The Making of Modern Japan / An Account of the Progress of Japan from Pre-feudal Days to Constitutional Government & the Position of a Great Power, With Chapters on Religion, the Complex Family System, Education, &c.

by John Harington Gubbins

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.”