The Power to Compete: An Economist and an Entrepreneur on Revitalizing Japan in the Global Economy

Epilogue

“Boys, be ambitious!” William S. Clark, a teacher at Sapporo Agricultural College [now Hokkaido University], is famous for leaving his students with these words of encouragement.

As if answering Dr. Clark's call to action, a great many ambitious young people came to gather around Sapporo at the start of the Meiji period. One such person was Inazo Nitobe, the man now depicted on the 5,000-yen note, but I don't think that many Japanese people know what Nitobe accomplished.

Nitobe was born in a warrior household of the southern Morioka domain. He studied at Sapporo Agricultural College alongside people like Kanzo Uchimura and others, and, at the age of 21, he set a grand life goal of becoming a bridge between nations across the Pacific Ocean. He quit a course at Imperial University midway through to go study abroad in the United States. He studied in Germany after that, and then he took a position at his alma mater, Sapporo Agricultural College, upon returning to Japan. In 1900, while he was still in the United States, he authored Bushido: The Soul of Japan in English. The book became a best-seller. It was translated into German, French, and other languages, and read around the world.

Following his time teaching at Sapporo Agricultural College, Nitobe moved on to other positions, including professor at Kyoto Imperial University and principal of First Higher School, Japan, before finally settling into a position as an undersecretary-general of the League of Nations. In that ...