The University of Tokyo: Teaching and Research after the Merger of Two Government Schools

On April 12, 1877, Japan's Ministry of Education issued Notification No. 2, merging Tokyo Kaisei School and Tokyo Medical School under the name University of Tokyo. The original text reproduced in the university's centennial history preserves the notices sent separately to both schools. Senior vice-minister of education Tanaka Fujimaro subsequently arranged four faculties: Kaisei School supplied law, science, and letters, and the former medical school supplied medicine. The university began as an organizational restructuring, not an institution built from nothing only after a new campus was completed.

On April 13, Katō Hiroyuki was appointed to oversee law, science, and letters, while Ikeda Kensai took charge of medicine. These parallel leadership arrangements show that the merged school was not yet a wholly unified administrative entity. Katō had earlier proposed renaming Kaisei School “Kaisei University,” but the final choice, University of Tokyo, included the medical school and went beyond renaming a single institution.

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The University of Tokyo Preparatory School, established the same day, brought together students from Tokyo English School and Kaisei School's preparatory course, providing foundational education for entry into law, science, and letters. General regulations in 1878 prescribed a four-year general course; medicine retained its separate preparatory course until joining this system in 1882. University development was closely tied to entrance preparation and cannot be understood through today's picture of a unified admissions system directly after high school.

Specialist curricula also had boundaries different from today's. The Ministry of Education's centennial history lists chemistry, mathematics, physics and astronomy, biology, engineering, and geology and mining among science fields; letters grouped history, philosophy, and political science in one department, alongside a separate department of Japanese and Chinese literature. Most programs lasted four years. This arrangement brought imported disciplines and traditional national learning into a common institution without establishing today's departmental structure at its foundation.

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Merger did not mean stable finances. The university's centennial history records that both predecessor schools had relied heavily on the treasury. The Ministry of Education at one point hoped to accumulate tuition and other income into funds that could eventually sustain the school independently, but the Ministry of Finance's accounting controls limited the ownership of surpluses and their use across fiscal years. These institutional disputes affected the continuing provision of teachers, books, and apparatus.

Rising prices after the Satsuma Rebellion and increasing coin prices also raised the cost of foreign teachers' salaries and travel and purchases of equipment and books abroad. In 1880, Katō requested additional funds to cover the gap, and the Ministry of Education reallocated its own resources to maintain the university. Foreign scholars and imported equipment expanded teaching but also exposed the university to fiscal and monetary conditions; government status did not guarantee abundant funding.

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Early research extended beyond classrooms. In his original report on the Ōmori shell mounds, zoology professor Edward Morse described investigating the site beside a railway near Tokyo with students including Sasaki and Matsuura; teachers including Yatabe and Toyama also joined the initial work. Excavated collections were organized into the university museum, allowing students to participate in collecting, observing, and building research materials.

The report offered more than an excavation narrative. Morse recorded the deposits' location and thickness and pottery forms, and compared ancient shells with living shellfish nearby. His preface thanked physicist Mendenhall for organizing more than a thousand shell measurements and Jewett for chemical analysis. Contributions from different specialties converged in one publication, showing how the new university transformed individual interests into collaborative research rather than relying on a lone foreign professor.

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The report appeared in 1879 as Volume One, Number One of the Memoirs of the Science Department, University of Tokio. In the preface, Morse thanked Katō and Hamao for support and listed the work of Japanese scholars, students, assistants, illustrators, and printers. Except for the final illustration, Japanese personnel handled drawing and engraving; students helped translate, and an assistant copied manuscripts for the printer. Publication rested on combined organizational, linguistic, and technical work.

The report also noted that plate lettering accommodated a Japanese edition. The preface was dated July 16, but Morse's August 26 letter to Darwin still described the material sent as proofs, with complete copies expected in several weeks. The preface date therefore should not be equated with publication. This surviving letter also records a concrete international exchange: observations and measurements from a Tokyo site reached a British scholar for discussion while printing was still underway.

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The 1877 merger and the Imperial University system of 1886 were separate events. The latter was defined by the Imperial University Order, approved on March 1 and promulgated the following day. Article One emphasized teaching and researching the scholarship and skills required by the state; Article Two distinguished advanced research in the graduate school from theoretical and applied teaching in the colleges. Article Ten listed five colleges: law, medicine, engineering, letters, and science.

The order also placed the president under the education minister's instructions and created a deliberative mechanism with professors serving as councilors. Early Tokyo University connected preparatory education, specialist teaching, collections, and research publication, while state supervision of the system underwent subsequent institutional redesign. Reading founding documents, financial records, and research reports together distinguishes formal establishment from the university's actual operation.

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