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

240 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANaimed to spread education, but it was often the kangaku juku andnot just the new schools that gave people access to education.Likewise, the strengthening of national identity cannot beattributed to the modern schools alone. The kangaku curriculum,however varied its application in the different juku, represented acommon culture, and as more people received education in jukuor schools where they were taught by kangaku scholars, morepeople shared in that culture than previously. Not until theWestern civilization transmitted in the new schools had beenabsorbed by most of the population did kangaku lose this role.Even then Confucian ethics, assimilated into the new nationalideology, constituted the basis of moral education in the newschools.Kangaku, which formed the core of what most juku taught, wastransformed in a similar way as the study of classics in Europe,from an amateur pursuit for those with capital and leisure to anacademic discipline among other disciplines. At the same time(and again comparable to Europe) the position of kangakuchanged from being the source of all learning and the way toabsolute truths to being a field of study among others, wheremethods of textual criticism were applied to contextualize and todiscover true facts. 1 Education at the traditional juku, with itssynthesis of intellectual and moral training was closely related tothe former concept of kangaku. Thus the transformation ofkangaku, which became manifest in the 1890s, the spread ofmodern schools and social changes caused juku to becomeobsolete.As we have seen, although juku education left its mark indifferent ways after the disappearance of the juku itself, the mostenduring legacy is perhaps the way it is remembered and what Ihave called called the “juku myth” (Chapter 6). The idea of thejuku inspired and still inspires educational initiatives anddebates. The warm relationships between teacher and studentsand the students themselves are contrasted with the cold, factorylikeatmosphere and the lack of attention to the indivdual in“mass-education”. Education of the whole person, includingcharacter training, is contrasted to the one-sided attention tointellectual education and passing examinations to gain worldlybenefits. Thus the image of the juku offers an alternative withwhich to challenge the system of the day. Also, unlike themain stream education system imposed on an initially hostilepopulation, the juku is perceived as uniquely Japanese.