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The Japanese educational system is one that differs greatly from the system implemented in the United States. The foundation of the modern Japanese educational system was set during the many reforms that took place during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and was again reformed after Allied Occupation in 1947. Today, there are many questions as to whether the Japanese educational system is an effective one and to whether it should or should not be reformed. Japan was a feudal nation before it rapidly modernized itself in the 19th century. The Tokugawa was a period of peace and it was during this time that schools first began to emerge in Japan. Monks and priests were the first teachers in these early schools. By the end of the Tokugawa period in the mid-nineteenth century there was a literacy rate of 50 percent for boys and about 20 for girls even though only a small percentage of the population is said to have attended school before the reformation took place (Cleaver 205). The upper classes were taught literature and military arts on a strong basis of Neo-Confucian learning while the less privileged studied reading and writing and arithmetic at schools called terakoya located in urban areas and supported by nobility or the