11 - The Establishment and Curriculum of the Tōkyō Shokkō-gakkō (Tōkyō Vocational School) in Meiji Japan

Summary

INTRODUCTION

THE CONCEPT OF a formalized industrial education began to develop in Japan with the establishment of the Ministry of Public Works (Kōbushō) in 1870 (Meiji 3). It was part of the government policy aiming at the advancement of industrialization, and developing Japan into a modern nation comparable to the countries of Western Europe.

The government started its efforts to promote top-level technical education by hiring foreign teachers to train senior engineers. This led to the foundation of the Imperial College of Engineering (Kōgaku-ryō, Kōbu-dai-gakkō, ICE) under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Works. Teaching began in 1873 and aimed at introducing modern industrial technology, which was ‘unprecedented in Japan’. The training of senior engineers at ICE achieved its first results from around 1880, when students educated at the school graduated as engineers and teachers. In response to this, officials of the Ministry of Education (Monbushō), who had until then focused mainly on general education, gradually recognized the need to train intermediate-level engineers, as well as the need for institutions for secondary industrial education. Several officials undertook concrete measures to systematize such technical education.

The expansion of industrial education downward from the education of senior engineers to the training of intermediate-level engineers reflects the rise of modern industry and the establishment of a capitalist society in Japan, centred on the policy of industrial development. The education policy was not only geared towards the expansion and maintenance of technical education institutions, but reflects a strong awareness of the need for a continuous technical education that should already start below the level of higher technical education. In other words, a consistent hierarchy for the training of engineers was envisioned to meet the needs of industry, comprising the training of senior engineers, intermediate-level engineers such as foremen (shokkōchō) and managers of manufacturing facilities (kōjō keieisha), as well as lower-level technical workers and craftsmen (shokkō). It was regarded as an urgent task to spread this message widely in society and train many industrial engineers. This was partly successful, as the historian Ishizuka Hiromichi confirms:

With the retreat of the government-employed foreign engineers at the end of the 1880s, a large number of low-level technical workers (shokkō) were trained by senior technical instructors (kōshi) and instructors of vocational schools (shokkōchō) to master Western-style industrial technology.