Sapporo Agricultural College
Leland was born in 1850 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Amherst College and studied medicine at Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1878. Amherst College had strong ties to the Sapporo Agricultural College in Japan through its connection with Vice Minister for Education Tanaka Fujimaro, who had visited Amherst during the Iwakura Mission and subsequently returned from 1874-1877 for further first-hand research on the American school systems with the aim of modernizing and westernizing education in the Empire of Japan. He approached Amherst president Julius H. Seelye for advice on establishing a curriculum for use in the new state schools being established in Japan. He also visited the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, after which he submitted a report to the Japanese government praising the Amherst style of physical education over the more regimented, military-drill style techniques then in use in Japan.