Although the incursions made into Chinese philosophy and the revival of Japanese traditions during the Tokugawa Epoch contributed materially to the overthrow of feudalism and the restoration of the Throne's administrative power, the immediate tendency of the last two events was to divert the nation's attention wholly from the study of either Confucianism or the _Record of Ancient Matters_. A universal thirst set in for Occidental science and literature, so that students occupied themselves everywhere with readers and grammars modelled on European lines rather than with the Analects or the _Kojiki_. English at once became the language of learning. Thus the three colleges which formed the nucleus of the Imperial University of Tokyo were presided over by a graduate of Michigan College (Professor Toyama), a member of the English bar (Professor Hozumi) and a graduate of Cambridge (Baron Kikuchi). If Japan was eminently fortunate in the men who directed her political career at that time, she was equally favoured in those that presided over her literary culture. Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of the Keio Gijuku, now one of Japan's four universities, did more than any of his contemporaries by writing and speaking to spread a knowledge of the West, its ways and its thoughts, and Nakamura Keiu laboured in the same cause by translating Smiles's _Self-help_ and Mill's _Representative Government_. A universal geography (by Uchida Masao); a history of nations (by Mitsukuri Rinsho); a translation of _Chambers's Encyclopaedia_ by the department of education; Japanese renderings of Herbert Spencer and of Guizot and Buckle--all these made their appearance during the first fourteen years of the epoch. The influence of politics may be strongly traced in the literature of that time, for the first romances produced by the new school were all of a political character: _Keikoku Bidan_ (_Model for Statesmen_, with Epaminondas for hero) by Yano Fumio; _Setchubai (Plum-blossoms in snow)_ and _Kwakwan-o (Nightingale Among Flowers)_ by Suyehiro. This idea of subserving literature to political ends is said to have been suggested by Nakae Tokusuke's translation of Rousseau's _Contrat social_. The year 1882 saw _Julius Caesar_ in a Japanese dress. The translator was Tsubouchi Shoyo, one of the greatest writers of the Meiji era. His _Shosetsu Shinsui (Essentials of a Novel)_ was an eloquent plea for realism as contrasted with the artificiality of the characters depicted by Bakin, and his own works illustrative of this theory took the public by storm. He also brought out the first literary periodical published in Japan, namely, the _Waseda Bungaku_, so called because Tsubouchi was professor of literature in the Waseda University, an institution founded by Count Okuma, whose name cannot be omitted from any history of Meiji literature, not as an author but as a patron.