ABSTRACT
The years of Shozo’s second imprisonment saw drastic reforms in many aspects of Japanese life, as the modernizing administration got into its stride. So much had changed so quickly, he says, that at the age of thirty-three he was made to feel like a new-born baby. All the feudal domains had been abolished, the Western calendar adopted, a railway opened between Tokyo and Yokohama, the educational system reorganized, conscription introduced.
