ties; the teachers' associations are, as in America, for the improvement of methods of instruction; and the summer institutes are for the same purpose on a broader scale.
What was written about private schools may he repeated concerning libraries. No Japanese Carnegie has yet appeared; only a few men, like Mr. Ōhashi, and the late Baron Kodama, formerly Governor of Formosa, have endowed libraries as memorials. The largest public library is the Imperial Library[1] in Tōkyō, with over 400,000 volumes, of which more than 50,000 volumes are in European languages.
It is in the domain of science that the Japanese have achieved, perhaps, their greatest intellectual successes. Their work in original investigation is always painstaking, and in many cases it has attained an international reputation. The names of Dr. Kitasato, associated with the famous Dr. Koch in his researches, and Dr. Aoyama, the hero of the pest in China, are well known; and now comes Dr. Ishigami, who claims to have discovered the germ of smallpox.
The chief defects in the Japanese educational system are on three lines: dependence on Chinese ideographs, vague instruction in ethics, and encouragement of cramming. The removal of these hindrances to progress is engaging the attention of thoughtful educators, but is a slow and gradual process.
- ↑ This has recently secured the famous Max Müller Library.
