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

152 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANteaching methods used, may well have resulted in many hours ofboredom for the less enthusiastic students. On the other hand,the emphasis on self-study may well have promoted a highdegree of student responsibility and self-reliance. Moreover,communal life and study provided an experience that was fondlyremembered by many in later life.THE STUDENTSWho were the students at a juku? This depended very much onthe juku. Small juku outside the large towns often catered mainlyfor the local population and had mostly day pupils. Others, likeSuisaien, Zōshun’en and Seikei shoin, attracted students fromdifferent parts of the country, although most were locals. This isalso true of Yamada Hōkoku’s juku. The records probably listonly a fraction of the people he actually taught. The followingnumbers are given for his juku at Osakabe: 102 from the Bitchūarea (including 16 from former Takahashi domain and 16 fromthe village of Osakabe); 28 from Bizen (16 from former Okayamadomain), 62 from Mimasaka, 20 from Harima, 9 from Bingo, 10from Tanba, 2 from Tajima, 11 from Inaba, 14 from Izumo, 16from Bungo, 3 from Chikuzen, 1 from Buzen, 2 from Kyoto, 4from Ise, 1 from Owari, 6 from Hitachi (6 from former Mitodomain) and 1 each from Echizen and Musashi. 98 These figuressuggest that most students came from places in the immediateneighbourhood or from surrounding areas, especially frompresent Okayama prefecture, but also from the adjacentpre fectures. A significant number came from further away, inparticular from northern Kyūshū. Many came from rural, evenisolated areas, not from the larger castle towns, where therewould have been local schools and juku to choose from.The students of Inukai Shōsō’s San’yo juku appear to havecome mainly from the surrounding area. Of the 309 studentsknown by name, 99 29 came from Okayama city, 4 from Kurashikicity, 180 from Tsukubo district and 50 from Kibi district (bothnear Kurashiki) and 81 from other districts in the prefecture.Eleven students are listed as coming from outside the prefecture,but the 6 from Tokyo included Inukai Tsuyoshi, who came fromOkayama (Niwase domain, now Okayama city), so some or mostof these may well have originated from places close to San’yojuku. For 44 names no place was known. The figures, incompleteas they are, show that the juku was predominantly of local