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

218 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANincreased, so did the number of boarding houses, which wereknown as ryō or juku. At least 20 are known to have beenestablished up to the 1940s, but there may well have been twiceas many. As in the traditional juku, students learnt by mutualencouragement and competition; 23 unlike the traditional juku,there was no master and the houses were run by student selfgovernment.They had statements of aims, the main aim being tocreate men useful to the nation. Tōmei juku, established in 1938,explicitly referred to Saigō Takamori’s shigakkō. The juku hadtheir own lecture programmes, often with lectures on Chineseclassics; at Tōmei juku the programme included The GreaterLearning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects and Mencius. Thesystem of juku and ryō ended during the war and was notrevived, although one former member re-established one in1967. 24Among those fascinated by the idea of the juku (as they saw it)were educators who established their own schools in the 1920s.The liberal climate of the “Taishō Democracy” made itself felt ineducation. In the 1910s and 1920s the liberal New EducationMovement challenged the educational orthodoxy with ideals of amore child-centred education. 25 New translations of Westernworks on progressive education inspired experiments at bothpublic and private institutions. A large conference was held inTokyo in 1921 with lectures on new education; in literature andart new works especially for children were created. Several newprivate schools were established to put ideas about selfmotivationand individualized learning into practice. Someeducators called for a return to juku and terakoya education. 26 Themovement as a whole was short-lived, but some of the schoolssurvived, even to this day.Jōu kōtō jogakkō (Jōu High School for Women) was establishedin 1926 by Kōno Tsūneta (1891–1964), born in Tokyo as the eldestson of a former samurai. 27 In 1914 he graduated from the highernormal school attached to Waseda University in Japanese, kanbunand history. After a spell teaching at the First Middle School inSapporo, he taught at the Kanagawa Second Prefectural MiddleSchool in Yokohama from 1917 to 1920. In 1922 he graduatedfrom Tokyo Imperial University in Chinese philosophy. Then hetaught at Japan University, Waseda University First High Schooland Gakushūin. Meanwhile, he began to plan his own school; forgirls because these were less strictly regulated than those forboys. His co-founder, Masunaga Nobumaru (b.1877), had retired