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

THE DECLINE OF THE JUKU 189as an elementary teacher and study simultaneously for one year.He was in his early twenties by the time he moved to Tokyo toreceive more education. There, while working for a printingcompany, a roommate invited Katayama to Oka Senjin’s juku,since it was cheap. The relevant entrance document is dated1883, but he may have entered a year earlier, as he states in hisautobiography. Since he worked he could not actually attendlectures, except on his free days, so he was one of many whoused Suiyūdō as a boarding house; he was so poor that he couldnot afford to supplement the basic food provided at the juku.After a few months he became the new juku servant and gave uphis printing job. Now he could study, and for a year he heardSenjin’s lectures. Katayama also helped Senjin with his writings,including his work on the Meiji Restoration, Sonjō kiji.For a short while Katayama became the juku servant at anotherwell-known juku of the time, Kōgyokusha, but he returned toSuiyūdō. Although he regarded kangaku as outdated, and wouldhave preferred to study Western learning, 55 it was thanks to thelow expenses of Oka’s kangaku juku that he could further hiseducation at all. His name is recorded among three who formedan association of Senjin’s students and among those attending thefuneral in 1914; that year Katayama emigrated to the UnitedStates.Other young men in the 1870s and 1880s put their educationtogether like a patchwork quilt; 56 time at a terakoya or juku here, astint at one of the new schools there, another juku or several,perhaps in Tokyo, a series of public and private schools. One ofthe best-known examples is Tokutomi Sohō; his early lifeillustrates this pattern well, so is worth repeating here. 57 Sohōwas born in 1863 in Minamata, a village in what is nowKumamoto prefecture. His family was wealthy and important inthe local community. Although they were farmers, they also hadsome of the social privileges of the samurai class and held officesin local government. Sohō’s father Ikkei was a talented scholar ofthe Chinese classics and Sohō studied these at home from anearly age, as was customary for samurai and for the rural elite atthe time. For a short while he attended a local elementary school,which was still much like a terakoya.However, Sohō was his parents’ first son and his educationwas too important to be left to a school which provided chiefly forthe children of ordinary farmers. At the age of seven he joined hisfather in the town of Kumamoto, and there for the next few years