Agricultural Adviser
Dun was hired in 1873 by Albert Capron son of former United States Commissioner of Agriculture Horace Capron, the chief foreign advisor to the Meiji government's Hokkaidō Development Commission. Dun's task was to create a new cattle and dairy industry out of largely undeveloped island of Hokkaido. When he came to Japan, he brought with him around 50 head of cattle, 100 head of sheep, and a number agricultural implements to be used as samples to be copied by local Japanese artisans. He 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. Dun also married a Japanese woman (Tsuru) in 1875, which led him to extend his contract in Japan several times, despite difficulties such as the Hokkaidō Colonization Office Scandal of 1881.
From 1876 until 1883, 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. He also planted a number of experimental lots to research the types of crops most suited to Hokkaido's climate, and also built Hokkaido's first horse race track. With the assistance of Louis Boehmer, who discovered native hops in Hokkaidō, he established a successful beer brewery, the forerunner of modern Sapporo Breweries. Dun is also credited with initiating government policies to eradicate wolves with strychnine and hunting for bounties, which drove the Hokkaidō wolf to extinction by 1895. He was a close friend, and eventually brother in law, of the explorer and naturalist Thomas Blakiston.
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