Abstract
Seldom can a people have obeyed an Emperor’s injunction more faithfully than the Japanese, who, advised in 1868, that ‘knowledge shall be sought throughout the world’,1 promptly set about their search. They quickly found their way to Britain. Throughout the Meiji years Japanese students were to be found in various parts of the United Kingdom working long hours, sometimes following two courses at once, and always trying to better themselves for the ultimate benefit of their country. The young men involved were usually of samurai stock whose education had been sufficiently comprehensive to include a study of English. Of these, some had ambitions to serve in the upper management of developing Japanese industries. Others, of impressive academic attainment, hoped to command high positions in the university structure of the new Japan. Yet others, the sons of former princes, and desirous of learning the ways of Western gentlemen, came to the ancient English universities.
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Notes and References
The Emperor’s ‘Charter Oath’ of April 1868, see R. Tsunoda, W. T. de Barry and D. Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition, p. 644. See also D. Kikuchi, ‘Sketch of Japanese National Development’, PRSE vol. XXVII, part IV, 1907.
A. B. Mitford (Lord Redesdale) Garter Missionto Japan, 1906 pp. 255–6.
See J. A. A. Stockwin, Why Japan Matters, Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford, 27 January 1983; and
G. Bownas, ‘From Japanology to Japanese Studies’, Inaugural Lecture, University of Sheffield, 14 December 1966.
See M. Sanderson, The Universities in the Nineteenth Century, 1975, p. 70, where under the heading ‘Scottish Philosophy versus Cambridge Mathematics, 1836’, Sanderson remarks that ‘While philosophy was a forte in Scottish Universities, its study of mathematics was far behind that of Cambridge and excessively philosophical rather than quantative in character. This held back Scottish mathematics-based sciences.’
J. Perry, ‘Oxford and Science’, Nature, 31 December 1903, pp. 208–14.
Juichi Soyeda (1864–1929). On his return home he became private secretary to the Minister of Finance and then at the age of 35, Vice-Minister. Later he served as President of the Bank of Formosa (1899) and then as founding President of the Industrial Bank of Japan (1902). He served in Okuma’s cabinet in 1915. From 1893 he acted as Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Economic Society in London. See T. Johnes’s Obituary in EJ, September 1929.
J. Soyeda, ‘The Study of Political Economy in Japan’, EJ, June 1893, pp. 334–9.
For details of individual Satsuma students see T. Inuzuka, Satsumahan, Eikokuryugakusei (Satsuma students to England), Tokyo, 1974, p. 174; the author is indebted to Tamotsu Nishizawa for his help.
See T. Inoue, ‘The Story of the Introduction of Modern Economics to Japan: W. S. Jevons and Seven Japanese Students’, Osaka Commercial University Review, no. 54, 1979, pp. 95–115.
Kanae Nagasawa (1852–1934) had been at school in Aberdeen, see A. Shewan (compiler) Aspirat Adhuc Amor, Aberdeen, 1923, p. 364; Nagasawa was also involved with Thomas Lake Harris, see P. Kagan, New World Utopias.
Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833–1915) a chemist; educated in London and Heidelberg; close friend of Bunsen; Professor of Chemistry at Owens College, Manchester, from 1857 to 1887; author with Schorlemmer of standard treatise on Chemistry; knighted in 1884. H. E. Roscoe, The Life and Experiences of H. E. Roscoe; see also M. Sanderson, Universities, pp. 79–80; Roscoe’s book, Lessons in Elementary Chemistry (1871) was translated into Japanese in 1876, as Rosuko Shikagaku; see K. Fujii, ‘Atomism in Japan’, p. 154.
See Y. Markino, A Japanese Artist in London, 1910, for the most revealing study of a Japanese student’s life.
J. A. Ewing, Inaugural, 1891, p. 15.
Baelz believed that the Japanese thought of Western science as ‘a machine which can without further ado be transported from the West to any other part of the world there to continue its labours’, S. Hirakawa, ‘Changing Japanese Attitudes to Western Learning’, Contemporary Japan, vol. XXIX, September 1968, pp. 145–50.
For a self-evaluation of modern Japanese science see Anon., ‘Japan (1): On the Threshold of an Age of Big Science’, Science, 2 January 1980, p. 32.
S. Hirakawa, ‘Changing Japanese Attitudes to Western Learning’, vol. XXVIII, Contemporary Japan, vol. XXVIII, no. 3, May 1966, p. 560.
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© 1989 Olive Checkland
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Checkland, O. (1989). Students. In: Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10609-7_9
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