The foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan, known in Japanese as oyatoi gaikokujin (Kyūjitai: 御雇ひ外國人, Shinjitai: 御雇い外国人, "hired foreigners"), were those foreign advisors hired by the Japanese government for their specialized knowledge to assist in the modernization of Japan at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji period. The term is sometimes rendered o-yatoi gaikokujin in romaji. The total number is uncertain, but is estimated to have reached more than 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. However, despite being called "experts", some were simply convenient hires who happened to be in the treaty ports such as Yokohama and Kobe.
The goal in hiring the foreign advisors was to obtain transfers of technology and advice on systems and cultural ways. The foreign advisors 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 training Japanese replacements to take over their places, many found that their contracts (typically for three years) were not renewed. Some, however, made their lives in Japan, for example Josiah Conder and Thomas Blake Glover.
Some foreign advisors supplemented their activities as government employees by undertaking Christian missionary activities.
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.
William Smith Clark
Edwin Dun
Max Fesca
Oskar Kellner
Oskar Löw, agronomist
William Penn Brooks, agronomist
Erwin von Bälz
Johannes Ludwig Janson
Heinrich Botho Scheube
Julius Scriba
Law, administration, and economics
Georges Appert, legal scholar
Gustave Emile Boissonade, legal scholar
Hermann Roesler, jurist and economist
Georg Michaelis, jurist
Albert Mosse, jurist
Otfried Nippold, jurist
Heinrich Waentig, economist and jurist
Georges Hilaire Bousquet, legal scholar
Horatio Nelson Lay, diplomat
Henry Willard Denison, diplomat
Karl Rathgen, economist
Jules Brunet, artillery officer
Léonce Verny, constructor of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal
Klemens Wilhelm Jakob Meckel, Army instructor
Jeremiah Richard Wasson
Henry Walton Grinnell, Navy instructor
Charles Dickinson West, naval architect
Henry Spencer Palmer, military engineer
Archibald Lucius Douglas, Naval instructor
Natural science and mathematics
William Edward Ayrton, physicist
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, physicist
Edward S. Morse, zoologist
Charles Otis Whitman, zoologist, successor of Edward S. Morse
Heinrich Edmund Naumann, geologist
Curt Netto, metallurgist
Sir James Alfred Ewing, physicist and engineer who founded Japanese seismology
Cargill Gilston Knott, succeeding J.A. Ewing
Benjamin Smith Lyman, mining engineer
William P. Brooks, agriculture
Richard Henry Brunton - builder of lighthouses
Josiah Conder, architect
William Kinnimond Burton, engineering, architecture, photography
Horace Capron, agriculture, road construction
Henry Dyer, engineering education
Hermann Ende, architect
George Arnold Escher, civil engineer
John Milne, geologist, seismologist
Edmund Morel, railway engineer
Johannis de Rijke, civil engineer, flood control, river projects
John Alexander Low Waddell, bridge engineer
Thomas James Waters, civil engineer, architect
William Gowland, mining engineer, archaeologist
Jean Francisque Coignet, mining engineer
Wilhelm Böckmann, architect
Art and music
Edoardo Chiossone - engraver
Luther Whiting Mason, musician
Ernest Fenollosa, art critic
Franz Eckert, musician
Rudolf Dittrich, musician
Antonio Fontanesi, oil painter
Vincenzo Ragusa, sculptor
John William Fenton, musician
Liberal arts, humanities and education
Alice Mabel Bacon, pedagoge
Basil Hall Chamberlain, Japanologist and Professor of Japanese
James Summers, English literature
Lafcadio Hearn, Japanologist
Viktor Holtz, educator
Raphael von Koeber, philosopher and musician
Ludwig Riess, historian
Leroy Lansing Janes, educator, missionary
Marion McCarrell Scott, educator
Edward Bramwell Clarke, educator
David Murray, educator
William Elliot Griffis, clergyman, author
Guido Verbeck, missionary, pedagoge
Horace Wilson, missionary and teacher credited with introducing baseball to Japan.
Francis Brinkley, journalist
Ottmar von Mohl, court protocol
Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA