Guido Verbeck

Guido Verbeck

By Kana Takaku

Introduction

Do you know the man who triggered the Iwakura Mission being sent to Europe and America? The members of Iwakura Mission flourished in various fields, and they contributed to Japanese cultural enlightenment after they returned from the countries in which they studied. It means that the Iwakura Mission was very important event of Japan. The man’s name is Guido Verbeck, and he was Dutch political adviser, educator, missionary and o-yatoi-gaikokujin [hired foreign expert - Ed].

Life of Verbeck

Guido Verbeck was born in Zeist, Netherlands in Moravian family in 1830. He commuted to Moravian school and studied Dutch, German, French and English. When he was young, he was influenced by Karl Gutzlaff, who was a missionary in China, about working in foreign country as missionary. He hoped to be engineer, so he studied at the Polytechnic Institute of Utrecht. When he was in U.S. to work at foundry, he almost died from cholera and he swore to become a missionary if he recovered. He recovered from it, so he became missionary and went to Japan in 1859.

When he arrived at Japan, he said “ I have not ever seen a view this beautiful in Europe or America.” At that time, Christianity was prohibited, so he opened the school and Okuma Shigenobu took his class from 1861-1862. He had many students; there were more than 100 at his school. Okuma took his individual English class and he reminisced about Verbeck’s class, saying that he influenced him about Christianity.

In 1869, he became o-yatoi-gaikokujin and went to Tokyo to work on making a good rule and education at Daigaku-Nankou. 1868, he advised Okuma on Japanese modernization, and Okuma translated it and gave it to Prince Iwakura. Iwakura decided to send Japanese people to Europe. Verbeck also got a prize “Order of the Rising Sun”, which was given to people who did a good thing for Japan.

Summary of discussion

My discussion question was

1 What do you think about his experience in many countries?

2 His class influenced many people: is it good?

My group members told that going other countries is good because he may get knowledge and know about cultures. But some people thought the fact that he influenced people was not good, because he may have told them about Christianity secretly. All members thought he was great person.

Reflection

I think he was great person, because he gave chance to study foreign languages to Japanese people and he helped Japan to develop. Through this project, I learned that he had close connections with Japan and it is important to know about people who did a good thing for Japan like him.


Reference

“Guido Verbeck”, (n.d.). In Wikipedia, accessed December, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Verbeck