O-yatoi gaikokujin

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When o-yatoi gaikokujin ( Jap. お雇い外国人 , "Contract foreigners") refers to the Japanese foreign experts who were called in the second half of the 19th century into the country to the modernization of Japan to accelerate.

The "foreign contractors" were supposed to introduce new western technology and train Japanese specialists. Some also worked as missionaries on the side . More than half came from the Anglo-Saxon region. A list from March 1872 names 214 people, including 119 English, 50 French, 16 Americans, 9 Chinese and 8 Prussians. This tendency remains roughly the same even afterwards. For the period from 1868 to 1889, a total of 2,690 people can be identified in the government's records, including 1,127 British, 414 American, 333 French, 250 Chinese, 215 German, and 99 Dutch. They were highly valued and rewarded accordingly. In 1874 there were 520 foreign contractors whose salaries, at 2.272 million yen, were a third of the annual budget. The Japanese government's interest in a rapid replacement by local specialists was correspondingly strong.

With the end of extraterritoriality in 1899, this system was abolished. Some foreigners such as Lafcadio Hearn , Josiah Conder and Edwin Dun remained in the country in other jobs. Some "foreign contractors" also contributed to the modernization of neighboring Korea .

Known "foreign contractors"

Human and veterinary medicine

Jurisprudence, Administration and Economics

Military affairs

Science and math

Engineering

Art and music

Humanities and Education

Missionaries

Other

  • Thomas Alexander

See also

Web links

Commons : O-yatoi gaikokujin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ O-yatoi gaikokujin ichiran (table of foreign contractors). Chūgai-dō, Tokyo 1872 ( digitized version, National Diet Library)
  2. ^ Hazel Jones: Live Machines: Hired Foreigners and Meiji Japan. University of British Columbia Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0774801157