13 Facts About Edwin Dun

Edwin Dun was a rancher from Ohio who was employed as an o-yatoi gaikokujin in Hokkaido by the Hokkaido Development Commission and advised the Japanese government on modernizing agricultural techniques during the Meiji modernization period.

Edwin Dun served as United States envoy to Japan from 1893 to 1897.

Edwin Dun was hired in 1873 by Albert Capron, son of former United States Commissioner of Agriculture Horace Capron, the chief foreign adviser to the Meiji government's Hokkaido Development Commission.

Edwin Dun's task was to create a new cattle and dairy industry out of largely undeveloped island of Hokkaido.

Edwin Dun settled initially at an intermediary experimental farm in Tokyo, teaching up to seventy students assigned by the government in animal husbandry, veterinary medicine and basic techniques of selective breeding.

Edwin Dun married a Japanese woman, Tsuru, in 1875, which led him to extend his contract in Japan several times, despite difficulties such as the Hokkaido Colonization Office Scandal of 1881.

From 1876 until 1883, Edwin Dun lived in Sapporo, where he engaged in a number of pursuits, including the establishment of farm horse and race horse ranches, including the first two thoroughbred stallions in Japan, a pig farm with 80 hogs brought in from the United States, and a dairy farm, together with factories for the production of butter and cheese.

Edwin Dun planted a number of experimental lots to research the types of crops most suited to Hokkaido's climate, and built Hokkaido's first horse race track.

Edwin Dun is deemed responsible for initiating government policies to eradicate wolves with strychnine and hunting for bounties, which drove the Hokkaido wolf to extinction by 1895.

Edwin Dun was a close friend, and eventually brother-in-law, of the explorer and naturalist Thomas Blakiston.

Edwin Dun considered resigning but at the end of the year married again, to a woman named Yama Takahira.

Finally, in 1892, Edwin Dun was appointed as United States envoy to Japan, arriving back in Tokyo on July 14,1893, serving in that post until July 2,1897.

Edwin Dun was notable for advocating involvement of Standard Oil in the Echigo oil fields, which eventually resulted in a failed investment of over 8 million yen.