Figure 1.--This is one of the earliest images of Japanse Scouts taken in 1913. The boys are doing knot tieing and fitst aid. The boys here wear an early uniform. There was, however, not yet any associaion to set standards throughout Japan.

The Scout Movement reached Japan in 1913 only a few years after it was founded in England during 1907 by Lord Robert Baden-Powell. Scouting activities during the 1910s appear to have been the operations of isolated individual troops as there was not yet any national Scout association. A troop was established in Osaka. The American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). The Y and Boy Scouts had close contacts with the Boy Scouts of America. The ready acceptance and subsequent popularity of Scouting was a part of Americanization of Japanese urban life. As in other countries, the Japanese slowly began to turn the imported Boy Scouting movemnt into a domestic youth movement which integrated domestic cultural trends. We have very limited inforation on Japanese Scouting during the 1910s, but available images show them learning how to tie knots and working of first aid. We are not sure what kind of uniforms were adopted. We see here the udestinctive niform worn by one troop (figure 1). Without a national association it is ofcourse difficult to have any kind of uniformity.