 Many advocates of reform in Japan, swung between these two positions.Japan in the early 1880s was weak, as a result of internal peasant uprisings and samurai rebellions during the previous decade, the country was also struggling financially with inflation as a result of these internal factors.Subsequently, the Meiji government adopted a passive policy, encouraging the Korea court to follow the Japanese model but offering little concrete assistance except for the dispatch of the small military mission headed by Lieutenant Horimoto Reizo to train the "Pyŏlgigun".