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

164 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANentry, 50 sen per month, 9 sen per day for food and 10 sen permonth for boarding. 133Potential students who could not afford fees were notnecessarily prevented from studying at a juku. They were oftenallowed to pay their way by doing various jobs around the jukuand the master’s household. This is how Katayama Sen was ableto study at Oka Senjin’s juku. He became a jukuboku, a servant,whose job was to announce the start and finish of a lecture, clearthe lecture hall, explain the rules to newcomers and to performreception duties and the occasional errand. Katayama wouldhave preferred to study Western learning, but the fact that hecould study at Oka’s juku without funds of his own wasdecisive. 134 A student at Nishō gakusha reports that not only didhe not have to pay fees as a gakuboku (school servant), but waseven paid 50 sen a month. His duties included watching the doorand announcing the lessons. 135The concept of school fees was accepted with difficulty, asshown by the many applications stating that there were noregular fees and that the teacher received no salary. Amemorandum by Ikeda Sōan illustrates the traditional attitude ofthe Confucian scholar towards charging fees. His application,drawn up in 1873, stated that payments on entry and paymentsto the teacher were not fixed and left to the discretion of thestudents. Boarding fees were 6 gō (1.08 liters) of white rice and 1sen 7 ri per day. In his “Resolution to submit an application to opena kajuku”, written in October 1873, Sōan deplores having to ask forpermission to do something that belongs naturally to thevocation of a Confucian scholar. He opens his memorandum withthe following words:At this time, when I am applying to open a kajuku, I amalready a scholar and close to saying that I want to teach.Can this therefore be called the pride of a scholar?Moreover, if I submit an application and ask for permissionI will certainly open a kajuku and I will be like thosescholars of yōgaku, who sell their skills for money and letfall the principles of our predecessors, and our scholarshipwill fall into disrepute. Given these two assumptions, theword “negau” [i.e. having to ask for permission] disturbs me;there will probably be people who close their juku anddismiss their students.