The Meiji government during the 1880's created both an
             institutional and constitution structure that allowed Japan in the
             coming decades to be a stabile and industrializing country. Two major
             policies and strategies that reinforced stability and economic
             modernization in Japan were the creation of a national public
             education system and the ratification of the Meiji constitution. Both
             these aided in stability and thus economic growth.
             The creation of a national education system aided in creating
             stability because it indoctrinated youth in the ideas of loyalty,
             patriotism, and obedience. Japan's education system at first stressed
             free thought and the ideas of individual's exploration of knowledge
             but by 1890 the education system of Japan became a tool for
             indoctrination into what Peter Duus calls "a kind of civil religion"
             with the Imperial Rescript on Education. This Rescript stressed two
             things. First, it stressed loyalty to the emperor and to a lesser
             extant to the state. In every classroom a picture of the emperor was
             placed. Second, the education system stressed self sacrifice to the
             state and family. Filial piety was taught in schools and applied not
             only to the family but also to the national family which included
             father, teacher, official and employer. The Japanese education system
             also created a system of technical schools and universities both
             public and private that educated a growing class of Japanese on
             how to use new western machinery, administrate government and run
             private industries. The Japanese education system following the
             Rescript on Education served primarily to teach people what to think
             and not how to think; and as Edwin Reischauer stated, "Japan pioneered
             in the modern totalitarian technique of using the educational system
             for indoctrination and was in fact decades ahead of countries like
             Germany in perfecting these techniques." J...