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

26 PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPANJapan together. They spoke regional dialects, and Sino-Japanesewas their common language, in which they could bestcommunicate. Second, the importation of Western conceptsmeant that new words had to be devised, and as in the past theJapanese used Chinese morphemes for this purpose, in a similarway to the use of Greek in Europe. In short, at a time when Japanhad no national language and most of its people had no sense ofnational identity, kangaku provided both a language and a senseof common heritage, at least for the male elite.At the same time the use of kanbun reflected the influence ofConfucian education and thought. And since Confucian thoughtinspired many measures taken by the new government, this inturn helped perpetuate the necessity for reading and writingkanbun. A good example of this is the criminal law proclaimed in1871 in the Shinritsu kōryō. This was based on the Chinese law ofthe Ming (1368– 1644) and hardly influenced by Westernconcepts before its partial revision in 1873. This meant that in orderto work with these laws and to take part in government, aknowledge of kanbun and Chinese language and culture wasessential.Moreover, kanbun was still the language of scholarship,literature and kanshi poetry. The so-called “Three LiteraryMasters of the Meiji Era” (Meiji no Sandai bunsō) were all kangakuscholars: Mishima Chūshū (1830–1919), Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827–1910) and Kawada Takeshi (1830–96) . 55 Incidentally, all three ofthem opened juku. Educated in the Tokugawa period, they andothers were respected figures in the literary world after 1868.Chinese poetry (kanshi) in different styles was popular in Japanfrom ancient times and reached a new hight in the Meiji period.Most leaders of the Meiji Restoration composed kanshi; SaigōTakamori, who became the leader of the Satsuma rebellion in1877, expressed his disillusionment with the new government inthis form. The author Natsume Sōseki had a high reputation as awriter of kanshi as well as a novelist. 56 Several literary societies,anthologies and literary journals were devoted to kanshi and eventhe general newspapers and periodicals printed them. Westernpoetry was translated into kanbun. Even the Sino-Japanese Warinspired numerous kanshi, many of them written by soldiers.An example of the importance or kangaku in scholarship andpolitical thought is the Meiji government’s effort to revive officialhistoriography in the tradition of the Six National Histories(Rikkokushi). These were inspired by the Chinese dynastic