Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan
Template:Short description The foreign employees in Meiji Japan, known in Japanese as O-yatoi Gaikokujin (Kyūjitai: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Shinjitai: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, 'hired foreigners'), were hired by the Japanese government and municipalities for their specialized knowledge and skill to assist in the modernization of the Meiji period. The term came from Yatoi (a person hired temporarily, a day laborer),<ref>James Curtis Hepburn, Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 1873.</ref> was politely applied for hired foreigner as O-yatoi gaikokujin.
The total number is over 2,000, probably reaches 3,000 (with thousands more in the private sector). Until 1899, more than 800 hired foreign experts continued to be employed by the government, and many others were employed privately. Their occupation varied, ranging from high salaried government advisors, college professors and instructor, to ordinary salaried technicians.
Along the process of the opening of the country, the Tokugawa Shogunate government first hired German diplomat Philipp Franz von Siebold as diplomatic advisor, Dutch naval engineer Hendrik Hardes for Nagasaki Arsenal and Willem Johan Cornelis, Ridder Huijssen van Kattendijke for Nagasaki Naval Training Center, French naval engineer François Léonce Verny for Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, and British civil engineer Richard Henry Brunton. Most of the O-yatoi were appointed through government approval with two or three years contract, and took their responsibility properly in Japan, except in some cases.<ref>Hardy's Case, The Japan Weekly Mail, January 4 1875.</ref>
As the Public Works hired almost 40% of the total number of the O-yatois, the main goal in hiring the O-yatois was to obtain transfers of technology and advice on systems and cultural ways. Therefore, young Japanese officers gradually took over the post of the O-yatoi after they completed training and education at the Imperial College, Tokyo, the Imperial College of Engineering or studying abroad.
The O-yatois were highly paid; in 1874, they numbered 520 men, at which time their salaries came to ¥2.272 million, or 33.7 percent of the national annual budget.
Despite the value they provided in the modernization of Japan, the Japanese government did not consider it prudent for them to settle in Japan permanently. After the contract terminated, most of them returned to their country except some, like Josiah Conder and William Kinninmond Burton.
The system was officially terminated in 1899 when extraterritoriality came to an end in Japan. Nevertheless, similar employment of foreigners persists in Japan, particularly within the national education system and professional sports.
Notable O-yatoi gaikokujinEdit
AgricultureEdit
- Template:Flagicon Louis Boehmer
- Template:Flagicon William Smith Clark
- Template:Flagicon Edwin Dun
- Template:Flagicon Max Fesca
- Template:Flagicon Oskar Kellner
- Template:Flagicon Oskar Löw, agronomist
- Template:Flagicon William Penn Brooks, agronomist
Medical scienceEdit
- Template:Flagicon Erwin von Bälz
- Template:Flagicon Johannes Ludwig Janson
- Template:Flagicon Heinrich Botho Scheube
- Template:Flagicon Julius Scriba
Law, administration, and economicsEdit
- Template:Flagicon Georges Appert,<ref>Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Appert, Georges (1850-1934); retrieved 2013-4-2.</ref> legal scholar
- Template:Flagicon Gustave Emile Boissonade, legal scholar
- Template:Flagicon Hermann Roesler, jurist and economist
- Template:Flagicon Georg Michaelis,<ref>"Georg Michaelis" at Archontology.org; retrieved 2013-4-4.</ref> jurist
- Template:Flagicon Albert Mosse, jurist
- Template:FlagiconTemplate:Flagicon Otfried Nippold, jurist
- Template:Flagicon Heinrich Waentig, economist and jurist
- Template:Flagicon Georges Hilaire Bousquet, legal scholar
- Template:Flagicon Horatio Nelson Lay, railway developer
- Template:Flagicon Alexander Allan Shand, monetary
- Template:Flagicon Henry Willard Denison, diplomat
- Template:Flagicon Karl Rathgen, economist
MilitaryEdit
- Template:Flagicon Jules Brunet, artillery officer
- Template:Flagicon Louis-Émile Bertin, naval engineer, constructor of the Kure and Sasebo Naval Arsenals,
- Template:Flagicon Léonce Verny, constructor of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal
- Template:Flagicon Klemens Wilhelm Jakob Meckel, Army instructor
- Template:Flagicon Carl Köppen, Army instructor
- Template:Flagicon James R. Wasson, Civil engineer and teacher, army engineer
- Template:Flagicon Douglas R. Cassel, Naval instructor
- Template:Flagicon Henry Walton Grinnell, Navy instructor
- Template:Flagicon José Luis Ceacero Inguanzo, Navy instructor
- Template:Flagicon Charles Dickinson West, naval architect
- Template:Flagicon Henry Spencer Palmer, military engineer
- Template:Flagicon Archibald Lucius Douglas, Naval instructor
Natural science and mathematicsEdit
- Template:Flagicon William Edward Ayrton, physicist
- Template:Flagicon Edward Divers, chemist
- Template:Flagicon Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, physicist
- Template:Flagicon Edward S. Morse, zoologist
- Template:Flagicon Charles Otis Whitman, zoologist, successor of Edward S. Morse
- Template:Flagicon Heinrich Edmund Naumann, geologist
- Template:Flagicon Curt Netto, metallurgist
- Template:Flagicon Sir James Alfred Ewing, physicist and engineer who founded Japanese seismology
- Template:Flagicon Cargill Gilston Knott, succeeding J.A. Ewing
- Template:Flagicon Benjamin Smith Lyman, mining engineer
EngineeringEdit
- Template:Flagicon William P. Brooks, agriculture
- Template:Flagicon Richard Henry Brunton, builder of lighthouses
- Template:FlagiconTemplate:Flagicon Charles Alfred Chastel de Boinville, architect
- Template:Flagicon Josiah Conder, architect
- Template:Flagicon William Kinnimond Burton, engineering, architecture, photography
- Template:Flagicon Horace Capron, agriculture, road construction
- Template:Flagicon Henry Dyer, engineering education
- Template:Flagicon Hermann Ende, architect
- Template:Flagicon François Perregaux, mechanical watchmaker
- Template:FlagiconTemplate:Flagicon Albert Favre Zanuti, mechanical watchmaker
- Template:Flagicon George Arnold Escher, civil engineer
- Template:Flagicon John G.H. Godfrey, geologist, mining engineer
- Template:Flagicon John Milne, geologist, seismologist
- Template:Flagicon Colin Alexander McVean, civil engineer
- Template:Flagicon Edmund Morel, civil engineer
- Template:Flagicon Johannis de Rijke, civil engineer, flood control, river projects
- Template:Flagicon John Alexander Low Waddell, bridge engineer
- Template:Flagicon Thomas James Waters, civil engineer
- Template:Flagicon William Gowland, mining engineer, archaeologist
- Template:Flagicon James Favre-Brandt, mechanical watchmaker
- Template:Flagicon Jean Francisque Coignet, mining engineer
- Template:Flagicon Henry Scharbau, cartographer
- Template:Flagicon Wilhelm Böckmann, architect
- Template:Flagicon Anthonie Rouwenhorst Mulder, civil engineer, rivers and ports
Art and musicEdit
- Template:Flagicon Edoardo Chiossone, engraver
- Template:Flagicon Luther Whiting Mason, musician
- Template:Flagicon Ernest Fenollosa, art critic
- Template:Flagicon Franz Eckert, musician
- Template:Flagicon Rudolf Dittrich, musician
- Template:Flagicon Antonio Fontanesi, oil painter
- Template:Flagicon Vincenzo Ragusa, sculptor
- Template:Flagicon John William Fenton, musician
Liberal arts, humanities and educationEdit
- Template:Flagicon Alice Mabel Bacon, pedagogue
- Template:Flagicon Basil Hall Chamberlain, Japanologist and Professor of Japanese
- Template:Flagicon James Summers, English literature
- Template:Flagicon Lafcadio Hearn, Japanologist
- Template:Flagicon Viktor Holtz, educator
- Template:FlagiconTemplate:Flagicon Raphael von Koeber, philosopher and musician
- Template:Flagicon Ludwig Riess, historian
- Template:Flagicon Leroy Lansing Janes, educator, missionary
- Template:Flagicon Marion McCarrell Scott, educator
- Template:Flagicon Edward Bramwell Clarke, educator
- Template:Flagicon David Murray, educator
Missionary activitiesEdit
- Template:Flagicon William Elliot Griffis, clergyman, author
- Template:Flagicon Guido Verbeck, missionary, pedagogue
- Template:Flagicon Horace Wilson, missionary and teacher credited with introducing baseball to Japan
OthersEdit
- Template:Flagicon Francis Brinkley, journalist
- Template:Flagicon Ottmar von Mohl, court protocol