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

190 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANhe studied kangaku at various juku, including Kunitomo’s (seeChapter 4). Since it was common for pupils of different ages tostudy together even in the new schools, and since his ambitiousparents wanted him to progress by three years for every one yearof study, Sohō was the youngest and smallest pupil in everyschool he attended. From 1870 to 1871 he studied at theGōrakuen, a juku run by Motoda Eifu. When Motoda left forTokyo to take up his appointment with the court, Sohō brieflyentered an academy established by a colleague of his father’s, buthe soon changed to another kangaku juku, that of KanezakaShinsui, another associate of Tokutomi Ikkei. Sohō was a boarderthere from 1871 to 1873, thus spending more time at that schoolthan at any of the others he attended in Kumamoto.Kanezaka’s school later became the model for the Seisanacademy in Footprints in the Snow, the novel by Sohō’s brotherKenjirō. Kenjirō describes it with an affection that his brother wasprobably far from feeling while he was submitted to the Spartanregime of his teacher Kanezaka. Again, he was the youngest andsmallest pupil. Nevertheless, Sohō himself appears to haveregarded his old school highly in later years, saying that it hadgiven him valuable experience of living in a democratic society ofequals and learning to stand on his own feet without relying on hisprivileged family background. Sohō left Kanezaka’s juku becausehis father wanted him to receive a “modern” (and that meant aWestern) education. Sohō was then only ten years old and hadcompleted most of the formal training in the Chinese andJapanese classics that he would ever have.Sohō’s first contact with Western studies was a failure. He wasenrolled at Kumamoto School of Western Studies, which hadsuperseded the old domain school for Confucian studies, but wasdismissed after only a few months with a letter stating that helacked maturity and should try again later. Sohō spent the nextyear and a half, until his re-enrolment, in private study of theChinese classics and being tutored in English and mathematicsby a friend of his father’s. When he reentered the school in 1875,he became a very successful student and a leader among hispeers as well as a friend of his older schoolmates, some of them hisformer classmates of 1873. The students were taught by the U.S.Army Captain Leroy Lansing, a devout Christian, who taughtapplied science and universal history as well as giving charactertraining and religious education. Like Kanezaka in his old-styleacademy, Lansing in the “modern school” impressed his pupils