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

EDUCATION IN TRANSITION FROM THE TOKUGAWA TO THE MEIJI PERIOD 27histories and compiled in Japan during the height of imperialpower. The first attempts to set up an office for the compilationof a national history were made in 1869, and work was begun inearnest in 1875, when an Office of Historiography (shūshikyoku)was set up in the Council of State, the highest executive organ ofthe new government. Most of the officials were scholars ofkangaku. In 1882 the office’s members began writing the Dainihonhennenshi [Chronological History of Great Japan]; the nameclearly shows its indebtedness to the Dainihonshi [History of GreatJapan], compiled in the feudal domain of Mito from the midseventeenthcentury, and faithfully imitated the format of thestandard histories of China. It had been accorded the status of anofficial history. The Dainihon hennenshi became in effect itssequel, written in kanbun. Like the compilers of the Dainihonshi,the members of the Office of Historiography did not perceivekanbun as a foreign language. 57In the late 1880s this view began to change, and by the 1890skanbun and kangaku were in retreat. This resulted in part from therise of nationalist thought. Critics of the Office of Historiographyrejected the choice of kanbun on the grounds that it was wrong towrite a national history in a foreign language. Even so, in 1894,on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, Shiga Shigetaka published hisNihonfūkeiron (Japanese Scenery) with the purpose to arousenational pride in Japan’s environment. The work was written in astyle heavily influenced by kanbun. 58Although language reform—until then discussed mainly frompragmatic considerations—became a nationalist issue after1895, 59 the main argument against kanbun may well have beenthat it had become a dead language (shigo). The educationminister, Inoue Kowashi, referred to it as such when he orderedthe abandonment of the Dainihonhennenshi in 1893. The sameminister introduced more kanbun into the school curriculum. Heemphasized that writing kanbun was no longer required, but thatthe ability to read it was necessary for studying the Confucianclassics as well as Chinese history. He also stressed that theJapanese language could not be separated from the influence ofChinese in its written form. But for Inoue kanbun was a specialistsubject among other school subjects. In the same way, kangaku atuniversity level became a set of specialized disciplines; tōyōshi,tōyō bungaku and tōyō tetsugaku (East Asian, mainly Chinese,history, literature and philosophy). Kangaku was the philologicalstudy of China, which stressed close reading of the classics in