Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/290

 From the outset the debates were recorded verbatim. Years before the date fixed for the promulgation of the Constitution, a little band of students elaborated a system of stenography and adapted it to the Japanese syllabary. Their labours remained almost without recognition or remuneration until the Diet was on the eve of meeting, when it was discovered that a competent staff of short-hand reporters could be organised at an hour's notice. Japan can thus boast that, alone among the countries of the world, she possesses an exact record of the proceedings of her Diet from the moment when the first word was spoken within its walls.