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

52 KANGAKU JUKU IN THE MEIJI PERIODall. Some juku were registered as private middle schools, likethose of Tsunetō Seisai and Murakami Butsusan (Chapter 3); atotal of 23 private middle schools were recorded, all but 2 for1879. Fukuoka then, despite the relatively low number of juku (50)recorded in NKSS, is another example of a prefecture whereeducation flourished before 1872 and where juku continued to fillthe gap in public provision for a long time.Shimane is another prefecture where traditional educationflourished. NKSS records 73 juku (47 kangaku), but againsubsequent research has increased the number. 42 Only 5 out ofthese are recorded to have survived beyond 1874 (1 to 1875, 1 to1881, 3 to 1879). Between 1875 and 1879, 17 private middleschools were recorded, including the juku of Uchimura Rōka,named Sōchōsha, and Yamamura Benzai, named Shūbunkan(both 1875). 43 Sōchōsha had 121 to 131 students between 1876 and1879, Shūbunkan 73 to 80. Most other private middle schoolswere much smaller, only one (Tokubankō, established 1874),having 110 students in 1876, rising to 270 in 1879. 44 Most of theseschools had only one teacher, suggesting that they were run asjuku. Thus juku, mostly centring on kangaku, provided postelementaryeducation until modern schools were established. 45Like Shimane (but unlike Ōita and Fukuoka), Aichi prefecturewas formed out of former domains close to the shogunate,including Owari (Nagoya), which was ruled by a branch of theTokugawa family. But the region was not particularly known forits education; there were domain schools and juku, but scholarstended to pass through on their way to and from the centres ofTokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. 46 After 1868 efforts concentrated onelementary education with some success, and for several yearsduring the Meiji period school attendance in Aichi was above thenational average. 47 As in other prefectures, public middle schooleducation took longer to develop. Efforts concentrated onreviving the former domain schools, but were not verysuccessful. In 1877 a middle school, Aichiken chūgakkō, wasestablished; in the following years the demand for middle schooleducation increased as more people received elementaryeducation, and in the 1880s private middle schools wereestablished in response to this. But when Mori Arinori’s reformspermitted only one public middle school per prefecture, theprivate middle schools had to close or be content with the statusof a higher elementary school.