The product of research by US and Japanese scholars, this book is an assessment of the work of individual "yatoi", and their contributions to the rapid development that characterized Meiji Japan (1868-1912).

Foreword: "Za" Yatoi-An Appreciation -- Introduction -- The Yatoi Phenomenon -- The Yatoi Phenomenon: An Early Experiment in Technical Assistance -- Live Machines Revisited -- Case Studies: North American Views -- William Elliot Griffis: The Tokyo Years, 1872-1874 -- Science and Civilization in Early Meiji Japan: The "Autobiographical Notes" of Thomas C. Mendenhall -- William Smith Clark, Yatoi, 1826-1886 -- Encounters with an Alien Culture: Americans Employed by the Kaitakushi -- Westernizing Influences in the Early Modernization of Japanese Women's Education -- Principles and Pragmatism: The Yatoi in the Field of Art -- Edward Warren Clark and the Formation of the Shizuoka and Koishikawa Christian Bands (1871-1879) -- Case Studies: Japanese Views -- Contributions of Edward S. Morse to Developing Young Japan -- Margaret C. Griffis and the Education of Women in Early Meiji Japan -- American Professors in the Development of Hokkaido: The Case of the Sapporo Agricultural College (SAC) -- Engineering and Technical Yatoi in the Public Works Department of Meiji Japan -- William Elliot Griffis' Lecture Notes on Chemistry -- Frederic Marshall as an Employee of the Japanese Legation in Paris -- Archival Resources -- Primary Manuscript and Printed Sources for Studying the Yatoi: The William Elliot Griffis Papers and Related Special Collections at Rutgers University