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

192 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANgijuku (Chapter 2). He continued to study himself even whileteaching.However, although Sohō’s juku was successful, ultimately hewas not content to remain in the provinces, far from the capital.In 1886 he closed his school and moved to Tokyo. There hiscareer as a writer and publicist, for which he is famous today,began. His school was the expression of his early thought; Sohōstressed the importance of educating people to thinkindependently, to be willing and able to shape their own destiny,but also to serve society and to take respons ibility for thenational good. He attached great importance to small numberswhich made possible personal relations, and encouraged debate.In later years his views became more conservative and afterWorld War II he was even purged for supporting the formergovernment. It is as if Sohō’s personal history reflected thehistory of modern Japan; from an energetic youth, wheneverything seemed possible, he became more sedate in middleage, when conditions were more settled and options narrowed.Sohō was a member of the “new generation in Meiji Japan”,growing up at a time when the new education system wasbeginning to replace tradtional education. He received a kangakueducation in his early years, but then attended modern schoolsbecause his parents perceived that the future lay in a Westerneducation. His father’s generation would have continued tostudy kangaku until well into their teens, even into their twenties.His son’s generation would mainly be educated in modernelementary and middle schools, where foreign languages andnatural and social sciences formed the core of the curriculum.Sohō attended a variety of juku; in part this was a legacy of theEdo period, where informal schooling predominated. But it wasalso a sign of the times; things were in flux, and teachers as wellas pupils moved around. A remarkable feature of Sohō’s career isthe role played by student initiative in the new schools heattended; the dramatic conversion of the “Kumamoto band” andtheir subsequent reformation of Dōshisha. Nor were Sohō and hiscomrades the only students of their generation to react sovehemently because of opinions different from their elders. Thenovelist Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909), in his autobiographyMediocrity, relates two incidents in which he left schools afterdisagreeing violently with the principal. 58 The left-wing radicalŌsugi Sakae (1885–1923) recorded in his autobiography thatwhen the association which had built the middle school he