History -- Sowing the Seeds of Change: Chinese Students, Japanese Teachers, 1895-1905 by Paula Harrell

Sowing the Seeds of Change: Chinese Students, Japanese Teachers, 1895-1905. By Paula Harrell. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992. 289 pp. $39.50.

During the Meiji period (1868-1912). thousands of Japanese students went to the United States and Europe to acquire Western knowledge as part of their nation's modernization effort. The perennial fixation of the Japanese on the West tends to overshadow the fact that China emulated Japan's example.

This book focuses on the study-abroad program launched in Japan by the Ch'ing dynasty in 1895. The dynasty, says Harrell, sought "to revitalize China with lessons from the Meiji development experience" and considered "nationwide reform of the education system" a vital first step. Harrell estimates that as many as 15,000 Chinese students came to...