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

LIFE AT THE JUKU 129Thus personal (silent) reading (dokusho), first slowly, thenfaster, was a central activity. Reading was learnt and practised indifferent ways. By the second half of the Edo period certainforms of teaching had been established, which continued to beused, albeit with some modifications. 42 Students began byreading aloud works from the canon of Chinese classics withoutbeing expected to understand them. The practice was known assodoku (simple reading) and involved reading the Chinese text ina Japanese fashion, that is, with Japanese pronunciation of theChinese characters and Japanese syntax. Chinese syntax differssubstantially from Japanese, so the result amounts to atranslation into (literary) Japanese. Just as there are several waysof translating a text, there were several styles of reading theChinese text. Tokutomi Sohō, in his autobiography, reports thathe first learnt an inaka (rustic) style from an uncle, which he hadto correct after moving to a juku in the castle town ofKumamoto. 43 At Kangien the first three of nine levels of studywere largely devoted to sodoku. 44Often the youngest students, about eight or nine years old,would be taught the basics by older students; this is reported bya student of Suisaien and of Kunitomo’s juku Ronseidō andothers. 45 The report on Kimigabukuro’s juku in former Sendaidomain, drawn up for the Ministry of Education in 1883, states inthe section “number of teachers”: “Although [teaching] is theresponsibility of the one master, he has 4 or 5 students who excel,called shuritsu or hittō [head student or first student], to help withlessons”. A similar statement is in the report on the juku ofNakazawa Keisai, also in former Sendai domain. 46 YamadaHōkoku, on the other hand, made a point of doing all theteaching himself. It is said that he got up as early as four in themorning and did not rest until ten at night. One author, whocould still talk to old men who had studied with Hōkoku, heardthat once older pupils offered to take over the teaching of theyoungest ones, a practice common in juku. Hōkoku, however,after thanking them, declined on the grounds that his studentshad come to him to be taught by him personally. 47Once students had mastered the basics they would meetregularly for group readings, with or without the master beingpresent. For rindoku, or reading a work by turns, 5 to 8 studentswould read one after the other, either for the master or hisrepresentative. Kaidoku [meeting for reading and discussing textstogether] and rinkō [reading and explaining in turns] were