Go west, [old] man: Horace Capron, Guilded Age Capitalism, and the Development of Hokkaido

Abstract

After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese turned to Western models to modernize their government. Specifically, they hired former American Commissioner of Agriculture Horace Capron to advise the colonization of Hokkaido. Records from the Capron Mission therefore provide a window into both the history of Japanese development and the history of America's commercial expansion and foreign influence.