Educators

2024/11/26

It is well known that Yukichi Fukuzawa considered himself a scholar and stated that he was not a schoolteacher. However, those around him recognized him as the founder of Keio University and treated him as a representative figure among schoolteachers. Even today, Keio University is counted as one of the three great private academies of the Meiji era, and Fukuzawa is regarded as one of the six great educators of Meiji.

How, then, were Fukuzawa's educational theories perceived by other educators? This article focuses on women's education in the Meiji educational world to examine the attitudes educators showed toward Fukuzawa's ideas. Much of the content of this article is based on Naoko Nishizawa's "Fukuzawa Yukichi and Women."

Educational administration in the early Meiji era, while gradualist, included Westernizing elements. Keio University, which was a step ahead of other private academies as a school for English studies, was frequently asked to dispatch teachers to various parts of the country. Keio University was a source of teachers. However, entering the 1880s, Confucianist tendencies grew stronger. After the Political Crisis of 1881, when Shigenobu Okuma and bureaucrats from Keio University left the government, Confucianist elements in educational policy became even more pronounced. Fukuzawa criticized this and published works such as "On Moral Training" and "The Independence of Learning," but the trend did not change.

During this period, the Meiji government adopted policies that marginalized private schools. Exemptions from the Conscription Law for private schools were revoked, and graduates of private schools were barred from becoming principals or vice-principals of public middle schools and normal schools. In this way, the influence of Keio University decreased not only in government circles but also in the educational world.

Then, in 1890, the "Imperial Rescript on Education" was issued, which would exert a strong influence on subsequent education. Its content emphasized a state system centered on the Emperor, and the correct path for citizens was to observe virtues such as loyalty and filial piety as subjects (shinmin) of the Emperor. In school education, to give concrete form to the "Imperial Rescript on Education," these virtues were to be instilled through the subject of "Morals" (Shūshin).

As a representative of such Confucian thinking, "Onna Daigaku" (Greater Learning for Women), said to have been written by Ekiken Kaibara, had strongly fixed people's consciousness since the Edo period regarding how women should be. Fukuzawa, who was critical of Confucian-based morality such as the subordination of women to men represented by this book, published "Onna Daigaku Hyōron" (A Critique of Greater Learning for Women) in 1900, which compiled a series of articles from the Jiji Shinpo. Many newspapers and magazines focused on the Kaibara vs. Fukuzawa debate and offered commentary, but the majority of opinions were critical of Fukuzawa.

Fukuzawa's ideas were modern, advocating for gender equality and the idea that women should also have jobs and aim for individual independence. Therefore, they were incompatible with "Onna Daigaku," which was based on old Confucian teachings suggesting women should not have outside jobs but should handle household matters like childbirth and child-rearing and that wives should obey their husbands. They were also incompatible with the "Imperial Rescript on Education," which viewed citizens as subjects of the Emperor and imposed Confucian morality from above. Fukuzawa was viewed with hostility by people who wanted to maintain Confucian morality in Japanese society. This included a certain number of teachers.

One of Fukuzawa's interests in his later years was to criticize the deeply rooted subordination of women to men in modernizing Japanese society through works such as "Onna Daigaku Hyōron" and "Shin Onna Daigaku" (The New Greater Learning for Women). Even after collapsing from a cerebral hemorrhage, his desire to write about women's issues remained high. However, he did not write these books only for women; he also hoped men would read them. At the Fukuzawa household, a copy of "Onna Daigaku Hyōron / Shin Onna Daigaku" remains with his own brushwork stating, "Men should also read this book." He believed that unless the consciousness and habits of men changed, the spirit of male dominance could not be eradicated, and true gender equality could not be realized.

Another interest was the dissemination of the "Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code," which Shozo Hinohara and Fukuzawa's disciples compiled as the ideal morality for citizens, centered on "independence and self-respect." It is said that Fukuzawa was so committed to this that he was prepared to close Keio University to advance the dissemination activities, only to be stopped by those around him.

In June 1900, it was reported that the Kyoto Prefectural First High School for Girls might have banned the reading of Fukuzawa's "Onna Daigaku Hyōron / Shin Onna Daigaku." A Jiji Shinpo reporter requested an interview at the school to confirm the facts and interviewed the principal, Ichiro Kawahara. Kawahara had served as the principal of the school since 1890 and was a dedicated teacher who felt uneasy if he did not visit the school at least once even on holidays; he was 51 years old at the time.

While saying the story had been somewhat exaggerated, Kawahara admitted it was true that he had ordered the bookstores that supplied textbooks and reference books to the school not to carry "Shin Onna Daigaku." Additionally, he explained that he prevented any books he deemed inappropriate for reading, such as novels and magazines, from being brought in, so it was not as if he had banned only Fukuzawa's book. At this school, the principal had treated Fukuzawa's book as an "inappropriate" book and prohibited its handling.

Furthermore, Kawahara highly praised Kaibara's "Onna Daigaku" as "a truly magnificent book as a teaching for women and girls." At the school, they reportedly clipped out parts of novels and miscellaneous reports in newspapers that they judged should not be read, and they did not allow young women to read political newspapers or novels because they were harmful. This was based on the idea that "it is not good to let young women, whose brains are not yet firm, read too many different things."

He could be called a representative of the educators of that time who favored a Confucian view of women. Figures like Kawahara, who advocated for "good wife, wise mother" education, remained standard among teachers involved in women's education until after the war.

The foundation of Kawahara's educational view was the Imperial Rescript on Education.

In other words, the controversy over Kaibara's "Onna Daigaku" versus Fukuzawa's "Shin Onna Daigaku" regarding women was a conflict between the Imperial Rescript on Education and the Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code, and between Confucianism and Civilizationism. An editorial was published in the Jiji Shinpo describing this confrontation as the "final decisive battle." This editorial loudly proclaimed that this was a decisive battle between old and new morality, and expressed the desire to overthrow Confucianism from its roots and adopt the new morality of Civilizationism.

However, the year 1900 was two years after 1898, when Minister of Education Kinmochi Saionji, with the approval of Emperor Meiji, began work on revising the Imperial Rescript on Education with secretary Yosaburo Takekoshi, only to resign due to illness, leaving the project unfulfilled. Although more than ten years had passed and even the Emperor recognized that the Imperial Rescript on Education did not fit the times, education based on it was still being conducted on the ground, and it was treated as an absolute, infallible rule.

Critiques of Fukuzawa continued even after his death in 1901.

At an "Onna Daigaku" research meeting in 1909, prominent educators of the time launched critiques of Fukuzawa.

The attendees included Tetsujiro Inoue (philosopher), Dean of the College of Literature at Tokyo Imperial University (now the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo); Motomichi Miwada, Vice Principal of Miwada High School for Girls (now Miwada Gakuen Junior and Senior High School); Kumaji Yoshida, Professor at Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School (now Ochanomizu University); Jiro Shimoda; Sumiko Miyagawa (Sumi Oie, founder of Tokyo Kasei Gakuin); Rikizo Nakajima (ethicist, first-year student of Doshisha English School), Lecturer at Tokyo Higher Commercial School (now Hitotsubashi University) and Professor at Women's Higher Normal School; Shizuchi Yoshida (ethicist), Professor at Tokyo Higher Normal School (now University of Tsukuba); Sukemasa Arima (philosopher), Professor at Gakushuin; Keishi Nishida, Manager of Tokyo Jogakkan; and Motoma Sudo. Inoue was the person who, back in 1900, had criticized the "Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code" on the grounds that its advocacy of independence and self-respect conflicted with the Imperial Rescript on Education, which promoted loyalty.

Although some had experience studying abroad, the tone of the research meeting was one of finding significance in "Onna Daigaku" and unleashing critiques of Fukuzawa. The basic perception of women among the attendees was that modesty and obedience were virtues, and that women were beings who should not hesitate to sacrifice themselves as those who give birth to and raise children who will become subjects. Consequently, the conclusion was that the spirit of "Onna Daigaku" must be utilized in the society of that time.

Miyagawa, the only woman among the attendees, also argued based on her experience studying in the UK that for Japan to stand on equal footing with the West, mothers needed to have a spirit of obedience and humility and raise children capable of dying for the country, and for that purpose, women had to be instilled with the ideas of "Onna Daigaku."

Additionally, Ayako Tanahashi, a teacher at Tokyo Women's Normal School who resigned at Fukuzawa's request to educate the daughters of the Count Ogasawara family within the Keio University campus, criticized Fukuzawa's "Onna Daigaku Hyōron" as extreme and as leading Japanese women in the wrong direction, asserting that there were no inconveniences in "Onna Daigaku." Tanahashi later founded the private Tokyo High School for Girls (formerly Tokyo Joshi Gakuen, now Shiba International Junior and Senior High School) and became its first principal.

On the other hand, there were also women who were moved by Fukuzawa's educational theories and founded schools. In 1896, 15-year-old Kimi Takagi, who directly heard Fukuzawa's lecture at the Yokohama Port Opening Memorial Hall, strongly resonated with the content that a woman's economic independence leads to the independence of her character. In 1905, she opened the Takagi Girls' Juku to teach sewing, and in 1908, she reorganized it into the Kanagawa Sewing School (later Takagi Girls' Commercial School, now Eiri Girls' Academy High School).

In this way, many educators involved in private girls' schools supported the Confucian "Onna Daigaku." Fukuzawa's spirit, which aimed for the realization of a society where even women acquire learning, achieve individual independence, and men and women become equal, was subject to criticism and remained a minority view. Considering that gender equality cannot be said to have been realized even today, it seems that the "final decisive battle" of Fukuzawa and Keio University is not yet over.