"While Japan remained secluded from other countries, she had no
necessity for and scarcely any war vessels, but after the country
was opened to the free intercourse of foreign powers--immediately
she felt the urgent necessity of naval defense and employed a Dutch
officer to construct her navy. In 1871 the Japanese government
employed a number of English officers, and almost wholly
reconstructed her navy according to the English system. But in the
matter of naval education our rulers found the English system
altogether unsatisfactory, and adopted the American system for the
model of our naval academy. So, in discipline, our naval officers
found the German principle much superior to the English, and
adopted that in point of discipline. Thus the Japanese navy is not
wholly after the English system, or the American, or the French, or
the German system. But it has been so constructed as to include the
best portions of all the different systems. In the case of the
army, we had a system of our own before we began to utilize
gunpowder and foreign methods of discipline. Shortly before the
present era we reorganized our army by adopting the Dutch system,
then the English, then the French, and after the Franco-Prussian
war, made an improvement by adopting the German system. But on
every occasion of reorganization we retained the most advantageous
parts of the old systems and harmonized them with the new one. The
result has been the creation of an entirely new system, different
from any of those models we have adopted. So in the case of our
civil code, we consulted most carefully the laws of many civilized
nations, and gathered the cream of all the different codes before
we formulated our own suited to the customs of our people. In the
revision of our monetary system, our government appointed a number
of prominent economists to investigate the characteristics of
foreign systems, as to their merits and faults, and also the
different circumstances under which various systems present their
strength and weakness. The investigation lasted more than two
years, which finally culminated in our adoption of the gold in the
place of the old silver standard."

This quotation gives an idea of the selective method that has been
followed. There has been no slavish or unconscious i