period of learning from abroad was comparable only to the great period when the Japanese imported Chinese civilization over a thousand years earlier, but this time the process of learning from abroad was carried out on a larger scale and much more systematically. Students were chosen with care on the basis of their knowledge and capabilities, and the countries where they were to study were selected with equal care. The Japanese determined to learn from each Western country that in which it particularly excelled. They went to England to study the navy and merchant marine, to Germany for the army and for medicine, to France for law, and to the United States for business methods. The world was one vast school room for them, and they entered it determined to learn only the best in each field.
With its predominant interest in military strength, the new government naturally paid great attention to the creation of a strong army and navy along Western lines, but the young reformers knew that to be truly strong the new army and navy needed behind them an efficient and stable political system, a physically strong and technically competent people, and a sound and industrially advanced economic system. While building up the army and navy, therefore, they by no means neglected the other requisites for national strength.
The new government was in essence an oligarchy in the hands of fewer than one hundred young men. They had no reason to be dissatisfied with their own form of rule, but they saw the advantages of many Western political concepts and institutions as essential adjuncts