Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/471

Rh of the 'black ships' of Commodore Perry, It may be of interest, therefore, to some, to learn that in so remote a time as in the eighth century a university had already been established' in Japan that included such modern divisions as schools of medicine, ethics, mathematics, history, and that some of the text-books employed at that remote period dealt with such subjects as the diseases of women, materia

medica and veterinary surgery, types of text-books which appear to have been unknown in European countries until about one thousand years later.

Japanese higher education at the present day includes: (1) high schools, of somewhat higher scope than the American high schools, (2) higher normal schools for both sexes, (3) colleges of peers and peeresses, (4) military and naval colleges at Tokyo and Etajima, (5) a series of schools of technology and arts, including an academy of music, (6) colleges of law, politics and literature in Tokyo and Kyoto, (7) girls' university of Tokyo and (8) Imperial Universities of Tokyo and of Kyoto.

As the universities stand at the head of the educational system of Japan, it may be well to describe their organization in some detail. And I shall refer especially to the Tokyo Imperial University since the second one is only recently founded (1897).