246 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE IMPEEIAL UmVEESITIES OF JAPAN 



Br H. FOSTER BAIN 



SAN FRANCISCO 



THE public school system in Japan, as in the United States, is 

 capped by the university. In keeping, however, with the highly 

 centralized government of the former country, the university is con- 

 trolled and supported by the imperial government, whereas in America 

 the support of higher education has been left so far to the individual 

 states. The imperial government now maintains two fully organized 

 universities; one at Tokyo, and a second at Kyoto; and is organizing 

 two more; one in the south at Fukuoka, Kyushu, and the other in the 

 north at Sapporo, Hokkaido. At Fukuoka, medical and engineering 

 schools have been established and others are to be added. At Sapporo 

 only an agricultural station and an agricultural college, which go back 

 to early American influences, are as yet in being, though the plan con- 

 templates ultimately a complete university. In addition to these 

 imperial schools there are important institutions of university rank 

 endowed and supported by private initiative, and in this as in other 

 particulars the situation shows similarities to that in the United States. 

 Among these non-governmental schools Waseda and Keio are the largest 

 and best known. What is said here relates exclusively to the Imperial 

 Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, limitations of time having pre- 

 vented my visiting the others. 



With the beginning of the new era in 1868, Japan faced the prob- 

 lem of organizing a new system of education, as well as of government, 

 war and industry. Previously there had been no general system of 

 public instruction, and in this, as in many other particulars, the work 

 was essentially one of construction rather than re-construction. It 

 would be a grave mistake, however, to consider the Japanese of the 

 pre-Meiji eras as uneducated. While not familiar with Western learn- 

 ing, they were far from unlearned, and in the sense of having had their 

 mental powers developed many of the gentlemen of old Japan were 

 highly educated. This was especially true of the younger sons of the 

 daimyos who, forbidden by the social system to marry or hope for head- 

 ship in their own houses, were driven to the exercise of arms and 

 rigorous study of the Chinese classics, each hoping to attract attention 

 and be adopted as heir in another house. Failing in this, many opened 

 private schools. In these, and other institutions whose origin is too 

 diverse to permit review here, a severe drill in the Chinese language and 

 literature and in Oriental philosophy, gave to the pupils a mental 

 training not gi'eatly dissimilar to that which our own grandfathers 



