William Smith Clark spent just eight months in Hokkaido in 1876-77, yet his influence on the island has proved durable enough to earn him a prominent statue on the Hokkaido University campus. Clark was an American agricultural scientist recruited by the Meiji government to help establish what would become Hokkaido University and to introduce Western farming techniques suited to Hokkaido's climate. He organised the curriculum, imported seeds and livestock, and helped set the university's practical-science orientation. His departing words — "Boys, be ambitious!" — became sufficiently famous to be inscribed on the statue, which shows him pointing east, supposedly towards the future.
The statue stands near the south end of the Hokkaido University campus, a short walk from Sapporo Station. Clark's contribution sits in an interesting context: he was one of several foreign advisers brought in under the Meiji government's Oyatoi Gaikokujin programme, which systematically recruited Western experts in specific fields then expected them to leave once the knowledge was transferred. Clark was no exception — he returned to the United States after eight months, the government having got what it needed. The pointing gesture, whatever Clark originally meant by it, has acquired a certain irony in retrospect.