It is commonly said that a group of Scottish people gave a great influence on Bakumatsu and early Meiji Japan, but it has not been known clearly enough how it was so. This is a tentative work to prove how closely the two countries were related through technological ecdcation in those days. In fact the first person from the United Kingdom was Lord Elgin, a Scottish land lord and Lord Rector of Glasgow University, who was dispatched as a plenipotentiary ambassador to negotiate a treaty of commerce soon after the United States concluded the treaty with Japan. The clerk of his mission was also a Scot, who became well-known after returning home, having been hurt at Tozenji. He gave lectures at many places in Scotland and contributed articles to magazines and newspapers on Japan. Also he looked after young Japanese samurai, especially of Satsuma, who came to the United Kingdom. The Scottish merchants who had been in India and South China were eager to approach a new market in the Far East after the Opium war. Companies, like Jardin & Matheson, Dent & Co., and P. & O. Navigation Co. among them, were operating extensively and eager to trade with Japan. They arranged to help some young samurai, especially of Satsuma and Cho-shu, illegally leave Japan for the United Kingdom. Y. Yamao from Choshu was in London with others in 1864, but went to Glasgow in 1866 after his fellow companion H. Ito returued to Japan. He stayed there until early 1868, learning naval architecture at R. Napier shipyard in the daytime and at Anderson College in the evening. After he came back to Japan, he with Ito's support proposed a plan of establishing a technical college in order to promote industrialization of the nation. Ito as an acting minister of public work was empowered in 1872 to appoint teachers abroad for the staff of the college during the travel as vice-ambassador in the Iwakura Mission. Thus H. Dyer, a Glasgow graduate was nominated to be a principal of the college. Dyer, when he arrived in Japan in 1873, was very surprised to know Yamao, one of his classmatesof Anderson College was in charge of the new college in Tokyo. Yamao and Dyer thenceforth endeavoured to realize technological development in Japan by means of Koubu Daigakko (The Imprerial College of Engineering). A few of the most brilliant students who were graduated for the first time from the new college in 1879 were sent to Glasgow University to improve their knowledge and skill for the purpose of becoming professors of Tokyo University when they returned. Dyer came back to Glasgow in 1833. Thereafter the two universities in the two cities came to be more and more closely related to each other through exchange of scholars and students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth conturies.
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