Some Americans such as Samuel Robbins Brown, Birdsey G. Northrop, and John Hopkins Twichell in late 19^th century New England had early contacts with both Chinese and Japanese students. These discoveries led the author to consider the necessity of further pursuing study into (1) the activities of missionaries and intellectuals who had contacts with both Japanese and Chinese students aspiring to learn from the west, and (2) the contacts and relationships between Japanese and Chinese overseas students.
This paper firstly clarifies the background and footsteps regarding relationships between Americans and Japanese/Chinese overseas students, then examines whether Japanese and Chinese students themselves built up interactions and friendships through their network of American acquaintances, schools and local communities, and finally makes comparisons from family backgrounds to careers of 21 Japanese and 21 Chinese students studying at Yale University in the period 1870–1887.
The students of these two countries were studied because their similar experiences as overseas students may provide important insights to why Japan and China took different paths in their modernization, a topic the author has had continuous academic interest in. This paper also intends, as the first step in a comparative study of modernization processes in Japan and China, to find out whether Japanese and Chinese students studying at Yale University in the same period set off from similar starting points.
In conclusion, the ground was set for communication between Japanese and Chinese students in second-half 19^th century New England, but deeper interaction and solidarity did not seem to have grown between them. Moreover, although China fell far behind Japan in modernization, both countries had overseas students who had the same western training under the same environment at the start.

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By a notification in 1871, the Meiji Government contrived to establish a unified national system for the relief of abandoned children. The Tokyo area, however, had its own special system, "kunai-azukari", that had its origins in the Tokugawa Era. This relief system, financed by ku and gun as autonomous government units, is reputed to have played an important role in times of social upheaval, particularly during the period of the Matsukata Deflation. On the other hand, the fact that the system far exceeded the national one in the scale of expenditure and was subject to the arbitrary control of local officials, caused conflicts with the policy of the municipal government. Study of the shomu-ka (general affairs section) documents of the old government enable us to clarify both the structure of these conflicts and the concern of the authorities over the increases in expenditure which were due mainly to the participation of particular agents, "shusennin", in the kunai-azukari system. Eventually, the local autonomous system was dissolved. In 1885-1886, the municipal government ordered that all children under the care of kunai-azukari be accommodated in the Tokyo Yoikuin (the poorhouse). Once the order had been put into action, all the related expenditures were completely incorported into the accounts of the Yoikuin. Since it is obvious that the wishes of ku and gun offices were precluded, and since all remaining resources were appropriated as a new source of funds for the Yoikuin, I conclude that the order implied a solution favourable to the municipal government. Meanwhile, it should be pointed out in reference to further study that there might be the hopes for the rationalization of "society" and "culture" held by the chairman of the Yoikuin, Shibusawa Eiichi, and other "distinguished persons" in the city.

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