Individual Paper
5. Transmitting Knowledges: Institutions, Objects and Practices
The period from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890 saw the progressive institutionalisation of a modern education system in Japan. Still, these roughly twenty years saw important shifts in policy directions. Scholars have figured out turns from “Japanese” to “Western” models and back, the domination of “French”, “American” and “German” reference societies, often in relation to “liberal” or “conservative” approaches. Although not devoid of a certain validity, this paper proposes to go beyond these often simplifying ascriptions. It will be argued that early Meiji Japan saw the confrontation of three different “languages of education” (Daniel Tröhler), that is dominant ways of thinking about education. The first language of education was based on American congregationalist republicanism and was brought to Japan through vice-minister of education Tanaka Fujimaro’s contact with the American “common school crusaders”. The second language of education championed efficiency and centralised control, epitomised by the Presbyterian American advisor to the ministry of education David Murray. The third language of education is the inward-looking Lutheran German idea of Bildung that came to Japan when minister of education Mori Arinori invited the German Emil Hausknecht to become the first professor of pedagogy at Tokyo Imperial University. While they originated from different Euro-American contexts and were imbued with religious and nationalist meanings, the Japanese blended these languages of education into a new unique model, signifying the first successful case of educationalisation beyond Christian contexts.
Klaus Dittrich
The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong