A JAPANESE STATESMAN'S REMINISCENCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2342, 19 January 1899, Page 35

A JAPANESE STATESMAN'S REMINISCENCES.

The Japanese Prime Minister lately addressed a young men's association in Tokio on the changes in his ideas during the past half-century. He was born, he said, at a time when the Shogun'^ Government was begintiing to feel the effect- of dissatisfaction in the country. The arrival of Commodore Perry in -Japam was the signal for a conflict between those who were in favour of admitting foreigners and those who wqre against it. Count Okuma urged educational reform in his native place, and was forthwith expelled from his school. He thereupon ' took the opportunity of studying Dutch ; but when this was regarded as a sign of disloyalty he took to the Btildy of native literature, and especially of military books. From a Dutch book that fell in his way ho acquired some knowledge of the causes of the prosperity of European countries, and was especially impressed by tho importance of learning and of a military spirit. At this time ho was an ardent and anti-foreign partisan, and was also the enemy of Christianity, which he regarded as a danger to the State. He studied the Bible under the late Dr Verbeck for about 18 months, but he failed to understand it. His study of that laid him open to suspicion, but he cleared himself by representing his object to have been hostility to foreigners and a desire to know their real tenets in order to combat them the more effectually. Meanwhile, however, his sentiments were undergoing transformation, for the study of foreign books had gradually undermined his anti-foreign notions, while personal intercourse with foreigners had revealed' to him his own defects. He grow anxious to spread foreign learning- and threw himself in with those resolved to overthrow the Shogun. He became a wandering agitator, and for a time gave up study. Thought in Japan advanced, and afc last it came to pass that tho man who was an irresponsible inmate of one lodging" house after another reached at a single bound the nosition of a Minister of State. The struggle of the old with the new was eevere, and Count Okuma thinks it a credit that the counky kept its head during the crisis. His own policy was to make use of foreign pressuro to secure internal order and progress. As to the moral and social outlook, ho said : " The materialism that I once believed in I now see to be one of our greatest foes."