to the treaty port of Yokohama to study English. He resided in Yokohama with Daisuke Shibata, a government official reputedly proficient in English and received additional pronunciation coaching from Charles Wagman, Japan correspondent of The Illustrated London News. Tōgō made rapid progress in his studies and in 1870 secured a place at the newly established Imperial Japanese Navy Training School at Tsukiji, Tokyo. On 11 December 1870 he was formally appointed a cadet on the Japanese ironclad flagship Ryūjō, then at anchor in Yokohama harbour.