A Yankee in Hokkaido: The Life of William Smith Clark

William Smith Clark was in Hokkaido for only eight months but, as John Maki's fascinating biography shows, his influence has endured. A Yankee in Hokkaido places Clark's appointment to oversee the creation of the Sapporo Agricultural College within the context of the Meiji era's drive to modernize and Westernize Japan and to settle the island of Hokkaido. Maki recounts how Clark inspired his Japanese contemporaries with an idealistic vision of the future born in the United States of the late nineteenth century; with agricultural expertise and pedagogical initiatives; and with his devotion to the moral development of his students--men who would later number among the leaders of modern Japan. The work also offers the reader an intimate portrait of this extraordinary citizen of Massachusetts from childhood through Civil War action to the founding and running of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, known today as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.