Meiji Japan’s Path Towards Modernisation in the Nineteenth Century: A Reinterpretation of Japanese Policy of Hiring Foreign Workers in The Country

Abstract

The study attempts to revisit the policy of hiring foreign experts and advisers in the Japanese public institution especially in the essential sectors such as bureaucracy, military, education, and economic sectors following the takeover of the Bakufu government by the Meiji leadership in 1868. This study also intends to investigate how successful such a policy was in paving the way for the modernization of the Japanese public institutions and economy as far as the Meiji leadership was concerned. In so doing, the study adopts a method of content analysis, deriving its observation from a wide range of archival and scholarly sources which are later selected for their relevance to the study. Eventually, the study demonstrates that the Meiji Government employed foreign experts, advisers, and employees in a way that would serve twofold purposes, namely of enforcing reforms in the country by having the Japanese workers acquire the know-how in related fields by working hand in hand with their foreign supervisors and co-workers. Soon thereafter, as the local Japanese workers were getting trained and later became experts by themselves, the Meiji Government had slowly reduced the number of foreign experts and advisers employed in the country.