refsplat

[wombat1138]

I was going to post these snippets about Meiji education to a thread on RKDreams, but the forum has gone blinky *again* :b the pre-Meiji math stuff is pretty nifty in its own right, though.

http://www.jref.com/society/japanese_educational_system.shtml :

Japan started Westernizing during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Schools before that time were mostly for rich people and were not regulated by the government. The Meiji government immediately instituted a new educational system based on the French, German and American model. Primary, secondary schools and universities were established in 1872. In the same year, the authorities declared 4 years of elementary education to be compulsory for all boys and girls, nationwide. However, school attendance did not exceed 25 to 50% in the first decade of the new system. In 1905, school attendance for school-age children had reached 98% boys 93% for girls, and about 10% of the eligible population continued to middle school. Only a small minority made it as far as high school. Nevertheless, in 1899, the government required all prefectures to have at least one high school for girls.

The Meiji educational system quickly became state-centered. The curriculum had a moralistic approach and promoted Confucian ideals of loyalty to the state, filial piety, obedience and friendship. In 1890, the Imperial Rescript on Education formalised these conservative values. A portrait of the emperor was also to be enshrined in every school in Japan.

various snippets from http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/ijhmt/index.asp?Id=International+Bibliography&Info=Japan --

abstract: "The status of mathematics education during the Meiji Period has been well studied especially from a factual point of view. However, there are some facets that have received little attention. One such facet is the relationship between the mathematics education in the Meiji Period and the characteristics of the mathematics that was introduced from Europe. The author throws some light on the topic by looking at the characteristics of Wasan (traditional Japanese mathematics) and historical changes in the concepts of European mathematics."

abstract: "With the Meiji restoration, Western mathematics was introduced in Japan. We needed about 30 years to standardize the curriculum of mathematics in primary and secondary schools. But it went the contrary to the so-called Perry-movement. To innovate it, we had to wait for the advent of Green Cover in primary school and the outcome of the reconstruction movement in secondary school."

article title: "The process of change in the construction principles of instructional contents at the arithmetic textbooks in Meiji kenteiki period: On the properties of fraction, comparison of sizes, the addition and subtraction at the second half of the first stage and the second stage."

article title: ""A study on the reconstructional movement of the calculation with abacus (soroban) in the Meiji middle period"

As for wasan, this English-language page only has a brief introduction-- "During the Edo period (1603-1867) Japan was cut off from the western world. But learned poeple of all classes ,from farmers to samurai, produced theorems in Euclidean geometry. These theorems appeared as beautifully colored drawings on wooden tablets which were hung under one of the roof in the precincts of a shrine or temple. [....]"-- but the Japanese-language site linked at the top has several examples of the form. More info here, here, and here.

Comments

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

There're some classroom details in the rural Taisho book I think I mentioned back on RKD-- Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan by Junichi Saga; there's a sequel I keep meaning to hunt down-- but again, I'm not sure how close they'd be to Meiji Tokyo.

The book is a set of small essay-like chapters drawn from individual interviews; in the last one, a woman born in 1903 says that she went to the Girls' Primary School (hence, sex-segregated), where they didn't have any textbooks so they wrote on slates with "slate sticks" (chalk? or were different colors of slate actually used to write on each other?) and occasionally brought in newspapers for calligraphy practice; sometimes there wasn't any paper available, and so they'd dampen the "sandpit" outside (a playground sandbox, or something specifically designated for writing in?) and practice writing their kanji in there. They had music lessons (mostly singing patriotic songs) in a different room of the same traditionally-constructed building, with handmade paper screens and a soggy wooden veranda

And then there's the rather bloodcurdling account by two guys who were born in 1895 and 1896, of all of the boys their age routinely playing around by making gunpowder from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal and stuffing it into a bamboo pipe for fireworks or small shotguns (for picking off birds). And hey, that one has a footnote about the "slate sticks"; there was another game for which "[t]he stick was cut in half and the two pieces rubbed against a stone to flatten out the bottom part, making them semi-cylindrical" (so they were cylindrical to start with); one end of each half-stick was then cut into a "downward-pointing wedge" and the bottom was oiled, and then the half-sticks were flicked around on a flat writing slate (which had raised rims) to try to knock the other kid's stick off, kinda almost like air hockey?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

--oh, I guess the slate sticks really were made of slate; this site (http://www.swehs.co.uk/docs/news24.html) about a historical tour of rural England has the line "We tried our hand at writing on slate boards with slate sticks (no chalk!)."

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. So it seems that maybe the students wrote on little chalk boards instead of on paper. But perhaps since Tokyo was a large city and the capital by that time, the schools there could afford ink and paper?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

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]

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Seriously? The capital had the fewest public schools and they were the poorest? What the hell does that say about the country? Yeesh!

OK, in terms of RK, would Kenshin and Kaoru be more likely to send Kenji to one of those temple schools in the 1880s? If the temple schools were privately funded, they could probably afford paper and ink, right? (Please say they could!) Since they're temple schools, does that mean they were taught by Buddhist monks?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

The capital had the fewest public schools and they were the poorest?

Not exactly; the way Seidensticker explains it, when the Meiji educational reforms started and they started establishing public schools, Tokyo already had so many private schools that they didn't seem to need any new ones, so the government just sort of ignored them for a while. Once Tokyo *did* start to get new public schools, they were considered higher-prestige than the old private ones.

Since they're temple schools, does that mean they were taught by Buddhist monks?

I don't think so-- while the term terakoya is based on the word for "temple", at this point it seems to be used for any private elementary school, like the farmboy's school below where the teacher was just a retired merchant. It also looks like terakoya is a good websearch term-- here's a set of woodcuts (http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/ndl_newsletter/117/173.html) from 1805 showing New Year's activities inside one, with the students writing out auspicious calligraphy (on paper; I have no idea how that slate-on-slate stuff works).

...wrt RK, I think some of the questions that still need to be answered are how did students match up with schools in the first place-- whatever was closest, or anywhere they wanted to go? how much did things like tuition or entrance qualifications enter into it?

This article abstract (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED060318&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED060318) suggests another factor-- private schools were more traditional/Confucian; public schools were more Westernized/secular (except for the growing influence of nationalistic State Shinto throughout the society). While Kenshin himself was clearly traditionalist, I don't know whether he'd object to Kenji learning about a more modern lifestyle... he might just go along with whatever Kaoru preferred.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

OK, so the terakoya are the older, more traditional schools. I get that.

Honestly, since I'm a lazy-ass, I'll just have them put Kenji in a terakoya since there were more of them in Tokyo and there was probably one near the dojo (where ever the hell Kamiya Dojo is actualy located!).

I don't think Kenshin would approve of the militaristic teachings in the public schools. All those public schools were were military indoctrination institutions. I can't see him and Kaoru wanting Kenji exposed to that.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

From p. 53, wrt the late Tokugawa pd:

[A]mong some aristocratic samurai families, basic literacy was the only "cognitive" goal and other academic skills were ignored. Instead, tutors trained the children in Confucian ethics and martial arts. Hence, the use of the abacus and other computational skills were proscribed for samurai youths as unbefitting the upper classes. Children of the emerging middle class [...] learned the practical skills of computation and literacy, appropriate to a merchant class, and were also instructed in the more refined arts and the ethical precepts of the upper classes they were beginning to emulate.

In general, most children attended a terakoya (parish school); historically, these began inside Buddhist temples, where the priests would teach kids to read and write.

The content of the education was practical, and its tone, by analogy, consistent with the moral homilies of McGuffey's Readers. Those attending were commoners, most likely farmers' children, and the virtues taught were Japanese agrarian: common sense, cooperation with and respect for others, thrift and the avoidance of waste.

There follows a few pages of narration of a composite "typical" farm boy's school day in the autumn of 1850. He gets up early to help his dad stack rice sheaves before it starts to rain; during good weather in harvest season, it's common for kids to completely skip out on school for days at a time to help their families. Eventually he grabs a rice-ball from home to take for lunch and meets up with the other 10 kids, ranging in age from 7-14. Their teacher (ringing a bell to signal the start of class as everyone comes in) is a retired merchant who'd already handed over his main business for his older son to run; since farm families tend to be low on cash, he accepts payment in the form of food, sake, homespun cloth, or other such barter items. Everyone sits on tatami mats in the same room; our boy bunches up with other students at the same level to recite a Confucian text in unison at the teacher, who then has them practice writing the characters. (The writing materials are not described.) Lessons are assigned according to age/ability, and the kids get a lot of individual attention, although when the teacher is concentrating on any one student or subset, the rest of the class continues chattering away and making noise. There's a scheduled lunch break and playtime, but since it's still raining, the teacher just tells everyone a story while they sit around the fire.

I think there are some other books inside our county system (probably at the community college libraries) that sounded even more targeted, including one about the worldwide history of the development of kindergarten which had specific chapters on China (which started to adopt the concept from Japan in the early 20th century) and Japan (which presumably got an earlier start). However, now I seem to've misplaced the scrap of paper I jotted down the titles/authors and LOC/Dewey refcodes argh.

There's also a snippet of information here (http://www.britishorigami.info/academic/lister/oriinskools.htm) about the origami-like paperfolding activities endorsed by the European educator Froebel, who was a formative influence in kindergarten concepts, and how they were absorbed in Japan into a syncretic mix with native origami forms.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

That sounds really cozy. Too bad modern schools aren't more like that.

Reading about origami. That Froebel guy makes another appearance. He must have been the father of modern kindergartens. I can't believe Mcarthy thought origami was bad. What a moron.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

I think origami is something people should just do for fun. Must everything be institutionalized and standardized by schools? *sighs*

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I can't believe Mcarthy thought origami was bad.

Anti-Commie Joe? Somehow, I'm not surprised in various ways-- even if there wasn't any actual Communist angle, it was close enough after WWII that a lot of Americans might've been suspicious of anything linked with either Germany or Japan.

(My parents were children in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. The first time my mother found me watching anime, she was... not happy about it.)

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Actually, I meant to type MacArthur. I was kinda zoinked out last night.

Jeez, the Japanese just wanted to occupy all of Asia back then, didn't they?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Arguably they started out by reacting against the Europeans colonizing other parts of Asia, esp. after the Russo-Japanese War. Still, they ended up doing some pretty godawful things while they were at it.

At one point I was flipping through a book at the library about the growth of Japanese nationalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including some writings by Katsura, or Kido as he became known instead. There was some other guy was was arguing that maybe these Westerners had some good ideas like steam power and heavy artillery, but this whole "science" thing about all people being descended from monkeys and the sun being a big ball of fire were obvious nonsense-- after all, everyone (in Japan at the time) knew that they and they alone were descended from the goddess Amaterasu, and everyone else on earth was of lesser birth and should be trampled underfoot.

(OTOH, it's still common to hear people of Chinese descent offhandedly mutter that *they* (i.e., China) originated all the really worthwhile culture in Asia, and all of their neighbors like the Korean and Japanese are just stupid barbarians who more-or-less ineptly tried to copy them. Ah, the delights of tradition.)

And to round out the general character-bashing for this post, before WWII, MacArthur was noted for disbanding the "Bonus Army" (a group of WWI veterans and their families who camped out near Washington DC in hopes of cashing in their service bonds from the government, during the early part of the Great Depression). Various men, women, and children were tear-gassed, bayoneted, and generally kicked around, and their tents and shanties were burned.

Yay patriotism. Rah.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

(OTOH, it's still common to hear people of Chinese descent offhandedly mutter that *they* (i.e., China) originated all the really worthwhile culture in Asia, and all of their neighbors like the Korean and Japanese are just stupid barbarians who more-or-less ineptly tried to copy them. Ah, the delights of tradition.)

And to round out the general character-bashing for this post, before WWII, MacArthur was noted for disbanding the "Bonus Army" (a group of WWI veterans and their families who camped out near Washington DC in hopes of cashing in their service bonds from the government, during the early part of the Great Depression). Various men, women, and children were tear-gassed, bayoneted, and generally kicked around, and their tents and shanties were burned.

Yay patriotism. Rah.

Well technically, they are correct. Much of what we think is Japanese (flower arranging, tea ceremony, etc.) was brought over to Japan by Buddhist monks from China, who in turn inherited a lot of stuff from India. Really, India is the epicenter of a lot of Asian culture.

Well isn't that nice to know! So the government issued them these bonds and then refused to honor them when the time came to pay the piper? Did those people sue the government or go to the media and make a big stink about it? I'd sue!

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Before I forget again-- pre-Juppongatana Anji = terakoya?

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but I thought it was more like an orphanage. Didn't temples take in orphans?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Oooo. (http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpbz198103/hpbz198103_2_037.html)

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. Bookmarked it for perusal when I'm actually awake enough to understand words.