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

196 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANAnalects, Mencius, The Doctrine of the Mean and The Greater Learning.At the same time he also received private tuition in English andmathematics. In 1997 Ōsugi entered Shibata Middle School,which had just been established; his headmaster was nicknamedConfucius and lectured on the Analects, so possibly he was one ofthose kangakusha who found employment in the new schools. 67From 1899 to 1901 Ōsugi attended the military cadet school inNagoya, but returned home after being expelled. Hesubsequently went to Tokyo, where he attended Tokyo Academy(Tōkyō gakuin) and in the evenings a French language school toprepare for entrance into the advanced year of a middle school.In October that year he entered the private Junten Middle School;a stand-in had taken the examination for him, while he took (andfailed) the one for Tōkyō Middle School. After graduation, in1903, he entered the Foreign Language College in Tokyō, but wasdisappointed with the level of French instruction there andskipped most of his classes. Soon he became a political activist. 68Ōsugi’s school career shows that in his time great importancewas attached to formal schooling as the road to success; his waythrough education was characterized by a determination tosucceed in the mainstream schools.These examples are not wholly representative; most of the mendescribed succeeded in finding a place in a changing society, butnot necessarily at the top. In specific fields the picture could bevery different. For example, the young men appointed to the lawfaculty of Tokyo University in the 1880s and 1890s had nearly allstudied at the university’s predecessor institutions from an earlyage and were then sent abroad by the government The youngerstaff in the faculty of letters usually followed the same pattern. 69They perhaps studied kangaku in their early years, but the key totheir success was acquiring Western learning from an early age.Nevertheless, the above examples suggest that how theeducational paths of individuals varied, and how the generaltrend changed over time. The tendency was towards moreformal schooling, culminating for the ambitious in study at oneof the imperial universities. Having the right educationalcredentials (gakureki) became increasingly important.Consequently, by the late 1880s options were narrowing. Anearly issue of the educational magazine Shōnen advised its youngreaders that the social order was stabilizing and that they had totackle their middle school education more systematically thantheir elders. 70 Even then, young men whose ambitions lay