The university is strictly governmental and is under the control of the Department of Education, one of the main divisions of the imperial administration. It includes six colleges—law, medicine, engineering, literature, science and agriculture. In general, its students are the graduates of high schools and are enrolled in a three-year course, medicine and law requiring, however, four years. It may be safely said that the grade of the regular work of the university is higher than that of the American colleges, for I find that the courses which are set down in the curricula of many colleges for freshmen and sophomore classes are given in the Japanese high school. One may further note that in the interest of general higher education the university courses are practically free. And as evidence of the democracy of learning one may sometimes note a young noble sitting shoulder to
shoulder with the son of a peasant. It goes almost without saying that every university student is expected to understand lectures when given in one of the European languages.
With this introduction we may briefly refer to the development of our university. Between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century young Japanese who had been thirsting for western learning began their study of medicine, astronomy, physics, chemistry, gunnery, fortification, by the aid of textbooks, mainly written in Dutch, which they had obtained, often in spite of much local disfavor, from the trading station at Nagasaki. Succeeding in their western studies, some of these Japanese workers opened schools at several places for the dissemination of their hard earned knowledge. And one of these schools, named Bansho-shirabejo (the place for the examination of the writings of the barbarians).
