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

THE DECLINE OF THE JUKU 193attended from 1897 in Shibata (Niigata prefecture) voted todismiss the headmaster, the students protested violently,smashing the inventory of the school and refusing to attendlessons. 59 Lafcadio Hearn, teaching in Matsue in the 1890s,claimed that students were far more likely to effect the dismissalof a teacher deemed incompetent than vice versa. 60 This kind ofbehaviour may well have characterized a time of transition, whennew hierarchies had not yet completely replaced the old.The historian Mikami Sanji (1865–1939) belonged to the samegeneration as Tokutomi Sohō. 61 He attended a terakoya turnedinto a public elementary school in Himeji, where he read amixture of traditional and adapted Western texts. On his wayhome from school he would go to a former vassal of the feudal lordto read the Chinese classics. From 1878 he attended the newdistrict elementary school in a former temple. There he readWestern works, but he continued to study kangaku with a teacheroutside school hours. After attending middle school for threeyears, he moved to Tokyo. For a few months he studied at thekangaku juku Shinbun gakusha of Tachibana Hatarō, whereuniversity graduates also taught English, before entering thepreparatory school for the Imperial University. At university hestudied in the Department of Classics (koten kōshūka) and thenWestern history under Ludwig Rieβ. He thus acquired athorough grounding both in traditional and new subjects.For the 1860s generation, however, it was still possible to avoidthe new school system altogether. Makino Kenjirō (1862–1937),professor at Waseda University, prided himself on having donejust that. His grandfather had studied with Kan Chazan and SatōIssai and his father had a juku, where Makino received most ofhis education, except for ten months spent at FujisawaNangaku’s juku. At 21 he took over his father’s juku, but in 1893moved to Tokyo, where he was involved in the Shidankai, anassociation to publish the history of the leading domains duringthe Meiji Restoration, and taught at the metropolitan middleschool. He became a lecturer at Waseda in 1901 and was active inseveral Confucian organizations. 62Men born in the 1870s often experienced a mixture oftraditional and modern education and some were later aware ofhaving lived through a time of transition. The journalist andsocialist Sakai Toshihiko (1870–1933), who came from a samuraifamily, was one of them. 63 From 1876 to 1882 he attendedelementary school and from 1882 Toyotsu middle school, then