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

124 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANRunning a juku in a remote rural area, where the master hadlittle opportunity to enjoy the company of people whose learningwas equal to his, must at times have been a lonely occupation.Some scholars travelled to visit f-riends, but others had to rely onletters or the occasional visit. Ties between scholars from differentregions often went back to their student days. Oka Senjin,Shigeno Yasutsugu, Uchimura Rokō and others knew each otherfrom their time at the Shōheikō. Ikeda Sōan and YamamuraBenzai corresponded widely, as did Murakami Butsusan. Otherevidence of ties between scholars their epitaphs, although thefact that a prominent scholar wrote one for a colleague does notnecessarily mean that they knew each other personally.Kangaku was essentially a male-dominated field of studies and,unlike terakoya (at least in the towns), juku were seldom run bywomen and probably did not offer very advanced studies.However, as the case of Miwada Masako has shown, there wereexceptions. Like her, women schooled in kangaku usually camefrom families with a tradition of scholarship. They took over thefamily juku because no male heir was available. Hio Naoko, forexample, was a daughter of the Confucian and scholar ofNational Learning, Hio Keizan (1789–1859), who taught her.After his death she took over his private academy with thesupport of her stepmother, Kuniko (1815–85), who was alsohighly educated. 24 Little is known about the school. Theapplication to the metropolitan government records its name asShiseidō, the subjects taught as kōkokugaku and shinagaku and thenumber of pupils as 17. 25While Hio Naoko’s juku probably ended with her death, AtomiKakei (1840–1926), like Miwada Masako, established a schoolthat still exists today. 26 Kakei started teaching from an early age,although she initially regarded herself as an artist rather than ateacher. Her family had fallen on hard times and her father ran ajuku to make a living. Kakei’s mother and Kakei herself helpedhim. From 1857 Kakei studied in Kyoto for two years. Then shereturned to teach in her father’s juku, which he had moved to thecentre of Osaka. Soon she was running the juku, which had 40 to50 pupils, by herself, because her father, who had links with theimperial court, had secured employment with the Anenokōjifamily in Kyoto as a servant of Anenokōji Kintomo.In 1866 the whole family moved to Kyoto, where they ran ajuku. The pupils came from good families, often connected withthe imperial court; it is said that there were over a hundred