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

228 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANWith the demise of the historical juku an ideal image of a jukucame into being, which influenced collective memories. Societiesconstruct memories according to their needs, and such memoriesare a product of relationships between private memory andpublic representation, between past experience and presentconcerns. 53 Personal recollections often fit themselves into theframework of this constructed memory, even if the experience ofthe individual was in fact different. This is what appears to havehappened with the authors of the articles in Nihon oyobi Nihonjin.The way they remembered juku shows how personal experienceof juku fades into the background, while the public juku-imageand the concern with the contemporary crisis in educationdominates their discourse. Yet this “juku myth” developed adynamic of its own, as the examples of private schools inspiredby it shows; nor has it lost its power today.CONTINUITIESThe juku held its ground for many years after a modern,standardized school system, which privileged public schools, hadbeen introduced. Despite government efforts to increase controland to promote public at the expense of private education,private schools still play an important role in Japan’s educationsystem today, in contrast, for example, to Germany and France.The word juku today can describe a variety of institutions,including the cram school. Does this mean that there arecontinuities from the juku of the Edo period to the present day?They have certainly not disappeared without trace. As has beenshown, some made the transition to a private school within thenew system and for a long time retained something of theiroriginal character. To this day Nishō gakusha, the only kangakujuku to become a university, is devoted mainly to the study ofChinese and Japanese humanities subjects.Scholars educated at least in part at kangaku juku continued ininfluential positions well into the twentieth century, mostobviously in the fields of Chinese and Japanese history andChinese literature and philosophy at universities. 54 Some werethe heirs of juku masters; Yasui Bokudō and Makino Kenjirō havebeen mentioned. Shionoya On (1878–1962), a professor at TokyoUniversity who had studied in China and Germany, was adescendant of Shionoya Tōin and Suzuki Torao (1879–1963) ofSuzuki Bundai, the founder of Chōzenkan.