Meiji Modernization, Scientific: Agriculture, and the Destruction of Japan's Hokkaido Wolf

Brett L. Walker

THE MEIJI RESTORATION of 1868 ranks among the most important events in Japanese history. Basically, after over two and a half centuries of samurai rule, the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu; literally, a military-style "tent government" run by the shogun) fell to what historians call the Satchô alliance—essentially, a political and military alliance between Satsuma, Chôshû, and a handful of other disgruntled feudal domains—and, in the course of the next several decades, the alliance replaced Japan's decentralized early modern polity with a more centralized modern one. Within months of the 1868 transfer of power, the Meiji emperor, in whose name the Satchô alliance had fought, issued the Charter Oath (gokajô no seimon), a short document that outlined the priorities of the new government. Most importantly, the Meiji government pledged to end centuries of carefully constructed isolation from most Western countries.1 Instead, the Charter Oath proclaimed that, "knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to invigorate the foundations of imperial rule." For a time, the government did just that: Japan wrote a Prussian-style constitution, built an English-style navy, and established an American-style agricultural college on Hokkaido, among many other noteworthy achievements. Of course, Japan did not simply mimic other countries and their institutions, but rather refashioned the knowledge and expertise garnered from foreign advisers and returning Japanese officials to fit its emerging vision of modernity.2 One such foreign adviser who assisted with Japan's modernization in the Meiji period, a man who offered expertise in the arena of scientific agriculture, was an Ohio rancher named Edwin Dun (1848–1931).	1
Map 1. Hokkaido, Japan. Courtesy of Dale Martin.
Dun came to Japan as a foreign adviser in 1873 after Albert Capron, a cattle broker, approached him in a Chicago hotel. Earlier, officials with the Meiji government had asked Capron to find a qualified rancher in the United States who could oversee the establishment of a modern livestock industry in Japan. Officials planned to focus the new industry on the recently acquired island of Hokkaido, where Capron's father, Horace Capron, a former commissioner of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, served as chief adviser to the Kaitakushi, or Hokkaido Development Agency.3 As part of the colonization of Hokkaido, the Meiji government promoted ranching, largely in the form of state-run experimental farms. In the eyes of Meiji officials and their Western counterparts, ranching was progressive and scientific, and it produced the primary cuisine of modern nations—beef. Most officials on Hokkaido, moreover, believed that ranching represented the agricultural future of northernmost Japan. Meiji officials and public intellectuals, many of whom had visited North America during the 1871 Iwakura Mission, also knew that the United States had settled the American West through the expansion of ranching and other forms of agriculture.4 Indeed, scientific agriculture suited Kaitakushi needs perfectly on the under-developed Hokkaido.	. . .