Jessica Campaniello

HI450: History of I

Professor Michael Baker

Final Paper

The History of Formal : 6th Century through Tokugawa Period

Formal education began with the adoption of Chinese Culture in the 6th century.

Buddhist and Confucian teachings as well as sciences, calligraphy, divination, and literature were taught at the courts. Scholar officials were chosen through an Imperial examination system.

But contrary to China, the system never fully took hold. Titles and posts at the court remained hereditary family possessions.

By the 9th century, the imperial capital, Heian-kyō (today's ), had five institutions of higher learning. Other schools were established by the nobility and the imperial court, during the remainder of the . Zen Buddhist monasteries were especially important centers of learning, during the medieval period, which was from 1185 to 1600. The Ashikaga School, flourished in the 15th century as a center of higher learning. The rise of the military class, during the Kamakura period, ended the influence of scholar officials. Buddhist monasteries, however, remained influential centers of learning.

In Japan, even during the feudal period that preceded the Restoration of 188, there existed many educational institutions. A number of the schools had been subjected to Chinese cultural influences, ever since ancient times. There were numerous private temple schools, called terakoya. Terakoya were mostly found in the towns, and functioned as elementary schools.

Provincial lords, whom were call daimyo, also established special schools for children of the warrior class. Additionally, yet another type of school instructed primarily the children of wealthier merchants and farmers. However, since the terakoya schools were the most drastic change of the time period, there shall be more attention paid to that type of education.

During the Tokugawa Period, the Yushima Seidō, in , modern-day Tokyo, was the chief educational institution. The warrior-turned-bureaucrat Samurai elite, of the period, had to be educated. But they had to be educated in not only in military strategy and the martial arts, but also in agriculture and accounting.

Additionally, the wealthy merchant class needed education for their daily business. The wealth, of the merchants, allowed them to be patrons of arts and science. Entirely new during the

Tokugawa period was that temple schools were opened and peasants were able to be educated, too.

Before the Tokugawa Period, public educational institutes were dedicated to children of samurai & ruling families. However, the rise of the merchant class during the Tokugawa period boosted the popularity of terakoya. The terakoya, were temple schools; private elementary schools for the education of the children of commoners. These temple schools taught writing and reading, ands were started in early 17th century.

Of course, when we talk in depth about a type of education, we want to take a look at the curriculum that was used. Therefore, let’s talk about the curriculum of the terakoya. As was previously mentioned, the focus of the temple schools was on reading and writing. However, extra subjects & disciplines were counting with the abacus, history, and geography. Girls were taught sewing, tea ceremony rituals, flower arranging techniques and other arts and crafts.

Though centers of popular education that taught mainly those skills that would be needed in everyday life, the temple schools offered a higher level of education.

The curriculum, in the temple schools, began with calligraphy courses, where the pupils imitated the instructor’s examples. However, once the basics of writing were mastered – pupils advanced to textbooks. These textbooks dated back to the Heian period. The books had been mainly used for the education of samurai. The textbooks contained useful information about the daily lives of people, as household precepts, conversation skills and moral values, as well as historical and geographical contents. From using these textbooks, a wider scope of social life was able to be shown to the students.

Even though, only a handful of the temple schools offered commercial courses for the children of the merchant class, calculating with the abacus became increasingly popular. Classes usually took place in the private homes of samurai, Buddhist priests, or even commoner citizens.

The instructors, were mostly commoners, but samurai and Buddhist clergy also taught. The administration tasks were often taken care of by the teachers themselves. However, a few of the schools were administered by priests and medical doctors.

There are no reliable statistics, but it is estimated that 50% of men and 20% of women nationwide were literate and possessed basic calculation abilities. Though contact with foreign countries was restricted, books from China and Europe were eagerly imported. Additionally, , which in Japanese literally translates to "Dutch learning," also became a popular area of scholarly interest.

The title “Dutch learning” is a bit misleading to modern readers, because we understand this to mean that the Japanese were learning purely about the Dutch, however, this is not truly the case. Rangaku was the scholarly area that covered “Western learning,” it received its title of

“Dutch learning,” because the Dutch were the only European population that had contact with the Japanese, due to Japan’s policy of national isolation.

By the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the attendance rate of the terakoya, in the capital Edo, had reached 70%. However, during the Meiji period, the terakoya were abolished. The reason for the terakoya being abolished is because, in 1872, the

Education System Order was instituted by the government. The Education System Order made attending public schools compulsory; this was to provide the whole population with a basic education.

During the Tokugawa period, Japan had not only the terakoya, but also the han schools.

Han schools were at first narrowly defined as schools for the cultivation of the samurai elite.

Therefore, attendance was not only expected of the children of the samurai class, but limited to them as well. Students at the han schools were initially taught Confucian studies. However, later in the Tokugawa period, children from other social classes were permitted to attend. With the expansion of the student population, the han schools also expanded the curriculum taught. The curriculum was expanded from its core in the Confucian classes, to include training in classical

Japanese studies, medicine and the various branches of “Western learning.” “Western learning,” included mathematics, astronomy, military science and ballistics. Students would start attending the han school at age 7 or 8, and were usually between the ages of 15 and 20 when they completed their courses of study. By the 1860s there were about 255 han schools nationwide; however, han schools were abolished in 1871.

Sources

De Bary, William et al. (2005). Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2, p. 69.

Kelly, Boyd. (1999). Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. 1, p. 522

R. P. Dore, The Legacy of Tokugawa Education," in Marius B. Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese attitudes toward modernization (1965) pp 99–131

Masai, Yasuo. (2014). "Japan," in Encyclopedia Britannica.