The educational system in vogue is a good index of a nation's civilization. Perhaps no {93} nation of the West has a better organized and developed free-school system than has Japan. Schools are found in every village and hamlet, and as all children of a prescribed age are required to attend, they are full to overflowing. The little round-faced, sleek-headed Japanese children swarm round them like bees. There are four grades of schools: the primary lower, the advanced lower, the lower middle, and the higher middle. The lower schools are found everywhere; the higher ones only in the large towns and cities. Of the higher middle schools (which correspond to our American colleges of middle grade) there are seven, distributed at various points over the empire. At the head of this whole system stands the Imperial University in Tokyo, which is itself the outgrowth of several colleges, and is largely modeled after the German universities. The lower schools are modeled after our American schools. Unfortunately, so large a part of the time of the school-children must be spent in studying Chinese characters that it takes about eight years to learn to read. What a pity that the awkward, antiquated system of Chinese writing is not abandoned! It seems that the native _kana_, of which there are about forty-eight, with a few of the more common Chinese characters, would answer all purposes; then the long years spent in studying Chinese could be devoted to other things, to {94} the immense advantage of the student. In the lower schools very little is studied except Chinese. In the middle schools the branches studied are just about what American youths study in the academies. Formerly considerable stress was laid upon the study of modern languages, and all students of the middle schools were required to study English and either French or German. But in recent years only English has been required, and it, even, is not studied so carefully as it was. Since the revision of the treaties the study of foreign languages seems to be on the increase.