Joseph Henry Longford, Dictionary of National Biography… (1912)
“ There was hardly a phrase book; there were no dictionaries, and no elementary grammar either for Europeans or for Japanese students, grammar being ignored in the Japanese school and college curriculum, and left entirely to philologists, whose works (few in number) were too abstruse for study by any but the most advanced students. Not until ten years after Aston's arrival was the first attempt at a grammar on European models published by the education department of the imperial government. ”
