Little more than a decade after the founding of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, its faculty and students helped establish a college in Hokkaido to introduce Japanese students to the latest scientific developments in agriculture. The Sapporo Agricultural College (later Hokkaido University) was an immediate success and over the years since, the two schools have regularly exchanged students and faculty.

One the earliest and most fruitful of these exchanges involved William Penn Brooks (1851-1938), a native of South Scituate, Mass., and valedictorian of the MAC class of 1875. Fresh from his bachelor's degree and a year of graduate study, Brooks was selected to take over responsibilities for organizing the Japanese college from his former professor, William Smith Clark, arriving in Hokkaido early in 1877. It was an exciting time for Brooks, not only his first time seeing a foreign country, but seeing a country gripped by extraordinary change. The "opening" of Japan to western commerce in the 1850s and 1860s resulted in an influx of new technologies ranging from photography to railroads, not to mention the agriculture with which Brooks was associated, but it was accompanied as well by the dramatic political transformation of the early Meiji era. It is an interesting coincidence that Brooks, charged with disseminating western ideas about agriculture, arrived only a few months before the Japanese government crushed the Satsuma rebellion, the last gasp of armed resistance by the samurai class to the dismantling of the feudal system.

Almost from the time of his arrival in the winter of 1877-1878, Brooks devoted his considerable energies to implementing an ambitious program, preparing and overseeing a suite of experimental fields and teaching courses in botany and the theory and practice of agricultural science. He proved particularly valuable in identifying profitable crops for the northern Japanese climate, and his contributions were recognized by promotion to acting president of the college in 1880-1883 and again in 1886-1887. In 1882, Brooks traveled home on leave and married Eva Bancroft Hall, who returned with him for his final years in Japan.

After his contract with the Japanese government expired in October 1888, Brooks returned home to accept a position at his alma mater. After returning the graduate study and earning a doctorate at the University of Halle, he joined the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station and remained there until his retirement in 1921. Throughout his career, Brooks was known for his commitment to practical agricultural work and like his mentor, Clark, he is remembered for introducing Japanese cultivars into the United States, including several varieties of soybean and millet.

This digital collection includes a selection of 100 letters, along with photographs and related printed material centered on Brooks' experience in Japan. The letters, nearly all written to his sister Rebecca, are arranged chronologically, with other materials following. The collection was donated to SCUA in 2004 by Ben Drew and Cynthia Redman, descendants of Brooks. SCUA houses other important collections for the history of American study of Japan, including the papers of Brooks' contemporaries William Smith Clark and Benjamin Smith Lyman and later scholars of Japan, Conrad Totman and John Maki.

William Penn Brooks in Hokkaido:
 
[ Introduction ][ 1868-1879 July ][ 1879 Oct.-1883 Jan. ][ 1883 Feb.-1885 July ][ 1885 Aug.-1895 ]
[ Photographs ][ Published works ]