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

THE LEGACY OF THE JUKU 209which Naramoto describes as a kind of juku (“isshu no shijuku”).These articles tell us more about the 1970s than about juku;apparently 100 years after being marginalized in reality, they nowhave been marginalized in myth.A particular image of juku, rather than actual experience,influenced later generations. Educators, well-versed in modernpedagogical theories, were inspired to organize new schools inthe “juku spirit”. This reinvention of the juku is just one exampleof many “traditional” things from the Tokugawa period thathave been reinvented. 2The transforming juku of the Meiji period form the linkbetween the juku of the Tokugawa period and this reinvention.Present-day juku, on the other hand, are often assumed to haveno connection with the juku of the nineteenth century, and this islargely true on the institutional level. Yet on a more subtle level,through people’s attitudes towards education and their choices,through personal ties and informal networks, a measure ofcontinuity may be said to exist.KANGAKU SCHOLARS AND JUKUCOMMEMORATEDThe master ofa juku often highly respected and inspired hisdisciples throughout their lives. Sometimes students went togreat lengths to preserve his memory. Often they had a memorialstone erected. A prominent kangaku scholar, often anacquaintance of the deceased, would be asked to compose anobituary for the stone. Shigeno Yasutsugu wrote one forUchimura Rokō, for whom a stone stands in Matsue, not far fromthe one commemorating Lafcadio Hearn (Figure 9). 3 He beginsby stating his relationship with the deceased:Uchimura Rokō died in his home town, Matsue. We werefriends at Shōheikō, but we did not meet for fifty years. Iwanted to travel to the San’in to see him and talk about oldtimes; Rokō requently urged me to come. I planned to goseveral times, but the plan was always abandoned. Alas,finally he died.Shigeno continues with details of Rokō’s early years and hisexploits as a young man in the turbulent final years of the bakufu.