19th Century
American Teachers in Japan
Archives
Aristocratic Lineage
Asian Studies
Bakumatsu Period
Boston
Category=JNB
Category=JNF
Category=JNM
Category=NHF
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
Christian Education
David Murray
Dutch Reformed Church
East Asia
Educational Exchange
Educational Reform
Edward T. Corwin
Edward Warren Clark
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First Foreign Student
Fukui
Guido F. Verbeck
Hillsborough Reformed Church
Historical Reconstruction
History
Holland
Immigrant
International Student
Iwakura Mission
James H. Ballagh
Japan Modernization
Japan-U.S. Relations
Japanese Returnees
Japanese Students
Katsu Kaishu
Katsu Koroku
Kusakabe Taro
Matsudaira Shungaku
Meiji Era
Meiji Gakuin
Michigan
Missionaries
Modern Educational System
New Brunswick
New Brunswick Theological Seminary
New England
New York
Philadelphia
Protestant Ministers
Race
Reformed Church in America
Rutgers Meets Japan
Rutgers University
Samurai
Satsuma-Rutgers Connection
Scholarship.
Takagi Saburo
Tomita Tetsunosuke
Transnational Network
Western Knowledge
William Elliot Griffis
Women's Education in Japan
Yokoi Shonan
Product details
- ISBN 9781978839106
- Weight: 540g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2026
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In 1867 Kusakabe Taro, a young samurai from Fukui, Japan, began studying at Rutgers as its first foreign student. Three years later, in 1870, his former tutor, friend, and Rutgers graduate, William Elliot Griffis, left for Japan to teach English and Science for three and a half years. The year 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of two landmark events in the history of the Rutgers-Japan relationship: the untimely death of Kusakabe only weeks before his graduation, and his friend Griffis’ departure to Japan.
Griffis and Kusakabe were only a small piece of a vast transnational network of leading modernizers of Japan in the 1860s and 70s. The Japanese students in New Brunswick were young and innovative men of samurai and aristocratic lineage, who were sent by reform-minded leaders of Japan, which was undergoing a dramatic transformation. They came to New Brunswick seeking Western knowledge that was much needed for the modernization of a newly forming nation. New Brunswick became the hub of a network of Japanese nationals that extended to the major cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and from there to the smaller towns of New England. Once in New Brunswick, these Japanese students were embraced by Protestant ministers, educators, and missionaries—both men and women—whose network encompassed Rutgers College and the neighboring New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and which stretched to Dutch Reformed parishes throughout the Eastern seaboard, and westward as far as the Dutch enclave of Holland, Michigan. Meanwhile, the American teachers and missionaries who left for Japan became part of a network of reformist leaders and Japanese returnees that extended to schools, colleges, and missions in Japan, and formed the foundations of Japan’s modern educational system. Through contributions from scholars and archivists in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, Rutgers Meets Japan aims to reconstruct the early Rutgers-Japan connections and examine the role and impact of this transnational network on Japan and the U.S. in the late nineteenth century.
Griffis and Kusakabe were only a small piece of a vast transnational network of leading modernizers of Japan in the 1860s and 70s. The Japanese students in New Brunswick were young and innovative men of samurai and aristocratic lineage, who were sent by reform-minded leaders of Japan, which was undergoing a dramatic transformation. They came to New Brunswick seeking Western knowledge that was much needed for the modernization of a newly forming nation. New Brunswick became the hub of a network of Japanese nationals that extended to the major cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and from there to the smaller towns of New England. Once in New Brunswick, these Japanese students were embraced by Protestant ministers, educators, and missionaries—both men and women—whose network encompassed Rutgers College and the neighboring New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and which stretched to Dutch Reformed parishes throughout the Eastern seaboard, and westward as far as the Dutch enclave of Holland, Michigan. Meanwhile, the American teachers and missionaries who left for Japan became part of a network of reformist leaders and Japanese returnees that extended to schools, colleges, and missions in Japan, and formed the foundations of Japan’s modern educational system. Through contributions from scholars and archivists in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, Rutgers Meets Japan aims to reconstruct the early Rutgers-Japan connections and examine the role and impact of this transnational network on Japan and the U.S. in the late nineteenth century.
Haruko Wakabayashi is an associate teaching professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Rutgers-New Brunswick. She is the author of The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism.
Fernanda Perrone is the Archivist and Head of the Exhibitions Program and Curator of the William Elliot Griffis Collection, Special Collections/University Archives at Rutgers University. She is the co-author of The Douglass Century: The Transformation of the Women’s College at Rutgers (Rutgers University Press).
Fernanda Perrone is the Archivist and Head of the Exhibitions Program and Curator of the William Elliot Griffis Collection, Special Collections/University Archives at Rutgers University. She is the co-author of The Douglass Century: The Transformation of the Women’s College at Rutgers (Rutgers University Press).
