There are also 294 kindergartens, with an attendance of 26,000 infants, whose parents pay 3d. per month on the average for each child. In general the kindergartens are connected with elementary schools or with normal schools.
If a child, after graduation at a common elementary school, desires to extend its education, it passes into a common middle school, where training is given for practical pursuits or for admission to higher educational institutions. The ordinary curriculum at a common middle school includes moral philosophy, English language, history, geography, mathematics, natural history, natural philosophy, chemistry, drawing and the Japanese language. Five years are required to graduate, and from the fourth year the student may take up a special technical course as well as the main course; or, in accordance with local requirements, technical subjects may be taught conjointly with the regular curriculum throughout the whole time. The law provides that there must be at least one common middle school in each prefecture. The actual number in 1909 was 216.
Great inducements attract attendance at a common middle school. Not only does the graduation certificate carry considerable weight as a general qualification, but it also entitles a young man to volunteer for one year’s service with the colours, thus escaping one of the two years he would have to serve as an ordinary conscript.
The graduate of a common middle school can claim admittance, without examination, to a high school, where he spends three years preparing to pass to a university, or four years studying a special subject, as law, engineering or medicine. By following the course in a high school, a youth obtains exemption from conscription until the age of 28, when one year as a volunteer will free him from all service with the colours. A high-school certificate of graduation entitles its holder to enter a university without examination, and qualifies him for all public posts.
For girls also high schools are provided, the object being to give a general education of higher standard. Candidates for admission must be over 12 years of age, and must have completed the second-year course of a higher elementary school. The regular course of study requires 4 years, and supplementary courses as well as special art courses may be taken.
In addition to the schools already enumerated, which may be said to constitute the machinery of general education, there are special schools, generally private, and technical schools (including a few private), where instruction is given in medicine and surgery, agriculture, commerce, mechanics, applied chemistry, navigation, electrical engineering, art (pictorial and applied), veterinary science, sericulture and various other branches of industry. There are also apprentices’ schools, classed under the heading of elementary, where a course of not less than six months, and not more than four years, may be taken in dyeing and weaving, embroidery, the making of artificial flowers, tobacco manufacture, sericulture, reeling silk, pottery, lacquer, woodwork, metal-work or brewing. There are also schools—nearly all supported by private enterprise—for the blind and the dumb.
Normal schools are maintained for the purpose of training teachers, a class of persons not plentiful in Japan, doubtless because of an exceptionally low scale of emoluments, the yearly pay not exceeding £60 and often falling as low as £15.
There are two Imperial universities, one in Tōkyō and one in Kiōto. In 1909 the former had about 220 professors and instructors and 2880 students. Its colleges number six: law, medicine, engineering, literature, science and agriculture. It has a university hall where post-graduate courses are studied, and it publishes a quarterly journal giving accounts of scientific researches, which indicate not only large erudition, but also original talent. The university of Kiōto is a comparatively new institution and has not given any signs of great vitality. In 1909 its colleges numbered four: law, medicine, literature and science; its faculty consisted of about 60 professors with 70 assistants, and its students aggregated about 1100.
Except in the cases specially indicated, all the figures given above are independent of private educational institutions. The system pursued by the state does not tend to encourage private education, for unless a private school brings its curriculum into exact accord with that prescribed for public institutions of corresponding grade, its students are denied the valuable privilege of partial exemption from conscription, as well as other advantages attaching to state recognition. Thus the quality of the instruction being nominally the same, the rate of fees must also be similar, and no margin offers to tempt private enterprise.
Public education in Japan is strictly secular: no religious teaching of any kind is permitted in the schools. There are about 100 libraries. Progress is marked in this branch, the rate of growth having been from 43 to 100 in the five-year period ended 1905. The largest library is the Imperial, in Tōkyō. It had about half a million volumes in 1909, and the daily average of visitors was about 430.