: SAIGO TAKAMORI

EDUCATION OF THE NATION

Meanwhile the Government had been strenuously seeking to equip the
people with the products of Western civilization. It has been shown
that the men who sat in the seats of power during the first decade of
the Meiji era owed their exalted position to their own intellectual
superiority and far-seeing statesmanship. That such men should become
the nation's teachers would have been natural anywhere. But in Japan
there was a special reason for the people's need of official
guidance. It had become a traditional habit of the Japanese to look
to officialdom for example and direction in everything, and this
habit naturally asserted itself with special force when there was
question of assimilating a foreign civilization which for nearly
three centuries had been an object of national repugnance. The
Government, in short, had to inspire the reform movement and, at the
same time, to furnish models of its working.

The task was approached with wholesale energy by those in power. In
general the direction of the work was divided among foreigners of
different nations. Frenchmen were employed in revising the criminal
code and in teaching strategy and tactics to the Japanese army. The
building of railways, the installation of telegraphs and of
lighthouses, and the new navy were turned over to English engineers
and sailors. Americans were employed in the formation of a postal
service, in agricultural reforms, and in planning colonization and an
educational system. In an attempt to introduce Occidental ideas of
art Italian sculptors and painters were brought to Japan. And German
experts were asked to develop a system of local government, to train
Japanese physicians, and to educate army officers. Great misgivings
were expressed by foreign onlookers at this juncture. They found it
impossible to believe that such wholesale adoption of an alien
civilization could not be attended with due eclecticism, and they
constantly predicted a violent reaction. But all these pessimistic
views were contradicted by results. There was no reaction, and the
memory of the apprehensions then freely uttered finds nothing but
ridicule to-day.

FINANCE

One of the chief difficulties with which the Meiji statesmen had to
contend was finance. When they took over the treasury from the Bakufu
there were absolutely no funds in hand, and for some years, as has
been shown above, all the revenues of the former fiefs were lo