ABSTRACT
ONE THING SHOULD BY NOW BE CLEAR. If the Tokugawa period was a time of stagnation in many social and technical fields and of cyclical fluctuation in its repeated phases of administrative reform and decline, in the field of education at least there were steady and consistent trends-a trend of growth in the sheer amount of schooling provided and, though much more hesitantly and painfully, an evolution in its content and purposes. Did these developments in any sense condition the changes which took place in Japan in the last quarter of the nineteenth century? Are they germane to an explanation of why Japan, alone among Asian countries, was able to keep her independence and carry through the process of politically directed change which has made her a highly industrialized nation?
