Category talk:Foreign advisors to the government in Meiji-period Japan

O-yatoi gaikokujin -- really?

I removed this category label from the article on Basil Hall Chamberlain, who arrived in Japan in a very twentieth century fashion (at the end of a long trip, aimless other than for the hope of recovery from a breakdown and other ailments), who was most certainly not summoned by the Japanese government or any other institution in Japan, and who I think would have been most amused to discover himself described as an o-yatoi gaikokujin. I wonder how many others here shouldn't be here; sorry, but I don't have time to investigate. -- Hoary 01:55, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Perhaps you or somebody else would care to provide us with a definition of "o-yatoi gaikokujin". Chamberlain certainly worked for the Japanese government (at the Naval Academy and Tokyo Imperial University) for a long time. Indeed he was not summoned from England to do so, but is that the crux of the definition? In what other ways did his terms of employment differ from the o-yatoi? --Historian 00:28, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Now that I look into it, I find to my surprise that oyatoi gaikokujin was indeed used to cover people who were already in Japan when hired. But they seem to be peripheral to the general concept of oyatoi gaikokujin as highly qualified, selected from afar, coming to Japan to do their (handsomely remunerated) thing, and then leaving. As I understand it, Chamberlain had no particular qualification (or indeed skills) when he arrived in Japan, and he was neither expected to leave after a short period nor paid highly. As it turned out, his mental/psychological make-up (if not his voice) equipped him to be a fine teacher. Thus I don't mean to criticize him when I say that he seems less a temporary human import of the oyato gaikokujin type than an outstandingly good example of the twentieth-century foreign employee, decades ahead of his time.

Here's Chamberlain on "Foreign employés in Japan" (from Things Japanese, 5th ed., 1905):

. . . There is nothing picturesque in the foreign employé. With his club, and his tennis-ground, and his brick house, and his wife's piano, and the rest of the European entourage which he strives to create around him in order sometimes to forget his exile, he strikes a false note. The esthetic and literary globetrotter would fain revel in a tea-tray existence for the nonce, because the very moment he tires of it, he can pack and be off. The foreign employé cannot treat life so jauntily, for he has to make his living; and when a man is forced to live in Lotus-land, it is Lotus-land no longer. . . .

Admittedly this was written (or at least judged still to be valid) thirty years after Chamberlain's own arrival, but it sounds very much like the engineers of Meiji (and the ludicrously paid westerners who live in "Roppongi Hills" and such places today); not at all like Chamberlain, with his energy in learning Japanese and exploring Japan. -- Hoary 03:58, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

Thank you for this long and interesting response. It certainly seems that Chamberlain held himself aloof and apart from the "foreign employé", to use his phrase. But whether foreign employé and o-yatoi gaikokujin are totally synonymous I am not sure. Technically Chamberlain could be regarded as an o-yatoi gaikokujin, much as he might have been amused or offended at the phrase. Though not as well paid (did he get a pension and was he paid as a Japanese professor?) as the short-term contract men, he was a "hired foreigner" and of course he eventually returned to Europe himself! So, can we return him to the category do you think? --Historian 11:48, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

The vast majority of readers of en.wikipedia can't understand Japanese, and I think one should only use longish and unfamiliar Japanese terms if they handily subsitute for even more laborious native terms. What do you take "O-yatoi gaikokujin" to mean? If it's just "western employee in late 19th-century Japan", I wonder if it's worth bothering with. It might be worthwhile if it denotes something more precise: "skilled western employee sought from overseas in late 19th-century Japan and intended as a short-term resident" (etc.). And Chamberlain did indeed return to Europe, but not out of homesickness or boredom with Japan. There may have been additional family- or health-related issues (I've read this but forgotten it); as for Japan, he was not bored by living here but instead increasingly queasy about its drift toward militarism. As for his pay, again I don't remember offhand. I'll check in Ota's book. And then, how about waiting for some third (and fairly knowledgable) voice to pronounce on Chamberlain's, er, oyatoigaikokujinsa? -- Hoary 12:03, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

As for a third voice, how's this? Professor Richard Bowring's biographical portrait in 'Britain and Japan 1859-1991 Themes and Personalities', edited by Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, Routledge 1991. Bowring says that Chamberlain was offered an appointment teaching English at the Naval Academy soon after he arrived in Japan in 1873 at the age of 23. 'As a foreign employee (oyatoi gaikokujin) he was extremely well paid...' --Historian 12:11, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Removed self-reference on O-yatoi gaikokujin article

I removed the text "There has been some discussion as to the exact definition of 'o-yatoi gaikokujin' and whether Basil Hall Chamberlain was one. See Category talk:O-yatoi gaikokujin." from the O-yatoi gaikokujin article, as per Wikipedia: No self-references. I was going to rewrite this in a non-self-referring fashion, then realized that doing such a thing would be original research: I can't rely on a Wikipedia talk page to make factual claims in the article itself. So if anyone has any references for or against including Chamberlain (or others) as "oyatoi gaikokujin", please feel free to add them to the O-yatoi gaikokujin article. Colin M. 04:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)