educational reforms on the American model. Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence appears to have served as a model for a government reform proposal drafted in 1870 by Itagaki Taisuke and Fukuoka Kotei, who began their proposal with a preamble stating that all men were by rights equal, from which they went on to draw many conclusions. (Think of the second sentence of our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…,” leading to many conclusions.)
