ABSTRACT
In April 1902, some two months after the Anglo-Japanese Alliance had been concluded, a Japanese book, entitled Shin no Eikoku, was published. The literal translation of this title was True Britain. The author, Yoshimoto Tadasu (1878-1973) had studied at Oxford and had returned to Japan in the autumn of the previous year. Yoshimoto was the first partially blind person to receive higher education in Japan. Yoshimoto’s book brought a new vision of the welfare available to blind people in Japan. Kumagai Tetsutaro (1883-1979), the first blind clergyman, described the tremendous impact of Yoshimoto’s book, especially the long chapter concerning the blind in Britain. He referred to it as a dawn bell, proclaiming change for the blind in Japan.1 Illustrating the advanced welfare provision for the blind in Britain, Yoshimoto suggested that blind people could receive similar benefits even in Japan. The idea that the blind in Britain were treated as citizens came as a great surprise to the Japanese.
