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

EDUCATION IN TRANSITION FROM THE TOKUGAWA TO THE MEIJI PERIOD 31of education was often preferred. In rural areas, apart from beingthe only type of post-elementary education on offer, it appearedmore suited to people’s lives, which had not (yet) changeddramatically since the Tokugawa period. In towns, studying at akangaku juku was more likely to be in addition to education at thenew schools, and in the late Meiji period it often took on the roleof continuing education. All these different ways in which jukuresponded to the challenges of the new era may well haveincreased their diversity. Of course, in addition to finding a placein the new system, factors like the presence of a suitable andinterested heir and the ability to run the juku as a successfulbusiness were also important.Just as the juku after 1872 had to compete with the expandingpublic school system, so the new system can be said to have beenin competition with private establishments, which had to betolerated because public provision lagged behind the demand foreducation. This demand was, after all, in line with thegovernment’s aim to spread education. Did the traditionalkangaku juku help or hinder the government’s plans forestablishing a national system? There is evidence that they wereat least perceived as a hindrance (Aktia, Ibaraki; Chapter 5).Moreover, in Ōita and other prefectures new juku opened as lateas the early twentieth century, while new schools were slow todevelop. 63 Did the very success of the old institutions slow downthe establishment of new schools, as some local authoritiesfeared?While this is a possibility, at least for certain places at certaintimes, the overall picture suggests that the rapid spread ofeducation and development of a national system was possiblebecause of the kangaku juku. They often provided education foryoung people who otherwise would not have received it,certainly not beyond elementary level. It is difficult to imaginewhere the resources and especially the qualified teachers formore public schools would have come from. The kangakuscholars constituted a pool of educated people, as often as notwith a track record of teaching young people. They enjoyedrespect and trust in their local communities. That they often wereconservative was the other side of the same coin. But theevidence suggests that those juku that survived longest were theones where the master made conscious concessions to thechanging times, such as offering a broader curriculum than justkangaku, in some cases the same range of subjects as the public