d. The Promulgation of the Higher Middle School Order

On July 31, 1911, the Higher Middle School Order was promulgated. Komatsubara Eitaro (1852-1919), Education Minister at that time, considered the higher schools to be the central problem of the educational system, and thus in this Order he proposed a higher middle school with a course of two years and five or six months which would have the goal of furnishing a higher level general education to those who had completed a middle school. This Higher Middle School Order was to be enforced nearly two years later, on April 1, 1913. Initially it was planned that no more than twenty government schools throughout the nation would be set up, but just before enforcement, in March, 1913, the plan was indefinitely postponed. It was never enforced.