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Government Ethics Textbooks in Late Meiji Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Wilbur M. Fridell
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Abstract

As one means of uniting the people behind the new regime, Japanese government authorities employed a series of ethics (shushin) textbooks in the schools during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and beyond. With the appearance of fully government-produced texts in 1903 and their first revision in 1910, ideological patterns were established which were influential down to the last revision of the series in 1941. The 1910 revision fused old and new socio-ideological patterns and values under the designation of “national morals,” retrospectively known as the “family state” (kazoku kokka) ideology. This was comprised of (1) a German “state organism” theory of state sovereignty, as the intellectual superstructure; (2) Confucian-like familyism, as the ethical base; and (3) ancient Shinto imperial mythology as the religious sanction. Progression of thought in the textbooks placed crucial emphasis on the extension of loyalty from home and parents to nation and emperor through the absolute equation of filial piety and emperor-loyalty. The frondine soldier, however, found difficulty reconciling the call to die for the emperor with his filial obligation to live for his parents. This may be one reason why in successive revisions (especially 1941) the familial approach to national loyalty was downgraded in favor of a direct national-imperial appeal.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 1970 , pp. 823 - 833
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1970

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References

1 Especially in the 1930's and '40's, ethics increasingly shared this role with history, geography, and language. In the Meiji period, however, ethics instruction was still central as the vehicle of value-indoctrination in the school system.

2 On government ethics texts in early and mid-Meiji, see especially Sansom, G. B., The Western World and Japan, (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1958)Google Scholar chap. 15; Passim, Herbert, Society and Education in Japan, (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1965) chap. 4Google Scholar; Smith, W. W., Confucianism in Modern Japan, (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1959) pp. 68–88Google Scholar; and two articles by Shively, Donald H.: “Motoda Eifu—Confucian Lecturer to the Meiji Emperor,” in Niveson, D. S. and Wright, A. F. (eds.), Confucianism in Action, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and “Nishimura Shigeki, A Confucian View of Modernization,” in Jansen, M. B. (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Kami are spirits, or deities, in the Shinto tradition.

4 Takeyoshi, Kawashima, Ideorogii toshite no Kazoku Seido (The Family System as an Ideology), (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963) p. 44.Google Scholar

5 Quotations in this paragraph are from Kawashima Takeyoshi, Ibid., p. 43. Jimmu Tennō: first mythical emperor and ancestor of the imperial family. Sacred Treasures: the three imperial regalia (sword, mirror, and jewel).

6 Tokiomi, Kaigo and Kumaji, Yoshida, Kyōiku Chokugo Kanpatsu igo ni okeru Shōgakkō Shūshin Kyōju no Hensen (Changes in the Teaching of Ethics in Elementary Schools after the Promulgation of the Rescript on Education), (Tokyo: Nihon Bunka Kyōkai, 1935) pp. 1–2Google Scholar, and chap. 2, passim.

7 Takeo, Miyata (ed.). Dōtoku Kyōiku Shiryō Shūsei (Compilation of Moral Education Materials), (Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki, 1959) vol. I, p. 9.Google Scholar

8 The Confucian doctrine regarding relations between father-son, husband-wife, older brother-younger brother, friend-friend, and ruler-subject.

9 Tomitarō, Karasawa, Kyōkasho no Rekishi (A History of Textbooks), (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1960) pp. 232–33.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 231.

11 Kaigo, and Yoshida, , op. cit., chap. 7.Google Scholar

12 Miyata, , op. cit., vol. I, p. 12.Google Scholar

13 Karasawa, , op. cit., p. 286.Google Scholar

14 Adapted from Karasawa, , p. 228Google Scholar. The percentage of lessons devoted to national ethics in the 1910 texts, given by Karasawa as 18 percent, would be even larger if he had included all elementary grades in his calculations for that year. As he indicates in a note on p. 227, he based his 1903 figures on ethics texts for all grades of both Ordinary and Higher Elementary School, but his 1910 figures only on Ordinary Elementary School materials. That is, for 1910 he did not include the ethics texts for the important three years of Higher Elementary. From my own study of both texts and commentaries, however, it is clear that the third year ethics text of Higher Elementary School, as the last in the entire series, contained an especially high concentration of national ethical teachings. The inclusion of this material would raise Karasawa's figures somewhat above 18 percent.

15 Kazoku kokka can be translated “family state,” or again “family nation” in the sense of “national family.” I prefer “family state,” as it more adequately reflects the strong statist dimension of the ideology.

16 Takeshi, Ishida, Meiji Seiji Shisō-shi Kenkyū (Studies in die History of Meiji Political Thought), (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1961) pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

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18 No attempt will be made in this article to set the family state formulation widiin the broader context of kokūtai (national essence, or entity), that grandiose ideological catchall which goes back as far as Kitabatakc Chikafusa's 14th century Jinnō Shōtōki (Record of the Legitimate Line of the Divine Emperors), but was more explicidy developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The fact that the Japanese could never really explain kokutai, even to themselves, undoubtedly contributed to its mystic appeal. It did, however, include such elements as Shinto-based reverence for the imperial family, the union of mydi and history, the Confucian-type ethic of loyalty and filial piety, and selfless Bushidō devotion to one's lord. To one extent or another, all of these themes entered into the notion of the family state, as well.

19 On these two elements, I am much indebted to Ishida's history (see footnote 16), especially pp. 8–16, 73–80 and 105–39.

20 Both this “organism” concept of state sovereignty and Minobe Tatsukichi's “organ theory” (kikan-setsu) regarding the emperor's role in the state derive from similar German sources of political thought, but Minobe's formulation was considerably more liberal. Although Minobe assigned the emperor the position of “highest organ” (saikō kikan) of the state, he saw him as but one organ among others, including the Diet. The state organism theory, on the other hand, especially as propounded by Katō Hiroyuki, insisted upon an absolute distinction between the emperor and the rest of the state organism. Katō criticized Minobe's treatment of the emperor as an organ of state, holding that he was a sovereign ruler in a much more absolutist sense. For Katō, the emperor was in a transcendent position as the “thinking center” (shit chūsū) of the state or national organism. On Minobe's views, see Miller, Frank O., Minobe Tatsukichi, Interpreter of Constitutionalism in JapanGoogle Scholar, esgpecially chaps, 1 and 4; also Takeshi, Ishida, op. cit., especially pp. 127–28.Google Scholar

21 Ishida, , op. cit., pp. 107–09Google Scholar; also Masaaki, Kōsaka (ed.), Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era, (Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1958) pp. 390–91.Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., p. 364.

24 Miyata, , op. cit., vol. II, p. 494Google Scholar (lesson on “Subjects”).

25 Ibid., vol. II, p. 494 (same lesson).

26 Ibid., vol. II, p. 494 (lesson on “The Nation”).

27 Ibid., vol. II, p. 499 (lesson on “Loyalty and Filial Piety”).

28 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 177–78.

29 Ibid., vol. II, p. 499. Italics mine.

30 Ibid., vol. II, p. 259 (lesson on “Patriotic Emperor-loyalty”).

31 Ibid., vol. II, p. 240. These festivals (shukusai) were closely associated with Shinto and the imperial family.

32 Karasawa, , op. cit., pp. 282–83.Google Scholar

33 Miyata, , op. cit., vol. II, p. 508Google Scholar (lesson on “Boshin Rescript”).

34 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 494 (lesson on “Subjects”).

35 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 243.

36 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 493.

37 Holtom, Daniel C., “The Political Philosophy of Modern Shinto,” in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, series II, vol. XLIX, (London: Kegan Paul, 1922) p. 236.Google Scholar

38 The percentages of family and national ethics in the ethics textbooks from 1910 are as follows:

(From Karasawa, , op. cit., p. 228)Google Scholar