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

THE DECLINE OF THE JUKU 183onwards juku were tolerated if they catered for people above thecompulsory school age. Permission to open a juku, however, wasnot easily given. Two thirds of the juku are reported to haveclosed after the the proclamation of the Education Law. 34 Ehimeprefecture also took a stricter stance against private educationthan the Ministry of Education’s policies warranted. When thenumber of private elementary schools nationwide drasticallydecreased after 1876, it did so particularly rapidly in Ehime. 35Not only in Akita did the authorities face resistance to theirpolicies. This is shown by the number of juku that continued toexist after 1873, as well as by prefectural orders against peopleoperating illicit juku. For example, in Osaka in 1875 localadministrators were ordered to report people operating jukuwithout having applied for permission. An order to the villageadministration of Tennōji in 1893 similarly demanded thatmeasures be taken against people running private schoolswithout permission. 36What the authorities’ policies meant for indiviudals can beglimpsed from the situation of some of Ikeda Sōan’scorrespondents; former samurai were often especially hard-hit,since they had no alternative source of income. Yoshimura Hizan,formerly a teacher at the Hiroshima domain school, applied toopen a juku when the school was abolished, but his applicationwas turned down. He and his son became elementary schoolteachers. In 1873 he was at last allowed to open a juku atelementary level. In 1876 he was forced to include other subjectsbesides kangaku, and in 1880 he had to close his juku. TamuraKanzan in Toyooka (now Hyōgo) prefecture had even greaterdifficulties. He became an elementary school teacher in 1873, butsoon resigned and applied to open a juku. His conduct as aschool teacher was called into question and the applicationturned down. He resubmitted, but in 1878 he still had notreceived permission, and finally he had to give up the idea.Kusumoto Tanzan was likewise denied permission to continuehis juku, but as he wrote to Sōan in 1876, he had to run his juku inorder to survive and “[…] if [my juku] is officially prohibited, Iwill order the students on the basis of this, and if they continue tocome anyway, there is nothing I can do”. Presumably many actedin the same way if they could get away with it. 37Thus the central government and the prefectures to varyingdegrees aimed to gain control over education and did not regardjuku favourably. But how significant was the conflict between