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EAST ASIA.
the Japanese people are distinguished beyond all others for their generous zeal in
the cause of education. In the five years from 1875 to 1879 the voluntary con-
tributions for this purpose exceeded 1,680,000, exclusive of lands, buildings, books,
instruments, and donations of all sorts. Amongst the numerous associations of
recent creation, is a society founded especially for promoting education, and which
has already no less than 3,000 members in every part of the Empire.
Nevertheless two-fifths of the boys and four-fifths of the girls are still absent
from the public schools. Many children, however, are taught the elements at home,
and the chief fault hitherto found with the Japanese educational system is that its
courses are far too comprehensive for the primary and secondary schools. Instruc-
tion loses in depth what it gains in extent. The violent athletic exercises of the
Samurai youth have also been indifferently replaced by inadequate gymnastic
discipline, much to the detriment of the health of the pupils.
The number of foreign teachers invited by the Japanese Government from
Europe and America, to instruct the people in the arts and sciences of the West, is
diminishing from year to year.* The salaries also have been gradually reduced to
a very modest figure, a circumstance which explains the general substitution of
German for English and American professors. Engineers engaged to lay down
roads and railways, or to build and work steamships, physicians to whom the
management of hospitals had been intrusted, officers invited to instruct the native
troops, jurisconsults chosen to draw up the laws, financiers arriving in the hope of
manipulating the national funds, were all reduced by the gentle but firm attitude
of their hosts to the exclusive position of teachers each in his special province.
They were requested, not to apply their talents to their own direct advantage, but
to render themselves gradually useless by training pupils destined soon to replace
them. In this way New Japan, which aspires to renovate itself by its own forces,
was able rapidly to dispense with the services of many burdensome and indiscreet
foreigners, who have always been regarded in the light of necessary evils.
" As
the eagle is contained in the shell, so the future of a people lies within itself,"
proudly says a modern Japanese writer.
HISTORIC RETROSPECT THE REVOLUTION.
The reigning family descends traditionally from Zinmu-Tenno, the " Divine
Conqueror," son of the god Isanami and great-grandson of the " Sun-Goddess."
The Mikado now occupying the throne is supposed to be the one hundred and
twenty-third emperor bearing the three divine insignia of the mirror, sword, and
seal. For the dynasty of the Sun, whose emblem is the chrysanthemum, suggestive
in its form of the luminous globe encircled by rays, is said to have reigned
uninterruptedly for twenty-five centuries and a half, in other words, from the time
of Nabuchodonosor or of Tullius Hostilius. The first nine centuries, however, Qf
this dynasty belong exclusively to the legendary epoch, and authentic history dates
* They numbered 705 in 1875.