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

20 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANbeyond elementary level was largely neglected. In Tokyo, agovernment school for girls having graduated from elementaryschool existed from 1875 to 1877. The government alsoestablished Tokyo Normal School for Girls in 1875, which becamethe Higher Normal School for Girls, a department of the HigherNormal School, in 1885. 31 Not until 1899 did the government takesteps to expand further education for girls with the Girls’ HighSchool Law. Meanwhile private institutions, especiallymissionary schools, provided education for girls beyondelementary level. 32By the early twentieth century girls’ education had grown inimportance. School attendance had at last risen to over 50 percentand in 1902 reached 87 percent. The number of girls’ schools hadrisen from fifteen nationwide in 1895 to eighty in 1902. Most ofthem were public schools, but in 1901 Tsuda Ume and NaruseJinzō established private high schools for girls. With theincreasing official interest in education for girls came morecontrols and restrictions for private schools. However, manyschools did not attempt to gain official recognition since, forgirls, gaining formal qualifications was still not seen as a priority.By the end of the Meiji period the national school system wasfully established and provided the most reliable means for socialadvancement. School attendance had risen from just over 40 percent (males: 60 per cent) of an age cohort in 1880 to over 90 percent in 1904 for primary school. Thus nearly everyone received abasic education, but further and higher education was limited toa privileged few; in 1905 only 12 per cent of males (females: 4 percent) went on to secondary education. 33 While in early Meiji mencould rise to power and wealth by various routes, the optionshad narrowed by the early twentieth century. Even in thebusiness world, where large companies followed the example ofgovernment institutions, attending the “right” schoolsincreasingly became the only way to success (see Chapter 5). 34Thus within four decades the variety of schools had given wayto a centralized, uniform system, which privileged public schools.Private institutions had largely been incorporated into the system.TYPES OF PRIVATE SCHOOLSThe rising demand for education and the inability of the newsystem to keep up with it resulted in a wealth of privateinstitutions, which the government had to tolerate. Among these,