8o
The Green Bag,
and that a text-book is seldom finished dur ing the allotted time. In the Imperial Uni versity a class has been taken through Langdell's Cases on Sales and through a few others of the Harvard collections of cases; and at Keiogijuku use is made of them from time to time, and cases re-stated from our precedents are generally employed to stimu late discussion and generalization on the part of the student, and lead him up to a selfdiscovery of the principle in hand. But these practical methods are difficult to put into force. In the first place, the slender linguis tic accomplishments of the student make it impossible for him to do more than a very small stint of reading in foreign literature. In the next place, and chiefly, the ideal of the Japanese student is radically opposed to such methods of training. Education for him means the absorption of a certain amount of information. Intellectual effort, the thinking out of a principle for himself, is unnatural and repellent. There are some who enjoy discussion and the solution of incon sistencies, as cake or candy titillates our palates. But the substantial diet which their nature craves and expects is the knowl edge, the conclusions of the instructor. Just as the material aim of the average American law student, after no matter how long a flight of reasoning upon principle and public policy, always brings him down ultimately to the practical question, " Reasonable or unreasonable, which way is the law?" so the Japanese student, after no matter how many attempts by the instructor to stimulate his powers of decision, inevitably finishes with the flattering but passive question, " But what is your opinion? " Judged from our standpoint, this is the reverse of desirable. But the traditions of Japan furnish a different standard. Suppose that certain young lawyers in an American city heard of a sojourn which Professor von Ihering . or Professor de Boutmy was about to make in the United States, and conceived the idea of forming a class and inviting" the eminent foreign jurist to give a dozen pri
vate subscription lectures embodying some yet unpublished researches and speculations. On the first evening the foreigner, after a sketch of the subject, names a chapter in a printed volume, and calls upon them to pre pare themselves upon it. On the second evening he calls the roll, asks questions, tries to start discussion, refrains from com municating his own views, talks of stimulat ing thought, and then sets another lesson in the book, with no word of his looked-for original material. Should we think it un natural if the members of the class felt de frauded of their just expectations, and either informed the visitor of his misapprehension or ceased to attend? I do not mean to draw an exact parallel between the cases; but one who can understand how the lawyers would feel in the last instance will comprehend something of the feelings of the students in Japan. They do not come to be catechised or trained, but to obtain the information of which the lecturer is supposed to be uniquely possessed. The classic traditions of Japan ese higher education differ from our notions. The student sits at the feet of the sage, and reverently receives the words of wisdom that wing themselves from his lips. He who has most faithfully committed these utterances to memory is the most meritorious. The most approved Chinese and Japanese trea tises are those that marshal the greatest number of citations, and " Thus said the sage" introduces every paragraph. Grown up in such an atmosphere, what student of this generation can accommodate himself to the inverted methods of Western learning? In the face of this disposition it is some times extremely difficult to carry out plans for the practical and exercitative study of the law. Here is an instance from the ex perience of a friend. Desiring to make his work as beneficial as possible to the students in a practical way, he ordered for the library a set of the Supreme Court decisions,— they had not been thought necessary by the authorities, — of which some four volumes had then appeared, — in Japanese, of course.
