Sapporo Agricultural College Opens a Program of Scientific and Practical Training

The Kaitakushi needed trained personnel for its northern development program. On August 14, 1876, Sapporo Agricultural College opened its specialist course, alongside a preparatory course, with American teachers recruited through William Smith Clark’s connections to Massachusetts Agricultural College.

Clark taught botany and English. William Wheeler taught mathematics and surveying; David Pearce Penhallow taught chemistry and botany and helped organize specimens. Their subjects linked classroom work to the practical measurement, classification and management of land and crops. William Penn Brooks, whose appointment began in January 1877, supervised the school’s gardens and taught agriculture, growing crops including onions, sugar beet and potatoes.

Clark left Sapporo on April 16, 1877. Wheeler succeeded him, first in an acting capacity, so the teaching program continued beyond its first head’s short stay. Wheeler also planned the Enbujō, completed in 1878, with classrooms and a specimen room below a hall used for ceremonies and military drill.

The college made scientific and practical instruction into a continuing institution within the Kaitakushi’s administrative project. Its work formed part of Japanese settlement and state expansion in a region already inhabited by Ainu communities.