terakoya private schools

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terakoya 寺子屋 　"temple school", private school


source : facebook - meeting


. Teikin Oorai, Teikin ōrai 庭訓往来 textbooks in Edo .

From the 14th to the 19th century, the king of ōraimono was Teikin ōrai 庭訓往来. The title literally meant "Correspondence [samples] for education at home," but it was eventually used in temple schools (terakoya) as well. It contained 25 letters dated from the first month through the twelfth, artfully crafted to cover as much as possible of the topic and vocabulary pool from which your standard social letter might draw.


. gakumonjo 学問所 Academies of Higher Learning - Introduction .
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. CONFUCIANISM IN THE EDO (TOKUGAWA) PERIOD .

The Oyomei (Chinese: Wang Yang-ming) School:
... In sum scholarly Neo-Confucian studies were widespread and varied. A number of Confucian "academies" (like think tanks) were established, such as the Kaitokudo in Osaka. A so-called "merchant academy," it taught, subtly, that the merchants did have value to society as well and their contribution to the welfare of the realm was significant. Generally, only the samurai class would attend these academies, so this gave merchants a place to send their sons and instill pride in what their families did.
On the popular level, though, people learned about their place in society and the importance of loyalty and filial piety through travelling scholars and what was taught in the terakoya or temple schools.

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Terakoya (temple schools) were public educational institutions that provided children with an education of reading and writing and in some places taught the use of the abacus. They existed not only in Edo but in also in other towns and villages throughout Japan.

Thousands of terakoya began receiving pupils throughout the country during the Tempō era (1830-1844). The number of terakoya at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate seems to have reached some thirty or forty thousand and it was these institutions that contributed to the high levels of literacy among ordinary people.

An example from the beginning of the Meiji period, according to a survey conducted by the Tokyo government, the majority of terayako teachers were Edo citizens. Many were men, but in urban areas, especially in Edo, there were also female teachers. The teachers would consider the professions of the parents of the children who came to learn at terakoya and also their desires and would carry out education respectively with individual curriculums tailored to these needs and circumstances.



Osanarikugei No Uchi Shosū / Painted by Utagawa Kunisada

From the Six Neccesary Subjects for Children, Calligraphy and Abaccus
(Osanarikugei No Uchi Shosū) - rikugei

From the term "rikugei", which means the six kinds of knowledge a wise man has, "osanarikugei" denotes the six subjects necessary for children to learn. "Sho" means calligraphy and "sū" means the Japanese abacus. Children learning "sho" and "sū" are depicted.

Rikugei was knowledge required in ancient China for people who held a rank higher than samurai. It means six kinds of knowledge including "Rei" (moral education), "Raku" (music), "Sha" (archery), "Gyo" (technique to operate horse cart), "Sho" (literature) and "Sū" (math).
Take a look the abacus in the picture. You can see two columns in the upper space (heaven) and five in the lower space (earth). The number of columns is one more than the current abacus in both the upper and lower spaces. This is the exact form of the kind of abacus that originated from China and in the Meiji period, abaci with one heaven column removed, leaving five columns of one heaven and five earth columns, became widespread. Then in 1935 (Shōwa 10), the present abacus with one column in the upper and four columns in the lower spaces appeared




(Bungaku Bandai no Takara (Shinomaki, Suenomaki)
These works are a two piece nishiki-e (colored woodblock print) series depicting a class at terakoya (temple school). A male teacher teaches the class at "Shinomaki" (first volume) and a female teacher at "Suenomaki" (end volume). You can see that most of the children behave freely.

At terakoya (temple school) in the Edo period, not all students sat facing the teacher, the textbooks used and the ages of children varied and attending the class or not was optional.
Most children in the picture are not studying quietly. There are indeed many kinds of going on with some children fooling around with ink brushes and others punching each other or playing with dolls. Also from books behind the female teacher in "sue-no-maki" (end volume), we can see that flower arrangement, tea ceremony and incense burning were taught in addition to reading and writing.
This being said, the teachers at terakoya teachers strictly instructed morals, manners, and rules of decorum and there was a fixed set of rules in the class with punishments for excessive misbehavior whereby children were made to stand still or sit erect with legs folded.


- - - - - Textbooks - - - - -
(1) Teikinourai Terakodakara
(2) Jinkoki Kukunomizu
(3) Onotakamura Utajizukushi" / 1819 (Bunsei 2)


At Terakoya, the education method greatly differed from the present and children generally learned how to read and write. Different textbooks were used for children of farmers and for children of merchants so that each could obtain the respective knowledge neccesary for farming or trading. The general name for the textbook used in terakoya was "ōraimono". The objective of these studies was to learn how to write a letter to someone, and the textbook was called "ōraimono", which means to learn texts that go back and forth.

Teikin-ōrai was one of "Ōraibutsu" textbooks often used to learn basic culture and calligraphy at terakoya (temple school). When it was first developed in the Muromachi period, it was used to educate children of aristocrats, samurai, and monks but it was said to have been most popular in the Edo period as a textbook for common people.
In addition, "Onotakamura Utajizukushi", which was developed in early Edo period to learn Kanji, was so popular that multiple editions were published throughout the Edo period. The textbook contained kanji characters with the same "radical" and "tsukuri" such as 椿, 榎, 楸, 柊, 桐, etc. and also contained was a song to learn and remember them by (haru tsubaki, natsu ha enoki ni aki hisagi, fuyu ha hiiragi onajiku hakiri).
Jinkōki" was famous as an introductory book for math. This was written by a mathematician

- source : library.metro.tokyo.jp -

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A Day at a Terakoya School
How were children taught?
The terakoya, or "temple schools" that became common in the Edo period, were organized much like the private, after-school cramming classes found today. Rather than follow the same curriculum as others in their grade, however, the students progressed at their own pace.

The subjects they were taught were primarily reading, writing, and calculation using the abacus. They copied what the instructor wrote down, and practiced writing the same phrase over and over until they were able to approximate the teacher's handwriting. Most of the texts they read were Chinese and Japanese classics, which were repeatedly read aloud until they were practically memorized.

High rate of literacy
The terakoya were found throughout Edo (now Tokyo). According to one Edo-period source, some neighborhoods even had two schools, suggesting a high literacy rate of the townspeople. Enrollment in these schools was about 70% to 80%, much higher than the enrollment ratios found in Europe at the time.

Curriculum
There was no fixed curriculum for each grade and subject, as is the case today. Each school operator adapted the subject matter to the aptitude and progress of each child. Instruction followed a general course order, however, with children first learning the syllabary and then common kanji (Sino-Japanese characters) before studying more complex kanji and phrases. Many different textbooks were used, depending on the children's family background.

A typical day
In addition to academic subjects, children were also given lessons in some art, such as traditional dance and music. In the Ukiyo-buro (The Communal Bath), a late Edo-period novel by Shikitei Sanba depicting the life of townspeople and their children, a girl who is about to enter the bath describes a typical day to a friend: "After I get up, I go to the terakoya to prepare for the calligraphy lesson. Then I have a shamisen (a banjo-like three-stringed instrument) lesson before I come home for breakfast. I go to the terakoya again after my dance lesson, and it's already 3 o'clock by this time. I go to the bath and then go to my koto (zither) lesson. I come home to practice the shamisen and dance parts I learned that day. I play for a while, and after the sun sets I practice the koto."

While not all children may have been this busy, many foreign visitors to Japan toward the end of the Edo period expressed surprised in their diaries and journals at the high number of children who were able to read and write.
- source : web-japan.org/tokyo/know - Hidekazu Ishiyama -

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鶯や寺子屋に行く道の藪
uguisu ya terakoya ni iku michi no yabu

this bush warbler -
the thicket along the road
to the temple school

Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規


. Nightingale, bush warbler (uguisu 鴬) .

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寺子屋に傘多し春の泥 妻木
松瀬青々

寺子屋のてら子去にけり秋の暮
黒柳召波 春泥句集

寺子屋の七夕風景随筆に
高澤良一 寒暑

寺子屋の段も佳境に春夕焼
木村てる代

寺子屋の門うつ子あり朝寒み
太祇

糸瓜忌や寺子屋風に集まりて
深見けん二 日月

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Edo no Manabi 「江戸の学び」Schooling in Edo
「江戸東京博物館」 Edo Tokyo Museum


Hiroshige - 歌川広重の「諸芸稽古図会」Hiroshige’s Caricature:

- source : www.1101.com/edo/2006-


Mischievous Boys at a Terakoya
Hiroshige


. . . CLICK here for more ukiyo-e of Edo Terakoya !

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- - - - - quoting Hayato:
A short composition by one of Lafcadio Hearn's students in Kumamoto (From Out of the East):
"Before Meiji, there were no such public schools in Japan as there are now. But, in every province there was a sort of student society, composed of the sons of samurai. Unless a man was a samurai, his son could not enter such a society. It was under the control of the lord of the province, who appointed a director to rule the students. The principal study of the samurai was that of the Chinese language and literature.
Most of the statesmen of the present government were once students in such samurai schools. Common citizens and country people had to send their sons and daughters to primary schools called terakoya, where all the teaching was usually done by one teacher. It consisted of little more than reading, writing, calculating, and some moral instruction.
We could learn to write an ordinary letter, or a very easy essay. At eight years old, I was sent to a terakoya, as I was not the son of a samurai. At first, I did not want to go; and every morning my grandfather had to strike me with his stick to make me go. The discipline at the school was very severe. If a boy did not obey, he was beaten with a bamboo stick, while being held down to receive his punishment. After a year, many public schools were opened and I entered a public school.
- source : Hayato Tokugawa -





化々学校 - おばけの学校 School for Monsters and Demons
河鍋暁斎 Kawanabe Kyosai (1831 - 89)

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Temple Schools
The late 18th century Ehon sakaegusa (Fig.3), an illustrated book by the artist Katsukawa Shunko, shows us what contemporary temple schools (known as terakoya) looked like.
(illustration)
On left-hand side of the picture, we see two children sitting at the desk holding a brush and practicing writing. In Edo times, “learning to write” (tenarai) consisted of repeatedly copying words and sentences from a copybook. To save paper, every inch of the sheet has been used so that the sheet is completely covered in black ink. On the right-hand side, there is a female teacher holding a baby on her back and two little girls sitting in front of her with an open book in front of them. They point at the characters on the page with a stick. The girls are actually learning to recite Chinese texts in Chinese by mimicking the teacher’s pronunciation. The stick they are holding was called a jisashi (character pointer), and was used to trace the lines of the characters as one read them. In learning to both read and write, “repetition” was the key pedagogic device, and texts were an indispensable tool in both cases.

Temple schools were the simplest way for commoners to acquire the basic skills needed in everyday life (literacy, arithmetic, etc.). Over the course of the Edo period, thousands of books for use as textbooks in temple schools were published.

One example is the Ehon teikin ōrai (Fig.4). Because the illustrations are by the famous painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), they are larger than usual. One of them shows students at work at a temple school.

Onna daigaku (Fig.5), a popular behavior manual for women, contains an image of young girls learning to read Chinese texts from a female instructor.Images of commoners learning from books are indeed common in Edo-period educational books.

Despite some obvious changes, attitudes to education remained rather consistent after the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji period.
With the influx of ideas and institutions from the West following the Restoration, Japan rapidly reorganized itself as a modern nation state. As the title shows, Doi Kōka (1847-1918)’s Kinsei onna daigaku (Fig.6) was conceived as a “Great Learning for Women” for the modern age. ...
- source : future learn - Keio University -


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. Japanese Legends - 伝説　民話　昔話 – ABC-List .


........................................................................................................ Hyogo 兵庫県
神戸市 Kobe city

furudanuki 古狸 an old badger
Around 1868, at the terakoya 寺子屋 temple school from 常源寺 Temple Jogen-Ji there appeared furudanuki 古狸 an old tanuki badger.
Some brave boys drove it out with a stick but
there was now always a voice of someone reciting homework coming from under the floor.
. tanuki 狸と伝説 Tanuki badger legends .




........................................................................................................ Iwate 岩手県
奥州市 Oshu City

. hebi 蛇と伝説 Legends about snakes and serpents .
In the year 1877, there was a family working as teachers of a terakoya 寺子屋 temple school. Every night they saw the shadow of a young boy on the shooji 障子 paper sliding doors. It was hebi 蛇 a serpent that had come to tempt the woman of the family.



........................................................................................................ Miyagi 宮城県
蔵王町 Zao town

. furugeta no urami 古下駄の怨 the grudge of the old Geta .




........................................................................................................ Niigata 新潟県
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新潟市 Niigata city 江南区 Konan ward

. kitsune densetsu 狐と伝説 fox legends .
There lived a fox under the floor beams, who often looked very hungry, always came when the children from the terakoya 寺子屋 temple school were eating lunch.
One boy gave only a few bites to the fox, but it became bewitched by the fox.
The parents of the boy went to apologize to the fox and the boy came back to be normal.




........................................................................................................ Saga 佐賀県
佐賀市 Saga city

. Kappa Water Goblin Legends from Saga .
Once a girl of about 11 or 12 years of a rich merchant family came home from the terakoya 寺子屋 temple school when she met the child from next-door.
He invited the girl to play near the temple 観成院 Kanjo-In at the river.
The girl went home to tell her parents, who prayed to the Kami and smeared black ashes from the hearth fire on her face.
The neighbourhood child looked astonished and afraid at the black color and run away.
Now they knew this had been a Kappa in disguise.


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- reference : Nichibun Yokai Database -

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. gakumonjo 学問所 Academies of Higher Learning - Introduction .

. Famous Places and Powerspots of Edo　江戸の名所 .

. - Doing Business in Edo - 商売　- Introduction .

. senryu, senryū 川柳　Senryu poems in Edo .

. densetsu 伝説　Japanese Legends - Introduction .


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