Modern Japan affords the clearest illustration of a tendency which is prominent among all the Great Powers - the tendency to make national greatness the supreme purpose of education. The aim of Japanese education is to produce citizens who shall be devoted to the State through the training of their passions, and useful to it through the knowledge they have acquired. I cannot sufficiently praise the skill with which this double purpose has been pursued. Ever since the advent of Commodore Perry's squadron, the Japanese have been in a situation in which self-preservation was very difficult; their success affords a justification of their methods, unless we are to hold that self-preservation itself may be culpable. But only a desperate situation could have justified their educational methods, which would have been culpable in any nation not in imminent peril. The Shinto religion, which must not be called in question even by university professors, involves history which is just as dubious as Genesis; the Dayton trial pales into insignificance beside the theological tyranny in Japan. There is an equal ethical tyranny; nationalism, filial piety, Mikado-worship, etc., must not be called in question, and therefore many kinds of progress are scarcely possible. The great danger of a cast-iron system of this sort is that it may provoke revolution as the sole method of progress. This danger is real, though not immediate, and is largely caused by the educational system.
We have thus in modern Japan a defect opposite to that of ancient China. Whereas the Chinese literati were too sceptical and lazy, the products of Japanese education are likely to be too dogmatic and energetic. ...
近代日本(明治維新後の日本)は,あらゆる大国に顕著に見られる一つの傾向を最も明瞭に示している。即ち,国家を偉大にすることを教育の至上目的とする傾向である。日本の(第２次大戦前の)教育目的は,感情の訓練を通じて,国家を熱愛し,獲得した知識で国家に奉仕する臣民を育てることにある。 この二つの目的を達成する際に示された巧妙さは,なんと賞賛してよいか分らぬほど見事である。
