Contents -- Editors Preface -- Introduction -- Patterns of Thought and Action of the Common People during the Bakumatsu and Restoration Epoch -- The Political Background of Early Meiji Educational Policy -- Local Politics and the Development of Secondary Education in the Early Meiji Period -- The Confucian Ideal of Rule by Virtue and the Creation of National Politics -- Meirokusha Thinkers and Early Meiji Enlightenment Thought -- The Statist Movement and Its Educational Activities -- The Spirit of Political Opposition in the Meiji Period -- Thought and Education in the Late Meiji Era -- Notes -- Index.