QUESTION A: Are there arguably useful compare-and-contrast parallels in what we know as STEM-focused education today and the STEM-focused program of the Japanese government in 1869-1889?

QUESTION B: What is the significance of Japan's STEM-focused yatoi experience for developing countries today? -- see Noboru Umetani, "The role of foreign employees in the Meiji era in Japan," 1971. https://books.google.com/books?id=-VmuAAAAIAAJ&dq=editions%3AH-5Nd0_169wC&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=parasite

At the end of the 19th century, Western experts were hired by the Japanese government and educational institutions to bring STEM skills and education to a island nation that had shut itself off from almost all contact with the West for 200+ years. These men were called o-yatoi gaikokujin (御雇い外国人 honorable hired foreigners) . -- see "The Great Wave" (Stephen Mansfield). Japan Times, October 18, 2014. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/10/18/books/book-reviews/great-wave/#.XddBHVdKiUk

There were about 3,000 yatoi employed in the Meiji era (1868-1912). -- see Gluck, Carol. Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 1981, pp. 428–432. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/132211

A select list of yatoi suggests that a focused range of technical subjects which were considered crucial for the growth of the modern Japanese state. -- see Wikipedia "Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_government_advisors_in_Meiji_Japan

• Henry Dyer (engineering education) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dyer
• Thomas Gray (engineering, seismology) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lomar_Gray
• William Ayrton (physics, electrical engineering) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_Ayrton
• James Ewing (engineering, physics) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Ewing
• Cargill Knott (physics, mathematics, seismology) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill_Gilston_Knott
• John Milne (geology, engineering, seismology) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milne
Thomas Mendenhall (physics) -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Corwin_Mendenhall; and below see image of Mendenhall with his grad students in Tokyo, 1880

QUESTION A: Are there potentially useful compare-and-contrast parallels in what we know as STEM-focused education today and the STEM-focused program of the Japanese government in 1869-1889?

QUESTION B: What is the significance of Japan's STEM-focused yatoi experience for developing countries today?

QOTO = Question Others to Teach Ourselves?