eed do
I know what "Anglo-Saxon attainments" are supposed to be. Many of them
I should have thought were quite unsuitable for the ordinary Japanese
girl, tending, as they must, to destroy her national individuality.
There is also a girls' college in Tokio called the Women's University.
It does not confer degrees, but it gives a very high education, and it
is largely patronised.

I stated at the commencement of this chapter that I was of opinion the
provisions and arrangements a nation had made for the education of its
youth were an excellent test of the standard to which its civilisation
has attained. I hope the slight sketch I have given my readers of the
system of education in existence in Japan will enable them to form an
estimate as to the place Japan should occupy if judged by the standard
referred to. In my opinion, seeing that it is less than forty years
since the country passed through a drastic revolution--a revolution
which destroyed all these social forces which had been in existence
and had exercised a tremendous influence on the life of the people for
many centuries--it is, I think, not only extraordinary but highly
creditable to her rulers that Japan should have in that short interval
organised and perfected such a system of education as exists in the
country to-day. Under that system every boy and girl in the land
receives an admirable course of instruction, and is afforded
facilities for still further extending and enlarging that course, and,
if his or her abilities, ambitions, and opportunities incline them
that way, to proceed steadily onward in the acquisition of knowledge,
until they obtain as a coping stone, that final course, in the capital
either at the Imperial University or the Women's University where the
sum of all the knowledge of the world is at the disposal of those who
have the capacity and the aspiration to acquire it.

CHAPTER X

THE JAPANESE ARMY AND NAVY

A work on Japan which did not include some reference to the Army and
Navy would manifestly be incomplete. It is hardly any exaggeration to
assert that nothing in regard to the metamorphosis of Japan has so
impressed the Western mind as the extraordinary progress of its naval
and military forces. Both in this country and on the Continent it was,
of course, known that Japan had been for years evolving both an Army
and Navy, but I imagine most persons thought that this action on her
part was merely a piece of childish extrav