Guido Verbeck

Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck (born Verbeek; 23 January 1830 – 10 March 1898) was a Dutch political advisor, educator, and missionary active in Bakumatsu and Meiji period Japan.

At the age of twenty-two, on the invitation of his brother-in-law, Verbeck traveled to the United States to work at a foundry located outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin, which had been developed by Moravian missionaries to build machinery for steamboats.

Verbeck also taught foreign languages, politics, and science at the Yōgakusho (School for Western Studies) in Nagasaki, from August 1864.

Verbeck's pupils included Ōkuma Shigenobu, Itō Hirobumi, Ōkubo Toshimichi, Sagara Tomoyasu (Chian), and Soejima Taneomi.

In 1869, recommended by Ōkubo, Verbeck received an appointment as teacher at the Kaisei School (later Tokyo Imperial University).

In close cooperation with Sagara Tomoyasu (Chian), one of his former pupils, Verbeck recommended German medicine as a model for modern medical education and practice in Japan.

He was also often consulted about the establishment of the prefectural system of local administration and influential in encouraging the dispatch of the Iwakura mission, the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States and Europe In 1871 Verbeck assisted in bringing William Elliot Griffis of Rutgers University to Japan to teach at the Fukui Domain academy Meishinkan per the invitation of daimyo Matsudaira Norinaga.

Verbeck made a trip to Europe on 6 months' leave given by the Japanese government and traveled to meet up with the Iwakura Mission.

On his return to Japan, he resigned from the university, and spent the next few years as a translator of English legal documents into Japanese.

1868