THE KITASATO INSUTITUTE
It was not just science and technology that hired foreigners brought to Japan. Their work began by conveying the teaching of technical thought, where engineers were the standard-bearers of social progress, to clan children who believed that working was the job of coolies in the feudal 'four-class' society. There was much in this Oriental country that perplexed the foreign guests, such as the 'world upside-down'. Their common sense of 'drawing a line from left to right' and 'screws being clockwise' was reversed in Japan, and it seemed that 'Japanese having a peculiar habit of answering yes even if they don't understand'. For young Japanese students, the presence of hired foreign teachers was important and many youngsters went to their universities to acquire further technology.