Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:55:03.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Black Forest in a Bamboo Garden: Missionary Kindergartens in Japan, 1868–1912

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Roberta Wollons
Roberta Wollons*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of American at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The spread and adoption of German educator Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten idea in Japan occurred early in the history of the international kindergarten movement. Kindergartens were introduced as one among the vast array of Western educational ideas that flowed into Japan from Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1880. The years after 1880, however, were marked by increased governmental efforts to centralize authority, a strong shift in attitude away from Western learning, and government efforts to strengthen its control of education in Japan's movement toward modernization. During the Meiji Era (1868–1912), a period of profound transformations in Japan, the conditions that paved the way for kindergartens to become a permanent part of the educational landscape also transformed the kindergarten from a Western into a Japanese institution.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 1 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For examples, see Bogna Lorence-Kot, “Nationalism in the Nursery: Political Conflict and Early Childhood Education in Poland,” and Sondra Herman, “Feminist in the Nursery School: Alva Myrdal's Reform of the Swedish Pre-School, 1930–1950” (Papers presented at the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Kona, Hawaii, Aug. 1991; and Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).Google Scholar

2 In the United States, the kindergartens began as private enterprises, and only slowly were adopted by public schools, on a district-by-district basis.Google Scholar

3 Note on periodization: In an effort to conceptualize the changes that occurred between 1868 and 1912, some historians of Meiji Era Japan use a decade-by-decade approach. Shunsuke Kamei, for example, refers to the period 1868-77 as “civilization and enlightenment,” a time of learning and absorbing Western learning; 1878–87 as a time of “liberty and the people's rights,” marked by demands for a national assembly and greater popular representation; and the third decade, 1888–97, as a “national rights” period in which Japan had gained self-confidence from the experiences of the preceding twenty years and was looking not to adopt Western ways, but to form a unified identity and gain greater equality with Western nations. This last decade, in his view, was a period of disappointment and disillusionment with the West, and of consolidating social and political features that were distinctively Japanese. Shunsuke Kamei, “The Sacred Land of Liberty: Images of America in Nineteenth Century Japan,” in Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations, ed. Akira Iriye (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 55–72. In the history of education, however, for this study, a more simplified notion of early and late Meiji (1868–80, 1880–1912) serves to frame the changes in attitude from the systematic study and importation of learning from the West to the formation of a distinctive Japanese learning.Google Scholar

4 For the purposes of this paper, I make a distinction between Japanese kindergartens, both public and private, and Christian kindergartens controlled by the missions. This does not mean, however, that the children or teachers of these schools were exclusively Western or Japanese. All kindergarten children were Japanese, as were most of the teachers in the training schools.Google Scholar

5 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity: The Great Century in Northern Africa and Asia, A.D. 1800–A.D. 1914 (New York, 1944), 374, 382; Rev. G. G. Verbeck, “History of Protestant Missions in Japan,” Osaka Report of 1883, p. 740, Kobe College Archives, Nishinomiya, Japan; Annie L. Howe, “Excerpts From Annie L. Howe Letters, 1887–1927,” Kobe College Archives. Howe's niece, Alice Howe, transcribed this collection of Howe's letters from the written to typed pages (hereafter, Howe, “Excerpts”). Howe wrote in a letter home, “foreigners cannot travel in Japan without a government pass—that these passes are only for a limited time and only for health or scientific research.”Google Scholar

6 Verbeck, A History of Protestant Missions, 753. A Japanese governmental edict stated that citizens who practiced Christianity would be put to death. However, as with a law that prescribed the same punishment for people who lived abroad and returned to Japan, the edict was not enforced. Report after report from missionaries in the field testify to the open hostility from the samurai classes, and the occasional imprisonment or harassment of the missionaries by government officials. See also G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan: A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures (New York, 1965), 468–88; and Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan (New York, 1909), 2 vols.; Latourette, The Great Century, 376.Google Scholar

7 Collcutt, Martin “Buddhism: The Threat of Eradication,“ in Japan in Transition from Tokugawa to Meiji, ed. Jansen, Marius B. and Rozman, Gilbert (Princeton, N.J., 1986), 143–67, quotation on 154; Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 468. See Richard Rubinger, “Education: From One Room to One System,” in Japan in Transition, ed. Jansen and Rozman, 195–230, for a discussion of the ascendancy of Western learning in the first national university. For further history of Japanese universities, see Ikuo Amano, “Continuity and Change in the Structure of Japanese Higher Education,” in Changes in the Japanese University: A Comparative Perspective, ed. William K. Cummings, Ikuo Amano, and Kazuyuki Kitamura (New York, 1979), 10–39.Google Scholar

8 The notion that in the early Meiji period missionaries were sought after for their knowledge of the West more often than for religious instruction is supported in Latourette, The Great Century, 400; and Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 474.Google Scholar

9 Passin, Herbert Society and Education in Japan (New York, 1965; reprint, Tokyo, 1982), 63, 210 (for Fundamental Code in English), 67–68 (for a discussion of the influence of Western utilitarian and individualistic ideas on the framers of the Code).Google Scholar

10 Upon his return to Japan, Tanaka wrote a fifteen-volume book on his observations, Rijikootei. Passin, Society and Education, 64. The Iwakura Mission's findings would continue to influence the development of the new government throughout the Meiji period. See Marius B. Jansen, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5, The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 26, 462; and Marius B. Jansen, Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change (Princeton, N.J., 1980), 51–68. One of the members of the Mission was a six-year-old girl, Tsuda Umeko, later founder of Tsuda College for Women. Jansen, ed., Cambridge History, 5: 462; and Barbara Rose, Tsuda Umeko and Women's Education in Japan (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 6–7. Murray was not alone acting in an advisory capacity to the developing educational system in Japan. Tanaka Fujimaro and Mori Arinori corresponded extensively with American educators, including Theodore D. Woolsey, ex-president of Yale. Horace Capron, U.S. Commissioner of Education, and William S. Clark of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, took part in developing what would become Hokkaido University. See Passin, Society and Education, 71. For an extensive discussion of the role of private schools during this period, see Richard Rubinger, “Education: From One Room to One School,” 195–230.Google Scholar

11 Passin, Society and Education, 83.Google Scholar

12 Shapiro, Michael The Child's Garden: The Kindergarten Movement from Froebel to Dewey (University Park, Pa., 1983), 21, 70–72. Friedrich Froebel, “The Small Child,” in Friedrich Froebel: A Selection of His Writings, ed. Irene Lilly (Cambridge, Eng., 1967), 31–39.Google Scholar

13 Early German kindergarten leaders in America included Baroness von Marenholz-Bülow, Madam Bertha Ronge, Margaretha Meyer (Schurz), Maria Krause-Bölte. For biographical material, see Nina A. Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education (New York, 1923); and The Committee of Nineteen, Pioneers of the Kindergarten in America (New York, 1924). For biographical information on Peabody, see Notable American Women; The Committee of Nineteen, Pioneers of the Kindergarten; Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education; and Henry Barnard, ed., Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers: Papers on Froebel's Kindergarten: Principles and Methods of Child Culture in Different Countries (Hartford, Conn., 1890). For a biography of Schurz, see Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education; and Notable American Women. In 1877 Peabody organized the American Froebel Union, and went on to become the most notable American promoter of the movement.Google Scholar

14 It was in 1876 that American kindergartners gained popular support for the movement. American leaders included Susan Blow, Sarah Cooper, Caroline T. Haven, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Henry Barnard. For biographies, see Vandewalker, The Kindergarten in American Education; and Notable American Women. Shapiro, The Child's Garden, 26. On the importance of the centennial exposition, see Shapiro, ch. 5; and William Torrey Harris, “Reflections on the Educational Significance of the Centennial Exposition,” 27. Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Saint Louis Board of Education 1876, 174–79. On Japanese participation, see Passin, Society and Education, 71; and Neil Harris, “All The World a Melting Pot? Japan at American Fairs, 1876–1904,” in Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations, ed. Akira Iriye (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 24–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The Kyoto school was Yanaike Elementary. Early Childhood Education Association of Japan, ed., Early Childhood Education and Care in Japan (Tokyo, 1979), 11. The earliest kindergarten still in existence opened in 1876, attached to Tokyo Women's Normal School. The Kindergarten Training School became Ochanomizu University. See also Tsunekichi Mizuno, The Kindergarten in Japan (Boston, 1917), 31.Google Scholar

16 These were members of the Imperial Court, many of whom moved from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1871.Google Scholar

17 Early Childhood Education and Care in Japan, 21. Clara Matsuno came to Japan to marry Jun Matsuno in 1876, and was appointed to be the head teacher of the new kindergarten attached to the Tokyo Women's Normal School. Jun Matsuno was an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Makoto Kondo later translated Froebel and the Kindergarten System of Elementary Education by J. Payne into Japanese and published it in 1879. Seki had been a Buddhist priest, and engaged actively in anti-Christian campaigns. Nevertheless, his tomb, built of cylindrical and cone-shaped stones, imitated Froebel's tomb. The kindergarten created strange bedfellows. Fuyu Toyota, a former samurai of the Mita clan, was also a proponent of the kindergarten, but strongly favored foreign intercourse, and was assassinated for his views by a radical opponent.Google Scholar

18 Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 469 471; Carol Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 132–35.Google Scholar

19 In 1872 Japan also formally abolished the class system, formulated prefectures to replace domains, revised the land tax system, established the ministries of the army and the navy, and introduced national conscription. Western clothing became compulsory for government employees, and Japan changed from the lunar to the solar calendar.Google Scholar

20 For a history of the development and politics surrounding Doshisha University, see American Board of Foreign Missions, “Mission News: Doshisha Supplement, No. 2,” vol. 11, no. 3, Kyoto, Japan, Apr. 1899, Kobe College Archives.Google Scholar

21 Rohlen, Thomas Japan's High Schools (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), 53. See also Ivan Parker Hall, Mori Arinori (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); and Hall, “The Confucian Teacher in Tokugawa Japan,” in Confucianism in Action, ed. David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright (Stanford, Calif., 1959). Japanese Ministry of Education, 1881, An Outline of Early Childhood Education, reprinted in English in Passin, Society and Education, 210.Google Scholar

22 Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 103. This brief rendering of moral education in Japan draws on the works of Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 482; Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths; and Estelle James and Gail Benjamin, Public Policy and Private Education in Japan (New York, 1988), 14.Google Scholar

23 Mori continues to be a controversial figure. See Passin, Society and Education, 86–90; Ronald S. Anderson, Education in Japan: A Century of Modern Development (Washington, D.C., 1975); Ivan Parker Hall, Mori Arinori (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); Tetsuya Kobayashi, Society, Schools, and Progress in Japan (Oxford, Eng., 1978). In 1867, Mori and a few other Japanese students lived on Harris's experimental farms, The Brotherhood of the New Life, in Amenia and Salem-On-Erie, New York. See Hall, Mori Arinori; and Kimura Rikio, Ibunka Hendekki Sha: Mori Arinori (Tokyo, 1986). For the ideological turmoil created by the assassination and the constitution's promulgation, see Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 45, 226. Mori Arinori, Life and Resources in America (Washington, D.C., 1871), 298–99, quoted in Shunsuke Kamei, “The Sacred Land of Liberty,” 61.Google Scholar

24 Passin, Society and Education, 86–91; Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 123. University education in Mori's view was to be the domain in which individuals could pursue their intellectual interests on a free and liberal basis.Google Scholar

25 Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 108. The Educational Ordinance of 1879 replaced the first Education Act of 1872.Google Scholar

26 See Rubinger, Richard “Education: From One Room to One System,“ 195–230, quotation on 230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Educational Rescript of 1889, reprinted in English in Passin, Society and Education. Quotation from Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 132.Google Scholar

28 For a biographical sketch of Motoda Eifu, see Donald H. Shively, “Motoda Eifu: Confucian Lecturer to the Meiji Emperor,” in Confucianism in Action, ed. Nivison and Wright. See also Passin, Society and Education; Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 368. For a biographical sketch and explanation of Nishimura Shigeki's Confucian ideology, see Donald H. Shively, “Nishimura Shigeki: A Confucian View of Modernization,” in Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 193–241. Passin, Society and Education; Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 121, quotations on 127, 128, 133.Google Scholar

29 The ABCFM was the founder of the Doshisha University in 1875. The ABCFM missionaries were also responsible for the founding of Kobe Women's College. Howe corresponded with G. Stanley Hall and Earl Barnes of Stanford. Howe, “Excerpts,” 79.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 21 and passim.Google Scholar

31 Wollons, Roberta “The Impact of Higher Education on Women: The Case of Rock-ford College, 1870–1920“ (Paper delivered at the Mid-West Conference on the History of Women, St. Paul, Minn., Oct. 1977). Howe was already conscious of her position as one of the pioneering generation of educated women and was aware of the options available to her generation of unmarried women. In 1893, she wrote, “It is a blessed age for unmarried women. The ability to earn one's own living and to be of use in the world is a great improvement over those days when the spinster must stay at home, dependent and practically a child until her death” (Howe, “Excerpts,” 89). Rev. Clyde McGee, Bethany Union Church, Chicago, Ill., 31 Oct. 1943, Kobe College Archives (from a memorial service upon her death on 25 Oct. 1943 at the age of ninety-one).Google Scholar

32 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 13.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 21, 60, 10 (quotation); Verbeck, History of Protestant Missions in Japan, 877–78. Verbeck reported in 1882 the population of Catholics to be 4,094, and the population of Protestant missionaries to be 347.Google Scholar

34 She was, during her time there, able to give speeches, and read and translate in Japanese. Howe, “Excerpts,” 5, 22.Google Scholar

35 For quotation, see Howe, “Excerpts,” 6. There were twenty kindergartens already in Osaka (Ibid., 13). Friedrich Froebel, Mother Play (1847; Boston, 1888); Early Childhood Education and Care in Japan, 23. Unlike elementary school, the curriculum for kindergartens was not strictly prescribed, so that there was much variety in private kindergartens, depending upon region, individual founder, and experience.Google Scholar

36 Shoei Tandai exists today as a junior college in Kobe.Google Scholar

37 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 33 34, 9, 49, 51. Glory Kindergarten had waiting lists two years in advance. Mothers enrolled their children two years prior to when their children would be old enough to attend the school.Google Scholar

38 See Gluck for an extended discussion of the ideological debates that preceded the issuance of the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education. Japan's Modern Myths, 115–27.Google Scholar

39 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 90 40 (quotation), 44, 75. For a detailed examination of the Japan exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, see Neil Harris, “All the World a Melting Pot?,” 24–54.Google Scholar

40 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 92 100. Annie L. Howe, “Kindergartens in Japan,” in A Chapter of Mission History in Modern Japan, 1869–1895, ed. James H. Petee, Kobe College Archives. Howe also notes in her journal the predominance of men actively engaged in kindergarten instruction in Japan. The missionary schools were generally run by women, and they usually trained women, but the government teachers remained predominantly male throughout this period. This gender difference is unique to Japan compared to other countries where the kindergarten movement was dominated by women educators and reformers.Google Scholar

41 Howe, “Kindergarten in Japan“; Howe, “Excerpts,” 104–6, 109 (first quotation). Doshisha University, founded by Neeshima Jo as a Christian College, gave up its middle school, and its Christian curriculum in 1896 to comply with the new government regulations banning Christian education. It was a major setback within the Christian community, and the model against which Christian educators fought. Marius B. Jansen, Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change (Princeton, N.J., 1980), 65. Act 196 of the Imperial Ordinance began with the rule, “Infant training should supplement home education by cultivating sound mind and good habits.” This vague statement implied social, rather than developmental, training. See Tsunekichi Mizuno, The Kindergarten in Japan: Its Effects upon the Physical, Mental, and Moral Traits of Japanese School Children (Boston, 1917), 33, for a critique of kindergartens. He argued that kindergartens were good for intellectual, but not moral, training.Google Scholar

42 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 112 111.Google Scholar

43 Rev. Greene, D. C. “General Historic Review of Missionary Work in Japan since 1883: First Paper,“ 78 Kobe College Archives.Google Scholar

44 Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 57. Howe, “Excerpts,” 117–18. See also Latourette, The Great Century; Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 482. “Act of the Content and Facilities of Kindergarten Education,” in Early Childhood Education and Care in Japan, 11.Google Scholar

45 Mission News of the ABCFM in Japan 11 (Apr. 1899), Doshisha Supplement. Howe, “Excerpts,” 119.Google Scholar

46 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 117–22.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 121, 130, 124; Sansom, The Western World and Japan, 481.Google Scholar

48 “The Widening Circles of Christian Kindergarten Work in Japan: 1886–1919,” and By-Laws of the First Annual Meeting of the Japan Kindergarten Union, 1906, Kobe College Archives.Google Scholar

49 Nevertheless, in an address to the Froebel Association in Chicago in 1904, Howe spoke with admiration for the Japanese educational system, the rapid advancements that Japan had made, and the values asserted in the 1872 Fundamental Code of Education. She went on to praise the Japanese kindergartens for their physical construction, patriotic spirit, and lessons in the appreciation of nature. Casting the best light on Japanese kindergartens, to which she clearly felt connected, Howe minimized the curricular differences between the Christian and Japanese schools, and showed intense loyalty to the country in which she had built her career. Annie L. Howe, “The Kindergarten in Japan,” Kobe College Archives.Google Scholar

50 Kindergarten Union of Japan, President's Address, Karuizawa, 14 Aug. 1907, Kobe College Archives. The Japanese kindergarten teachers were organized into two associations, the Froebel Association of Tokyo, and the Kindergarten Association of Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and adjacent towns. Annie L. Howe, “The Kindergarten in Japan” (paper presented to the Chicago Froebel Association, 1905), 23. Kindergartens were by that time represented in fourteen Western countries and Japan.Google Scholar

51 Mizuno, The Kindergarten in Japan, 39–40. For examples of how the kindergarten was modified to national purposes in other countries, see Lorence-Kot, “Nationalism”; and Herman, “Feminist.”Google Scholar

52 “The Widening Circles of Christian Kindergarten Work, 1886–1919,” and “Glory Kindergarten and Training School,” pamphlet from the Annual Report of the Federated Missions in Japan, 1917, p. 1, Kobe College Archives. The pamphlet author reports, “Our Graduates have access to 1,441 children, and 1,441 homes”; Howe, “Excerpts,” 40.Google Scholar

53 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 147.Google Scholar

54 Early Childhood Education, 17, 29; History of the Japanese Kindergarten Union, 1941, Kobe College Archives.Google Scholar

55 The ruling applied to both Christian and government kindergartens.Google Scholar

56 Howe, “Excerpts,“ 163.Google Scholar

57 In the Early Education Association of Japan pamphlet, Early Childhood Education and Care in Japan, published in 1979, Howe is the only foreigner mentioned in connection with the history and development of the kindergarten in Japan.Google Scholar

58 In considering the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the irony of this date should be noted, though a detailed analysis of this irony is beyond the scope of this paper.Google Scholar