CHAPTER XXX

Education.

Before the Restoration the State concerned itself little with education. There were, indeed, in Yedo, as Tōkiō was then called, two or three Government schools open to youths of the military class, and similar institutions existed in the provinces, both in clan territories and in those of the Shōgun. In these instruction was given in the Chinese classics and in military accomplishments. Except for this slender provision for educational needs, the matter was left, to a great extent, in the hands of the people themselves. Such education as was thought to be necessary for children other than those of the military class was obtained in Buddhist temple schools (_terakoya_). In the case of the military class private tuition took the place of these schools, both for elementary instruction, and for such further education as might be desired; it being customary for students above a certain age to become pupils of some scholar of repute, in whose house they often resided during their course of study. From the absence of any regular official control of education it must not be inferred that learning was discouraged in Japan. On the contrary, it was encouraged from early times, both by the Court in pre-feudal days and by the later Tokugawa rulers, with the result that the Japanese nation had, as is well known, attained a high degree of culture of an Oriental kind before the reopening of the country to foreign intercourse. But the interest taken in education was only spasmodic. No attempt was made to systematize it, and make it a branch of the general administration of the country.

In the programme of the men who effected the Restoration educational reform occupied a prominent place; but while feudalism lasted not much could be done. Neither the control of education by one central authority, nor the defiance of class prejudice by throwing education open equally to all, was possible. The enlargement of the few existing colleges, the opening of a few more in places where they were most needed, the engagement of foreign teachers, and the selection of students represented all that was attainable for the moment. The desired opportunity came with the abolition of feudalism, and the disappearance of the military class. It was in the summer of 1871 that the Decree which swept away the feudal system was issued; a week or two later the Department of Education was established; and in the following year (1872) the first Educational Code was drawn up and promulgated. Compulsory education for both sexes dates from this time.

To the frankly utilitarian spirit disclosed in the preamble to the Code the late Baron Kikuchi, at one time Minister of Education, drew attention in his London lectures on the subject delivered in 1909. In it there is no mention of religion, nor is anything said about moral instruction. The Code provided for the creation of no less than eight universities and a corresponding number of elementary and middle schools, both being far in excess of the requirements of the country at that time. No surprise, therefore, was felt when in 1879 this plan was abandoned, and a scheme better suited to existing conditions adopted in its place. Nevertheless, in these seven years a good beginning had been made. The principle of compulsory education for all children between six and fourteen years of age had been introduced. The Tōkiō University had been established, and though expectations regarding the growth of middle schools had not been realized, in the creation and working of elementary schools satisfactory progress had been made.

The Code of 1879, by which a simpler and more practical form was given to elementary education, was in its turn replaced by the educational law of 1886. Under the new measure elementary education was divided into two courses; more attention was given to normal education; new features in the shape of moral and physical training were introduced; and the method of regulating educational affairs by means of Codes was discontinued. Various changes were made in subsequent years, but the system then established is, in its main outlines, in force to-day.

At the threshold of the present system lies the kindergarten, formed on the European model.

The actual system begins with elementary schools. These are of two kinds, the ordinary, and the higher, elementary schools. In the first the course extends over six years, and is compulsory for all children who have completed their sixth year. At thirteen years of age, therefore, compulsory education ceases. Ordinary elementary education is free, the cost being met by local taxation.

From the ordinary elementary school the child, boy or girl, whose education does not stop there, passes on to the higher elementary school. Here the course lasts for two years, a supplementary course being provided, as in the case of ordinary elementary schools, for those desiring it whose education ceases at this stage.

In elementary schools of both kinds boys and girls receive practically the same education. They are taught in the same schools, and often in the same classes. It is after this stage that the education of boys and girls becomes distinct, both as regards the schools and the subjects taught in them. Elementary schools established by the State are open to the children of all classes; but there are also private elementary schools of the same grades, which are recognized by law and are subject to official supervision.

At the age of fourteen or fifteen a boy enters what is known as a middle school, where he remains for five years. With the termination of this course, by which time he is about nineteen years of age, a Japanese youth has completed his general education. If he elects to go further, he must specialize, passing to a higher school in preparation for the University, to a technical school, to the higher normal school, or to what is termed a “special” (_semmon_) school, as the case may be.

The educational training open to girls on leaving the higher elementary schools is less extensive. They may enter a high school for girls, which corresponds more or less to the middle school for boys. Here the course is from four to five years, with a supplementary course spread over another two. Or they may enter a normal, or technical school. With the exception of some higher normal schools, no further provision for the more advanced education of women is made by the State.

Private enterprise and munificence have done much to supplement the educational work of the State. Besides the private elementary schools already mentioned, a certain proportion of the middle schools are also in private hands, whilst educational facilities of a more advanced standard are supplied by the flourishing colleges founded by Mr. Fukuzawa and Marquis Ōkuma. There are also Buddhist schools, and educational establishments of various kinds wholly or partly maintained by foreign missionary societies. Nor is the aid thus directed by private initiative confined to pupils of one sex. To what extent the education of women has profited is shown by the existence in the Capital of institutions so well known—to mention only a few—as the Women’s University founded by Mr. Narusé; the Girls’ College, which owes its creation to Mrs. Shimoda; and the schools for girls of the nobility, in which the late Empress, its founder, took special interest.

Let us now see what is taught under the present system of education.

The course of instruction in elementary schools comprises morals; reading, writing and letter writing, which are grouped together as one subject called “the Japanese language”; arithmetic and the use of the abacus, the counting-board of the ancients; gymnastics, drawing and singing; and (for girls) needlework. In the higher elementary course three additional subjects—history, geography and science—are included.

What, it may be asked, is meant by instruction in “morals,” the first subject mentioned in this curriculum? It is based on the principles laid down in the Imperial Rescript on Education promulgated in 1890, a copy of which, besides a portrait of the Emperor, hangs on the walls of elementary schools. Speaking of this, Baron Kikuchi in the lectures above mentioned says: “Our whole moral and civic education consists in so imbuing our children with the spirit of the Rescript that it forms a part of our national life.” No excuse is needed for dwelling at some length on a point to which he attaches so much importance.

The principles on which stress is laid in the Imperial Rescript are mostly of a kind with which the reader is more or less familiar, showing in the reference made to the duties of a Japanese subject to the Imperial Ancestors, to the Sovereign, to the State, and to society, their Confucian and Shintō origin. Attention has been drawn to the absence of any reference to moral teaching in the preamble of the Code of 1872. The fact that a different note is struck in the Rescript published eighteen years later does not justify the inference that the Government had seen reason to change its mind on the subject. For, only a year before the Rescript appeared, the Department of Education had issued a notification declaring it to be essential to keep religion and education apart, and forbidding the teaching of any religious doctrine, or the conduct of any religious ceremonies, in schools licensed by the State. It seems correct, therefore, to suppose that the attitude of the Government in regard to the relation of religion to education remained unchanged, but that the official mind made a distinction between moral teaching as identified with religious doctrines, and moral teaching of a more general kind. This supposition derives support from the close resemblance which the Rescript bears to a document entitled _A Short Exhortation to the People_, which was, as we have seen, published and circulated widely by the new Government in the early days of the Restoration. The object then in view was to divert to the Sovereign the old feudal feeling of devotion to the clan chief; to make the Throne, at a time when the fabric of old Japan was crumbling to pieces, the centre round which the nation could rally. The aim of the Rescript was the same, allowing for the change in circumstances, namely, to strengthen the framework of government by encouraging a fresh spirit of patriotism and loyalty. That education should be chosen as the medium for impressing upon the nation the spirit of precepts appealing with the force of tradition to national sentiment was very natural.

For the teaching of morals in elementary schools text-books are provided. These contain a series of illustrated homilies designed to inculcate the virtues to which prominence is given in Confucian ethics. The children are also taught in conversations with the teachers matters concerning the Emperor and the Court. They are brought to realize the extent of the Imperial solicitude for the people; these lessons leading up to the inevitable conclusion that the illustrious virtues of the Sovereign must be reverenced. Similar lessons are given on the subject of the national flag, with the object of promoting patriotism. In this respect the Japanese are fortunate in possessing a word of Chinese origin, which means literally “requiting the country for favours received,” and thus conveys the sense of duty on which the virtue rests. In their third school year the children learn about the Empress, and acquire some general knowledge of her position and responsibilities. And so they pass on to learn in succeeding courses, and always in the same sequence of moral ideas, what is meant by “the fundamental character of the Japanese Empire”—the relation, that is to say, of the Imperial House to the people—and something of the nature of government and civic duties.

It is not till the middle schools are reached that the influence of Western thought is noticeable in any marked degree. There the curriculum embraces morals, the Japanese language and Chinese literature, foreign languages, history, geography and mathematics. Moral instruction is continued on the lines on which it was begun in the elementary schools. It is not the fault of the teacher, nor of the system, if at the end of this stage of his education the pupil has not acquired a general perception of what is required of him in the way of his duty to ancestor, parent and neighbour, of his obligations to himself, to the family, to society and to the State, and if he is not also imbued with a deep sense of the fortunate privilege of Japanese nationality. It will be at once apparent how wide a field is covered by the subject of morals, and how practical is the end it is designed to subserve. The teaching of foreign languages in middle schools amounts practically to the teaching of English, this being in most of such schools the only foreign language taught. If, in spite of the prominence given to it, progress in the study of English is disappointing, the result is due to the false economy which substitutes for competent foreign teachers Japanese, whose knowledge and pronunciation are often defective.

The curriculum of the higher schools, the preparatory stage for the University, varies according to the three sections—Law and Literature, Science, and Medicine—into which they are divided. Four subjects, however, are common to all three. These are Morals, the Japanese language, Foreign Languages, and Gymnastics. Two of three foreign languages—English, French, and German—are taught in each section. In the Medical section German, and in the Science section English, is compulsory.

The course of University instruction does not call for any special notice. It is sufficient to say that it is modelled on Western lines.

Of late years the Government has given special attention to the establishment of Technical and Normal Schools. The fact that the pupils in these latter schools receive disciplinary training similar to that of military schools shows the anxiety of the authorities to foster a military spirit in the nation.

It will be seen that at every stage in the present system of education the Japanese language is one of the subjects of study. This is due not less to its complicated character than to the high degree of skill required in its writing, for which brushes and not pens are employed. In alluding to this point in a previous chapter attention was drawn to the difficulty created by the adoption of the Chinese written language by a people who had a spoken language of their own, and to the confusion that afterwards supervened when the borrowing nation devised written scripts for itself. The final result of this process of linguistic growth was the division of Japanese writing into three main branches—the Chinese style, in which Chinese hieroglyphs are used much as the Chinese use them; the native scripts, or syllabaries; and a third which is a mixture of the other two, and in varying forms is the one most in use to-day. Of the two elements that thus form the Japanese language of the present time—Chinese characters and the Japanese syllabaries—the former has so far proved itself the stronger and, in a sense, the more useful: stronger because of its having been the means by which Chinese civilization was introduced, and of its connection with the foundation upon which education has always rested; more useful because its effect on national culture has not only survived the reopening of Japan to foreign intercourse, but, owing to the fact that the native scripts are adapted for the writing only of native words, has increased twenty-fold. Just as we go to Latin and Greek to coin new words when we want them, so to Chinese the Japanese have always gone on the same quest; and for the better part of a century they have been busily engaged in coining new words for all the new things that have come to them in the train of Western learning. Thus the language which served to introduce Chinese institutions and culture many centuries ago is performing the same duty to-day for institutions and culture of quite another order. In this Japan seems to have been the sport of fate. She started with Chinese as the chief factor in her culture. The exigencies of language and circumstance drove her in later years, when her civilization was tending in an opposite direction, to draw again under altered conditions on the same resources as before, and thus expose herself afresh to the operation of the very influences from which in the first flush of her ardour for Western reforms she was striving to emancipate herself.

How greatly education is hampered by the difficulty of the language will be understood when it is mentioned that a Japanese youth who goes through the whole educational course provided by the State is still studying it when on the threshold of the University; and that if he desires to attain any real literary scholarship he must continue this study for some time after his education is completed. To show that the difficulty has not been exaggerated it may be well to quote two independent authorities, both Japanese. Baron Kikuchi tells us that “to those who are engaged in education, especially elementary education, the difficulty that a child has to encounter in learning Chinese characters is an ever-present and pressing question; with so many subjects to be learnt it is impossible to spend the enormous time that would be necessary in the mere learning of ideographs.”... “When we come to secondary education,” he adds, “the difficulty is increased still further.” Marquis Ōkuma, who has held the same portfolio, and speaks with the authority of a leading educationalist, is still more emphatic. “The greatest difficulty of all connected with education is,” he says, “the extreme complexity of the Japanese language. Japanese students to-day are attempting what is possible only to the strongest and cleverest of them, that is to say, two or three in every hundred. They are trying to learn their own language, which is in reality two languages ... while attempting to learn English and German, and, in addition, studying technical subjects like law, medicine, engineering or science.”

It is a mistake to suppose that because foreign influences enter so largely into the educational course Japan must necessarily end by becoming Europeanized. The foundation of her culture is too deeply laid for that. So long as elementary education remains, as it is now, practically untouched by Western influences, no great change of the kind in question is likely to happen. All that educational reform, as illustrated in the present system, implies is the making of education one of the chief concerns of the State and the diffusion of Western knowledge. The first has affected the whole nation; the latter chiefly the upper classes.