Talk:Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan

Comments

A couple of comments on this article:

"o-yatoi gaikokujin" and "oyatoi gaikokujin" are exactly the same thing, the hyphen being superfluous, so it is not necessary to differentiate. The "o" is simply a common prefix to make the root (here "yatou" "to hire") sound more 'polite'. The hyphen is used sometimes in romanization simply to point out that the preceding "o" is not actually part of the word.

Also, there appears to be an error in the article unless I am reading this wrong: "The o-yatoi gaikokujin ........were summoned, at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji Era, reaching over 3000 in all (with thousands more in the private sector) as of 1868" is followed by "They were highly valued; in 1874 the oyatoi numbered 520, ......". Either the population of foreign national professionals in Japan dropped drastically in number over six years, or one of those numbers is incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.117.194.247 (talk • contribs)

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Cutler 10:54, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

Removed self-reference

I removed the text "There has been some discussion as to the exact definition of 'o-yatoi gaikokujin' and whether Basil Hall Chamberlain was one. See Category talk:O-yatoi gaikokujin.", as per Wikipedia: No self-references. I was going to rewrite this in a non-self-referring fashion, then realized that doing such a thing would be original research: I can't rely on a Wikipedia talk page to make factual claims in the article itself. So if anyone has any references for or against including Chamberlain (or others) as "oyatoi gaikokujin", please feel free to add them in. Colin M. 04:24, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

In a 1905 book, the early Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain suggests that the English counterpart should be "Foreign employees" (independent contractors) -- see here (top of page) and here (bottom of page). Also, Sir Hugh Cortazzi, former British Ambassador to Japan, links the term yatoi with the noun "employee" in a book published on the occasion of the 1991 centenary of the Japan Society of London -- see here (2nd paragraph) and here (2nd paragraph). In light of these citations, I wonder if this article needs to incorporate more informed analysis about whether the contractual relationship is the most important element in O-yatoi gaikokujin or whether the advisory function of the yatoi deserves greater emphasis? These are not simple questions with easy answers. Perhaps these are unanswerable quandries; but, in my view, it probably makes good sense for the issues to be noted here. --Tenmei (talk) 01:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

My Suggestion

I suggest this article should be merged with the Gaijin article already written because the O-yatoi Gaijin is just another type of foreigner of Japan but the foreigners are only their for buissiness and it still uses the words "Gaikokujin". Samusfan80 17:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. O-yatoi gaikokujin refers to an historical concept. Gaikokujin is mostly a linguistic article. The two articles have very little in common. — Itai (talk) 19:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Re-naming

I agreed with each of the following proposals:

1. 1 In the discussion thread about deleting or renaming at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 7#Educators in Japan, Nihonjoe proposed keeping Category:Educators in Japan while creating a new sub-category Category:Foreign educators in Japan
2. 2 Nihonjoe also suggested getting rid of the hyphen in O-yatoi gaikokujin per WP:MOS-JA.
3. 3 In a related discussion about deleting or renaming at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 10#O-yatoi gaikokujin, Nihonjoe proposed renaming Category:O-yatoi gaikokujin to Category:Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan.

I took it on myself to remove the hypen in the title of this article per Nihonjoe's suggestion; and I merely assume that there will be no objections ...? In any event, I thought that it made good sense for these proposals to be noted here. --Tenmei (talk) 00:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Re-naming, again

I notice the discussion above agreed (over two years ago!) to rename the category by the English name; I’ve no idea why this page wasn’t re-named at the same time, but I’ve taken the liberty of doing it now. I trust that is OK with everyone. Moonraker12 (talk) 14:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Basil Chamberlain and Lafcadio Hearn

I think it is a little misleading as it is written now. They went to Japan as English teachers, and became later Japanologists. This article should show what they were hired to teach to the Japanese, I think.--Mycomp (talk) 00:31, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

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