Background
Shūji Isawa was born on 30 June 1851 in the province of Shinano, present-day Nagano Prefecture, the son of a samurai of domain of Takato; his literary name was Rakuseki. (His younger brother Izawa Takio was governor-general of Taiwan and an advisor to the Privy Council.)
Education
After completing studies at the official school of the domain, Izawa pursued a course in Western studies in Edo and Kyoto. In 1870 he was chosen to be an officially sponsored student from his domain and attended the Daigaku Nanko in Tokyo, the forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University.
He studied first at Bridgewater Normal School and later entered Harvard, where he studied physics and chemistry. From Alexander Graham Bell he learned how to teach lipreading and is said to have been present when Bell developed the first telephone and tried talking over the instrument.
Career
He entered the Ministry of Education in 1872 and in 1874 became head of Aichi Normal School. In 1875 he went to America in connection with a survey of methods for the training of teachers.
After returning to Japan in 1878, he held various positions such as head of Tokyo Normal School and director of the Editorial Bureau of the Ministry of Education, devoting his time to the compilation of textbooks. In 1895 he was assigned to service in Taiwan, which had just come under Japanese control, acting as chief of the Educational Bureau in the office of the governor general.
In 1897 he became a member of the Upper House of the Diet, and in 1899-1900 served as head of Tokyo Higher Normal School. During this period, he contributed greatly to the development of Meiji era education by introducing Western educational methods and Western music into the curriculum.