Rutgers Meets Japan: A Digital Companion

"Rutgers Meets Japan” is a digital companion to the book, Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century(Rutgers University Press, 2026). It features images from the William E. Griffis Collection that are included in the book and other relevant photographs that were omitted due to space limitations. The collection includes historical photographs from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century pertaining to Rutgers’ first Japanese students and Rutgers alumni who went to Japan as teachers and missionaries in the late nineteenth century. These include individual and group portraits of Japanese students who studied in New Brunswick, portraits of Rutgers alumni, teachers, and missionaries who went to Japan, and photographs of Japan (famous sites, schools, and homes of the teachers and missionaries in Fukui, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Shizuoka).

The digitization, transcription, and annotation of the Japan Photographs was funded by a grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission.

William E. Griffis, Rutgers College’s Class of 1869, was a leading member of the Philoclean Society (a literary club) and a founder of the Targum, Rutgers' student newspaper. He also became personally acquainted with some of the first Japanese students who came to the U.S. and studied at Rutgers College and Grammar School. Among them was Kusakabe Tarō from Fukui, the first Japanese student who enrolled in Rutgers College in 1867. In 1870, he received an offer to teach English and science in Fukui. After a year in Fukui, he moved to Tokyo to teach at Kaisei Gakkō (present-day the University of Tokyo). Upon returning to the U.S. in 1874, he continued to write and lecture about Japan and East Asia. He published numerous books and articles, including his monumental book, The Mikado’s Empire, published in 1876. In 1926-1927, he made a return visit to Japan, during which time he was presented the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. He died the following year. 

The William E. Griffis Collection of Rutgers University’s Special Collections and Archives is over 120 cubic feet in size, including journals, manuscripts, printed materials, photographs, family papers and scrapbooks, correspondence and ephemera. This digital collection features photographs from the Griffis Collection pertaining to Rutgers’ first Japanese students and Rutgers alumni who went to Japan as teachers and missionaries in the late nineteenth century. It has been created to serve as a companion to the book, Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century (Rutgers University Press, 2026), and contains images included in the book as well as other relevant photographs that were omitted due to space limitations. 

Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century (Rutgers University Press, 2026) is a collection of essays that examines the role and impact of the Rutgers-Japan transnational network on Japan’s modernization and the U.S.-Japan relationship in the late nineteenth century. The volume is divided into five parts and consists of fifteen chapters and an epilogue:

Part I: The Bakumatsu Network and the First Japanese Students

1.  “Guido F. Verbeck: Missionary, Teacher and Advisor in Bakumatsu-Meiji Japan” by  James M. Hommes
2.  “Envisioning a New Japan: Matsudaira Shungaku, Yokoi Shōnan, and the Bakumatsu Network at the Dawn of the Rutgers-Japan Connection” by Haruko Wakabayashi with Fuji Takagi
3.  “Katsu Kaishū as a Shadow Founder of the Japanese Ryūgakusei Community in New Brunswick: Katsu Koroku, Takagi Saburō, and Tomita Tetsunosuke” by Noriko Ochiai and Yukako Otori

Part II: The Japanese Students in New Brunswick and Beyond

4.  “The Japanese Students in New Brunswick and Beyond: A Comparative Study of New Brunswick and Boston as a Hub for Japanese Ryūgakusei” by Satoshi Shiozaki
5.  “Rutgers in the Nineteenth Century” by Fernanda Perrone
6.  “Rev. Edward T. Corwin and the Japanese Students at the Hillsborough Reformed Church at Millstone” by Haruko Wakabayashi

Part III: The American Teachers in Japan: Griffis, Wyckoff, and Clark 

7. “’Well of Blessing’: Griffis in Fukui” by Fernanda Perrone
8.  “Edward Warren Clark in Shizuoka 1871-1873” by A. Hamish Ion
9.  “Fukui’s Role in the Career of William Elliot Griffis” by Joseph M. Henning

Part IV: The Rutgers-Japan Network in Action: The Iwakura Mission and Educational Reform in Japan

10.  “The Satsuma-Rutgers Connection During the Early Meiji Era” by John E. Van Sant
11.   “The Rutgers Network and the Iwakura Mission: Guido F. Verbeck and Hatakeyama Yoshinari” by Haruko Wakabayashi
12.  “David Murray's Influence on Japanese Education” by Benjamin Duke / Edited by Fernanda Perrone

Part V: Reformed Church Missionaries and Early Christian Education

13.  “James H. Ballagh: The First Rutgers Graduate in Japan” by Kōji Nakajima
14.  “Rutgers Missionaries and Meiji Gakuin” by Naoto Tsuji
15.  “The Contributions of Rutgers and the Reformed Church in America to Women’s Education in Modern Japan” by Rui Kohiyama

Epilogue

• "Griffis’s Legacies: Rutgers and Fukui” by Ryuhei Hosoya

Haruko Wakabayashi
Associate Teaching Professor,
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
h.wakabayashi@rutgers.edu

Fernanda Perrone
Curator, William Elliot Griffis Collection,
hperrone@libraries.rutgers.edu

• William Elliot Griffis Collection, MC 1015, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.
• “William Elliot Griffis Collection.” n.d. Rutgers University Libraries. Accessed February 5, 2024.