David Murray, Professor of Mathematics and the Superintendent of Education of the Ministry of Education (1873-79)
David Murray (1830-1905) was a professor of mathematics at Rutgers from 1863-1873. He was instrumental in creating the science curriculum at Rutgers College and successfully lobbied for Rutgers to become New Jersey’s land grant college in 1864. He was a teacher and friend to many Japanese students who came to Rutgers, including the Iwakura brothers […]
Guido Verbeck and His “Brief Sketch”
Many of the Japanese students who came to New Brunswick had studied in Nagasaki under Guido F. Verbeck (1830-1898), one of the first three missionaries sent to Japan by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1859. Among his students were future leaders of Japan, such as Ōkuma Shigenobu, Ito Hirobumi, Ōkubo Toshimichi and Soejima Taneomi. The […]
Hatakeyama Yoshinari, the Third Secretary of the Iwakura Mission and the First President of Kaisei Gakkō
Hatakeyama Yoshinari (1842-76), known under the name “Kozo Soogiwoora” while at Rutgers, was a native of the Satsuma domain in present-day Kagoshima prefecture. He was one of the first nineteen students who were secretly sent by the domain to study in England in 1865. In 1867, he and five other students (Mori Arinori, Sameshima Naonobu, […]
Prologue: The Japanese Students at Rutgers
“Fifth day of the fifth month[…] Daybreak came at New Brunswick of the New Jersey state. This is the city where the famous school is.” The “famous school” (有名なる学校) that is referred to in this brief passage on New Brunswick, New Jersey, in A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation […]