meiji modernization, SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JAPAN'S HOKKAIDO WOLF

Environmental History, Apr 2004 by Walker, Brett L

THE MEIJI RESTORATION of 1868 ranks among the most important events in Japanese history. Basically, after over two and a half centuries of samurai rule, the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu; literally, a military-style "tent government" run by the shogun) fell to what historians call the Satcho alliance-essentially, a political and military alliance between Satsuma, Choshu, and a handful of other disgruntled feudal domains-and, in the course of the next several decades, the alliance replaced Japan's decentralized early modern polity with a more centralized modern one. Within months of the 1868 transfer of power, the Meiji emperor, in whose name the Satcho alliance had fought, issued the Charter Oath (gokajo no seimon), a short document that outlined the priorities of the new government. Most importantly, the Meiji government pledged to end centuries of carefully constructed isolation from most Western countries.1 Instead, the Charter Oath proclaimed that, "knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to invigorate the foundations of imperial rule." For a time, the government did just that: Japan wrote a Prussian-style constitution, built an English-style navy, and established an American-style agricultural college on Hokkaido, among many other noteworthy achievements. Of course, Japan did not simply mimic other countries and their institutions, but rather refashioned the knowledge and expertise garnered from foreign advisers and returning Japanese officials to fit its emerging vision of modernity.2 One such foreign adviser who assisted with Japan's modernization in the Meiji period, a man who offered expertise in the arena of scientific agriculture, was an Ohio rancher named Edwin Dun (1848-1931).

Dun came to Japan as a foreign adviser in 1873 after Albert Capron, a cattle broker, approached him in a Chicago hotel. Earlier, officials with the Meiji government had asked Capron to find a qualified rancher in the United States who could oversee the establishment of a modern livestock industry in Japan. Officials planned to focus the new industry on the recently acquired island of Hokkaido, where Capron's father, Horace Capron, a former commissioner of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, served as chief adviser to the Kaitakushi, or Hokkaido Development Agency.3 As part of the colonization of Hokkaido, the Meiji government promoted ranching, largely in the form of state-run experimental farms. In the eyes of Meiji officials and their Western counterparts, ranching was progressive and scientific, and it produced the primary cuisine of modern nations-beef. Most officials on Hokkaido, moreover, believed that ranching represented the agricultural future of northernmost Japan. Meiji officials and public intellectuals, many of whom had visited North America during the 1871 (wakura Mission, also knew that the United States had settled the American West through the expansion of ranching and other forms of agriculture.4 Indeed, scientific agriculture suited Kaitakushi needs perfectly on the under-developed Hokkaido.

Correspondences between the Kaitakushi's branch office in Hakodate, in southern Hokkaido, and superiors in Sapporo, site of the Kaitakushi's home offices, illustrate the place that ranching was to hold in the economic future of northernmost Japan. While debating whether to raise bounties on predators to quell increasing losses at the experimental farms, one Kaitakushi official emphasized the importance of the new commitment to ranching. Harken ing back to the official agronomy of the Tokugawa era (the early modern period; 1600-1868), wherein the wealth of feudal domains was measured in bushels of rice (the so-called kokudaka system; in which one koku equaled 5.2 bushels), he remarked that until now grain farming had served as the cornerstone of Japanese agriculture. he submitted, however, that Hokkaido's cold springs and early fall frosts made grain farming risky. What made sense for Hokkaido was raising livestock such as cattle, horses, and sheep. The same official pointed out, nonetheless, that despite the best efforts of Japanese settlers and the Kaitakushi, livestock numbers, particularly horses, had not increased. The reason was that year after year, bears, wolves, and wild dogs killed and ate free-ranging horses on the farms, devoured all the foals in the pastures, and once attacked a ranch hand. This official suggested that predators even caused hardships among the Ainu, the native people of Hokkaido, who hunted deer for the Kaitakushi after their forced deculturation and assimilation in the early nineteenth century.5 According to this writer, wolves and wild dogs, not the native Ainu or even the menacing Russians in the North Pacific, most immediately stood in the way of the Japanese settlement of Hokkaido. The Kaitakushi must act, officials argued, and act decisively, or hungry carnivores would devour Hokkaido's future.6

Dun oversaw the task of eliminating wolves (Canis lupus hattai Kishida, 1931) and wild dogs from southeastern Hokkaido. To the Meiji government, Dun and the many other late-nineteenth-century foreign advisers hired to assist with Japan's transformation into a modern nation were "live machines." Through their work, Meiji officials adopted foreign attitudes about wolves that combined with, or in some instances superimposed over, existing ones formed in the early modern period.7