Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline ...

PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPAN 107early in the 12th month: winter solstice poetry party.12th month 13th day: maids’ and servants’ day off;holiday.23rd: most students return home for New Year.27th: making ricecakes for the New Year.last day of the year: staying up all night on New Year’sEve.According to the above calendar, a ritual or celebration tookplace at least once a month. Some were local festivals connectedwith the agricultural year, others were peculiar to the juku, suchas the days to commemorate Butsusan’s teachers. In addition, thediary mentions other rural festivals and school rituals. A largenumber of Butsusan’s students came from temples, which mayexplain the significance of the Buddhist rituals. Butsusan himselfwas a devout Buddhist and his diary and “record of conduct”(gyōjōroku) record his regular visits to ancestral temples andgraves and conduct of Buddhist rituals to commemorate hisancestors and teachers. 85Many of the celebrations were occasions for composiongpoetry. To poetry parties Butsusan’s family would be invited,and his mother would be treated as a guest of honour. If formerstudents happened to be in the area they would also attend.Butsusan appears to have been very fond of drink as well aspoetry, and there were many occasions for drinking parties. Forexample, students who advanced to a higher rank or completedthe study of a book would invite their fellow students andButsusan to a drinking party. 86The different celebrations and ceremonies suggest a mixture ofrecreational and educational activities, of participation in rites aspart of moral and character training and of occasions for simplyhaving fun together. Poetry and rites served the cultivation ofaesthetic sensitivity (jōsō kyōiku) and of the ability to expressemotions (kanjō kyōiku). Although poetry seems to have played aparticularly important part in the education at Suisaien, andButsusan’s fame was mainly due to his poetry (his first collectionof kanshi, Bustusandō shishō, was published in 1852), theimportance of poetry was characteristic of other juku at the time,including Kangien and Zōshun’en. Hirose Tansō emphasized theimportance of poetry for the cultivation of sentiment (jō), thequality that distinguished humans from animals. 87