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

PRIVATE ACADEMIES OF CHINESE LEARNING IN MEIJI JAPAN 53Meanwhile, juku provided education beyond elementary level.Seventeen juku are known to have existed before 1870, all but twoof them for kangaku. 48 Most are recorded as having closed in1872, except for five, of which at least one, Yūrinsha, reopened.After the closure of Meirindō, the domain school of Nagoya,many former teachers opened their own juku.Twenty juku wereestablished between 1871 and 1872, most of them in Nagoya andby samurai. Fourteen of them were kangaku juku. Kangakueducation was still in demand, partly because of dissatisfactionwith what passed for modern education in the new schools. From1876 to 1882, 14 new juku were opened, 10 of them offeringkangaku, alone or in combination with other subjects. Over thefollowing years subjects became more varied; of the 14 jukuopened between 1883 and 1886, only 5 offered kangaku. Anothertendency was that samurai no longer dominated as founders ofjuku.Many of the juku were long-lived. Of the 65 recorded juku, 12are known to have still existed in 1895, 1 until 1900, 1 until 1906and 3 until 1908. Another, Yūrinsha, is known to have continueduntil 1908 or 1909. The most long-lived schools tended to teachmore than one subject or be vocational in orientation. Three jukubecame private middle schools. The figures, however unreliable,show clearly the importance of juku, including kangaku juku foreducation in Aichi until the early twentieth century.Hyōgo prefecture, the home of Ikeda Sōan’s juku, wascomposed of distinct regions, of which Tajima was the mostisolated. The situation there differed from that in the south of theprefecture, where Awaji and the port town of Kōbe were highlydeveloped areas. 49 Where the dates of closure are known, themajority of juku do not seem to have survived beyond 1874, asthe above table shows.Most of the juku were kangaku juku, but in Harima the subjectsrecorded are reading and arithmetic and/or writing, suggestingthat they offered elementary education. The two reported to havesurvived to 1879 and 1885 offered kangaku and kangaku withhistory respectively. Thus it may well be that most juku in Settsu,Harima and Tajima provided education at a fairly low level andwere soon replaced by the new elementary schools. In Awaji, thesituation may have been different. Between 1877 and 1879, 12private middle schools were listed for Hyōgo prefecture, none ofthem in Awaji. 50 The three in Settsu (Kōbe) were not previously