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

CHAPTER SIXThe Legacy of the JukuWlTH THE DECLINE OF THE KANGAKU JUKU and theemergence of a new type of juku, which did not directly evolvefrom the traditional one, this study could end. However, whilekangaku juku after 1868 have been neglected by academicresearchers, they have often received the attention of localhistorians, writers and educators. Much of the source material onjuku has been preserved as a result of activities devoted tocommemorating individual kangaku scholars and their juku.Moreover, almost before it disappeared, the traditional jukubecame “reinvented”. To examine the formation of this “jukumyth” also serves to scrutinize the process by which much of ourinformation about juku has been transmitted.Significantly, times when fascination with the juku wasparticularly evident appear to coincide with periods when thediscourse about modernization and its cost was at its mostintense. There are three such periods, the 1880s and 1890s, the1920s and 1930s and the 1970s and 1980s. 1 The “juku myth” wasfirst formulated by members of the “new generation”. Thespecial section on juku in Nihon oyobiNihonjin discussed in thischapter was published in 1938. In 1971 the journal Bōsei likewisepublished a special section on juku. By the 1970s few people alivehad first-hand experience of them; only two of the seven journalarticles deal with juku of the Tokugawa and Meiji period (Tekijuku and Keiō gijuku), whereas the others are about twentiethcenturyinstitutions. In the introductory article, in the form of adialogue between Tsurumi Shunsuke and Naramoto Tatsuya,whose pioneering book on juku in the Edo period appeared in1969, the subject is not so much the historical juku, but the twospeakers’ thoughts on education in the face of the student unrestsof the 1960s. During this time students set up their own courses,