Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry

The Lab as Contact Zone

Yoshiyuki Kikuchi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349297962, 9780230117785
• eBook ISBN: 9781137100139
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Anglo-Japanese and American-Japanese connections in chemistry had a major impact on the institutionalization of scientific and technological higher education in Japan from the late nineteenth century and onwards. They helped define the structure of Japanese scientific pedagogical and research system that lasted well into the post-World World II period of massive technological development, when it became one of the biggest providers of chemists and chemical engineers in the world next to Europe and the United States. In telling this story, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry explores various sites of science education such as teaching laboratories and classrooms - where British and American teachers mingled with Japanese students - to shed new light on the lab as a site of global human encounter and intricate social relations that shaped scientific practice.

Chapter 1

Japanese Chemistry Students in Britain and the United States in the 1860s

Two pioneering groups of young Japanese studied chemistry and other scientific subjects at UCL in the 1860s. They came to London in 1863 and 1865 from the Chōshū and Satsuma domains (han) in Western and Southwestern Japan, respectively. Some of the Satsuma students went even further across the Atlantic and ended up studying at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was a treacherous business in many ways. In addition to being on the sea for such a long time, which was much more dangerous in the 1860s than it is today, it was illegal under the laws of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Bakufu). By sending retainers abroad, these two domains defied the long-standing ban of overseas travel imposed by the shogunate and eventually joined force with other anti-Tokugawa domains to overturn that shogunate’s regime and usher in the Meiji Restoration in 1868.¹

At first glance, this event might seem to be a false start of our story about scientific pedagogy of chemistry in Meiji Japan. In fact, it is a perfect example of how nonexperts have a tremendous impact on scientific pedagogy as politicians and administrators. While former retainers of the Chōshū and Satsuma domains formed the core of the new Japanese government under Emperor Meiji (reigned 1867–1912), several members of these groups later held senior government and academic positions and were consequently involved in the employment of British and American chemists and the overseas study of Japanese chemists in Britain and the United States. Therefore, in addition to their central roles in Japanese history, their views on science, technology, and education are important for understanding how Anglo-Japanese and American-Japanese scholarly relations in chemistry developed, and for understanding the general process of institutionalization of scientific and technological education in Meiji Japan.²

Unlike later students in the Meiji period, the first students from the Chōshū and Satsuma domains had to make sense of what they were doing in Britain and the United States on their own without any previous experience of Western-style schooling and with little firsthand information on scientific pedagogy in Western institutions. Thus, their experience was a quintessential example of cross-cultural interaction in contact zones. As I discussed in the introduction, I am concerned with the question of who stood at the center of the structure of contact zones or the network of human relations between UCL chemistry teachers and Japanese and other students. The Japanese connections of Alexander William Williamson, the professor of chemistry and practical chemistry, are relatively well documented.³ This includes the assumption that because he was at the top of the hierarchy of UCL chemical education, he was at the center of the contact zones between teachers and students as well. This “professor-centered” structure applies to a lecture hall, for example, where a lecturer was a communicator and students tended to be passive recipients. However, both Chōshū and Satsuma students generally first opted to attend laboratory courses, where assistants and advanced students played distinctive roles as intermediaries between professors and junior students.⁴ It seems that there was an “assistant-centered” structure of contact zones between Japanese students and UCL chemists.

In light of the above consideration, I aim to answer the following three questions in this chapter: (1) how did the encounter between Chōshū and Satsuma students and their British chemists affect their views on science, technology, and education on both Japanese and British sides? (2) How did the structures of contact zones between them affect Chōshū’s and Satsuma’s experiences and views? (3) How did Satsuma students’ subsequent move to the United Stated and study at Rutgers College affect these differences? To gauge the impact of their encounter, one has to profile Chōshū and Satsuma students and their British and American teachers before the encounter, which I do as a preamble to the analysis of their encounter, contact zones, interactions, and aftermath. I also address the question of what brought them to UCL as part of this preamble.

Much of the discussion between Japanese students and their British and American teachers covered in this and the following chapters was centered on how to strike a proper balance between the scientific and technological components of technical education, that is, how to educate and train a good technologist. We are here looking at a question of global importance throughout the nineteenth century and beyond in Britain and the United States as well as in Japan.⁵ I argue in this chapter that both Japanese students and their British and American teachers learned from each other because neither Britons nor Americans could give the Japanese students a definite answer. This situation, in addition to the structures of contact zones encouraging mutual dialogue, made meaningful interaction between them possible.

Students’ Motives and Aspiration for Studying in Britain

The motives of the Chōshū and Satsuma governments in sending students to Britain and the aspiration of the students who were sent should be understood in the light of two contexts in which their educational plans were made and executed: the militarization of Western learning and the sonnō jōi (“revere Emperor, expel barbarians”) movement that spread among samurai (the ruling warrior class) in the Bakumatsu period (i.e., the late Tokugawa period, ca. 1850s to 1868).

Dutch learning and Western learning developed in Japan from the eighteenth century onward mainly through activities of medical doctors and astronomers.⁶ From 1842 on, however, when news of the defeat of Qing China in the First Opium War reached Japan, a growing sense of international crisis arose among samurai and led to a strong interest in Western learning, which as a result underwent what historians of Western learning in Japan called “militarization” (gunji kagakuka). In the Chōshū domain, this trend toward Western military learning was intertwined with the xenophobic jōi movement, which was prompted by the Tokugawa Shogunate’s action in 1858 to conclude international treaties with the United States, the Netherlands, Russia, France, and Britain without approval from the Emperor.⁷ The Chōshū domain had been the very center of jōi movements, which had been adopted as a policy of the domain. These circumstances inevitably influenced the feeling of the military-minded Chōshū students who would go to Britain in 1863. For example, when Takasugi Shinsaku, the leading military reformer of the Chōshū domain, led an arson attack on the newly built British embassy building in Shinagawa near Edo (Tokyo) in December 1862, he was joined by future UCL Chōshū students, Inoue Kaoru, Itō Hirobumi, and Yamao Yōzō.

Therefore, one important motive of the Chōshū domain government in sending students overseas was to have them learn naval techniques to “suppress barbarians with the arts of barbarians” (i no jutsu o motte i o seisu). Sending young samurai to Britain, the foremost sea power throughout the nineteenth century, was a sensible choice for the Chōshū leadership. Senior government officials of the domain secured funding for overseas students by diverting money allocated for purchasing Western-style guns, and likened sending the students to the purchase of “human machines” (hito no kikai) and “live machines” (ikeru kikai). This epitomized the officials’ keen interest in Western military technology and their image of both Western civilization and samurai youth as commodities.⁸

The Satsuma students in Britain shared the Chōshū students’ interest in naval and military techniques, and some also had strong jōi sentiments. Students’ interests were reflected in their proposed (but largely unrealized) subjects of study in Britain, which included naval and military studies, fortification, gunnery, shipbuilding, and naval surveying.⁹ However, Satsuma’s domain government was firmly against the jōi movement. The Satsuma slogan “enriching the nation, strengthening the army (fukoku kyōhei),” was itself commonly used in various domains, including Chōshū, and in the Tokugawa Shogunate. It gained general currency during the Meiji period. Yet Satsuma’s version emphasized “enriching the nation,” which the domain government thought was possible only by fostering Western-style manufacturing technology and encouraging trade with foreign countries. This argument gathered momentum especially after the bombardment of Kagoshima (the capital of the Satsuma domain) by the British Royal Navy in 1864. The intention of the Satsuma overseas study plan was thus more broadly oriented toward learning manufacturing technologies from an industrialized nation in addition to military technology. These twin goals reflected the Westernizing “enriching the nation” policy of the plan’s mastermind, Godai Tomoatsu.¹⁰

Connecting Japanese Students to UCL and Williamson

The two domain governments used their connections with British merchants in treaty ports when arranging overseas study for their retainers.¹¹ The student group from Chōshū went to Britain in 1863 with the assistance of Jardine, Matheson, and Company, a Far East trading company from which the Chōshū domain purchased ammunition. Hugh M. Matheson, the company’s London agent, welcomed the students and made arrangements for them. Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant who later had dealings with the Satsuma domain, was the main intermediary of Satsuma overseas study in 1865.¹² Ryle Holme, Glover’s associate, accompanied the Satsuma group, and Glover’s brother, Jim, made arrangements for them in London. On the academic side, the principal organizer for both groups was Alexander William Williamson, UCL’s professor of chemistry and practical chemistry who took responsibility for the students’ private and social lives as well as their academic lives in London by being their teacher, advisor, and landlord.

There is no direct evidence of any preexisting links between the British merchants and Williamson. Matheson recalled in his autobiography: “I was extremely fortunate in inducing Dr Williamson, Professor of Chemistry in University College, afterwards President of the British Association, to receive them into his house,” but he did not explain how he became acquainted with Williamson or why he chose Williamson for the task.¹³ However, Williamson’s obituary, written by his former student and physics colleague George Carey Foster, speaks of “the recommendation of Mr (now Sir Augustus) Prevost,” an auditor of University College London, who influenced placing “five young Japanese noblemen . . . under Williamson’s care by Mr Matheson, of the firm of Jardine, Matheson and Co.”¹⁴ It would seem that Matheson turned initially to UCL, rather than to Williamson personally.¹⁵

The facts that UCL was an educational institution delivering scientific and practical instruction and that it was secular in character were not sufficient to account for Matheson’s choice. For example, the RCC (which was by then RSM’s Chemistry Department) and Owens College Manchester met the same criteria. UCL, however, had uniquely established Far Eastern and Asian connections. For example, the UCL Council occasionally received letters from Lord John Russell, foreign secretary in the 1860s, asking UCL to recommend students who might become student-interpreters, an entry-level position for diplomats in Far-Eastern countries such as China and Japan.¹⁶ The example of Ernest Mason Satow, an ex-student of UCL who pursued a career as a diplomat in Japan and China, is well known.¹⁷ UCL, as an institution, had fostered Far Eastern connections that were recognized by the British Foreign Office.

Financial circumstances at UCL promoted acceptance of Japanese students as well. A severe financial situation induced the college’s council to establish, in March 1865, an internal committee to discuss possible measures to “increase the income of the College by augmenting the number of Students and Pupils.”¹⁸ Eighteen months earlier, the college had received a £3,000 donation from Cama and Company, an Indian trading company that p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Japanese Chemistry Students in Britain and the United States in the 1860s
• Chapter 2 American and British Chemists and Lab-Based Chemical Education in Early Meiji Japan
• Chapter 3 The Making of Japanese Chemists in Japan, Britain, and the United States
• Chapter 4 Defining Scientific and Technological Education in Chemistry in Japan, 1880–1886
• Chapter 5 Constructing a Pedagogical Space for Pure Chemistry
• Chapter 6 Making Use of a Pedagogical Space for Pure Chemistry
• Chapter 7 Connecting Applied Chemistry Teaching to Manufacturing
• Epilogue Departure from Meiji Japanese Chemistry
• Appendix  An Excerpt from Sakurai’s Lectures on Organic Chemistry and the Corresponding Part of Majima’s Notebook of Sakurai’s Lectures
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index