Guido Hrubecki, a Foreigner for Hire: The National Preparedness Demonstrated by Six Hundred Yen (Late 1860s to Early 1870s, the First Year of the Meiji Era)

Guido Hrubecki, a Foreigner for Hire: The National Preparedness Demonstrated by Six Hundred Yen (Late 1860s to Early 1870s, the First Year of the Meiji Era)

In early Meiji Japan, a salary of 600 yen per month was an unprecedented level of treatment comparable to that of the highest bureaucrats and a clear indication of the nation's will. Guido Hulbecki, who received this high salary, was positioned not merely as a language teacher, but as an intellectual advisor who comprehensively conveyed Western views of the state, legal concepts, religious ethics, and international sensibilities. The Meiji government was faced not with a lack of technology, but with the fundamental problem of how to understand the state and sovereignty, and Hulbecki was a rare individual who could provide the premises for this thinking. The attitude of prioritizing competence over nationality and religion indicates the budding of the modern bureaucracy, which was shifting from a status-based order to a competence-based one. On the other hand, with the prohibition of evil sects still in place, there was a tension in favoring a man from a missionary background,
and his official title was kept vague. Nevertheless, the government continued to place great importance on him, and his salary of 600 yen symbolized his determination to build a modern nation as an investment in intellect, not in institutions or weapons.