Okay, managed to nab three books from the library this time; there was also an interesting-sounding young-adult novel called "Samurai Shortstop", about a Japanese boy at an Americanized boarding school in the late 19th century, but it wasn't on the shelves at this branch and I don't know whether it has solid historical cites.
On first glance, Samurai and Silk seems to cover the wrong era-- the two main subjects were born in 1835 and 1855, so their primary educations were definitely complete by the time of the Meiji reforms-- but there may be some additional material about their kids. The index doesn't look promising, though. OTOH it could be interesting on other grounds, since the noble side of the family was from Satsuma.
High City, Low City by Edward Seidensticker may be a good general resource, since it's an overview of the ~40 yrs of Tokyo history from the end of the Shogunate to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Interestingly, what little he says about the educational system is that weirdly, Tokyo had a much less developed system of public schools than the rest of the country:
In 1879 Tokyo contained more than half the private elementary schools in the country. Despite its large population, it had fewer public schools than any other prefecture except Okinawa. The 'temple schools' of Edo had the chief responsibility for primary education in the early and middle Meiji. It was only toward the turn of the century that the number of pupils in public schools overtook the number in private schools.[p. 87]
As for the nature of those "temple schools", there's a good couple of pages (~53-61) in Merry White's The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children. [ctd. next post]
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2007-08-27 11:11 pm (UTC)On first glance, Samurai and Silk seems to cover the wrong era-- the two main subjects were born in 1835 and 1855, so their primary educations were definitely complete by the time of the Meiji reforms-- but there may be some additional material about their kids. The index doesn't look promising, though. OTOH it could be interesting on other grounds, since the noble side of the family was from Satsuma.
High City, Low City by Edward Seidensticker may be a good general resource, since it's an overview of the ~40 yrs of Tokyo history from the end of the Shogunate to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Interestingly, what little he says about the educational system is that weirdly, Tokyo had a much less developed system of public schools than the rest of the country:
As for the nature of those "temple schools", there's a good couple of pages (~53-61) in Merry White's The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children. [ctd. next post]