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

LIFE AT THE JUKU 153importance with few students coming from outside thesurrounding districts.Figure 8:Illustration of juku students (from a document on display in theMorohashi Tetsuji museum). Photograph: the authorOne of Shōsō’s students, Nanba Kuichirō, kept a diary in 1881.The Nanba were a family of village headmen and, in early Meiji,local administrators (kochō) in the village of Shimoshō. Thepapers of the Nanba family also include excerpts of Inukai’slectures and works read between 1881 and 1883, some at leastfrom the same Kuichirō. 100 Titles include the Outlines of theEighteen Histories, Mencius, Sun Zi, Nihon gaishi, Spring andAutumn Annals and the Greater Learning. In the diary Nanbarecorded daily (sometimes clearly retrospectively) what he didand whether or not he went to San’yo juku. For most days herecorded that he busied himself with affairs in and around thehouse (kayō ni tsukamatsuri) and attended juku. Sometimes herecorded errands in detail. At the end of the year he recorded foreach month how many days he went to the juku and arrived at atotal of 234 days. There were two long breaks when the juku wasclosed, at the beginning of the year and in the seventh month(Namba used the old-style calendar), at the time of the bonfestival.