Educators

It is well known that Yukichi Fukuzawa regarded himself as a scholar and stated that he was not a school teacher. However, those around him recognized him as the founder of Keio University and treated him as a representative figure among school teachers. Even today, Keio University is counted as one of the three great private academies of the Meiji era, and Fukuzawa is regarded as one of the six great Meiji educators.

How, then, was Fukuzawa's educational theory perceived by other educators? This article focuses on women's education in the Meiji educational world to examine the attitudes educators showed toward Fukuzawa's ideas. Much of the content of this article is based on Naoko Nishizawa's "Yukichi Fukuzawa and Women."

Educational administration in the early Meiji era, while gradualist, included Westernizing elements. Keio University, which was a step ahead of other academies as a school for English studies, was frequently asked to dispatch personnel as teachers to various parts of the country. Keio University was a source of teachers. However, as the second decade of the Meiji era began, Confucian tendencies grew stronger. When Shigenobu Okuma and bureaucrats from Keio University left the government in the Political Crisis of 1881, Confucian elements in educational policy became even more pronounced. Fukuzawa criticized this and published works such as "On Moral Training" and "The Independence of Learning," but the trend did not change.

During this period, the Meiji government adopted a policy of cold treatment toward private schools. Exemptions from the Conscription Law for private schools were canceled, and graduates of private schools were barred from becoming principals or vice-principals of public middle schools and normal schools. In this way, the influence of Keio University decreased not only in official circles but also in the educational world.

Then, in 1890, the "Imperial Rescript on Education" was issued, which would have a strong influence on subsequent education. Its content emphasized a state system centered on the Emperor, and the correct path for citizens was to observe virtues such as loyalty and filial piety as subjects (shinmin) of the Emperor. In school education, to give concrete form to the "Imperial Rescript on Education," these virtues were to be instilled through the subject of "Morals" (Shūshin).

As a representative of such Confucian thinking, "Onna Daigaku" (Greater Learning for Women), said to have been written by Kaibara Ekken, had strongly fixed people's consciousness since the Edo period regarding how women should be. Fukuzawa, who was critical of Confucian-based morality such as the subordination of women to men represented by this book, published "A Critique of Onna Daigaku" in 1900, which compiled a series of articles from the "Jiji Shinpo" newspaper. Many newspapers and magazines focused on the Kaibara vs. Fukuzawa debate and offered commentary, but the majority of opinions were critical of Fukuzawa.

Fukuzawa's ideas were modern, advocating for gender equality and that women should also have jobs to aim for independence and self-respect. Therefore, they were incompatible with the old Confucian teachings of "Onna Daigaku"—which held that women should not have outside work but should handle household matters such as childbirth and child-rearing, and that wives should obey their husbands—and the "Imperial Rescript on Education," which viewed citizens as subjects of the Emperor and imposed Confucian morality from above. Fukuzawa was viewed with hostility by those who wished to maintain Confucian morality in Japanese society. This included a certain number of teachers.

One of Fukuzawa's interests in his later years was to criticize the deeply rooted subordination of women to men in modernizing Japanese society through works such as "A Critique of Onna Daigaku" and "The New Onna Daigaku." Even after collapsing from a cerebral hemorrhage, his desire to write about women's issues remained high. However, he did not write these books only for women; he also hoped men would read them. At the Fukuzawa household, a copy of "A Critique of Onna Daigaku / The New Onna Daigaku" remains with his own brushwork stating, "Men should also read this book." He believed that unless the consciousness and habits of men changed, the spirit of subordinating women could not be wiped out, and true gender equality could not be realized.

Another interest was the dissemination of the "Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code," which Shozo Hinohara and Fukuzawa's disciples compiled as the ideal morality for citizens, centered on "independence and self-respect." It is said that Fukuzawa put so much effort into this that he was prepared to close Keio University to promote its dissemination before being stopped by those around him.

In June 1900, it was reported that Kyoto Prefectural First Girls' High School might be prohibiting the viewing of Fukuzawa's "A Critique of Onna Daigaku / The New Onna Daigaku." A reporter from Jiji Shinpo requested an interview with the school to confirm the facts and interviewed the principal, Ichiro Kawahara. Kawahara had served as the principal of the school since 1890 and was a dedicated teacher who felt uneasy if he did not visit the school at least once even on holidays; he was 51 years old at the time.

While saying the story had been somewhat exaggerated, Kawahara admitted it was true that he had ordered bookstores that visited the school to handle textbooks and reference books not to carry "The New Onna Daigaku." He further explained that since he prevented the bringing in of any books he deemed inappropriate for students to read, such as certain novels and magazines, he was not banning only Fukuzawa's book. At this school, the principal treated Fukuzawa's book as an "inappropriate" book and prohibited its handling.

In addition, Kawahara highly praised Kaibara's "Onna Daigaku" as "a truly magnificent book for the instruction of women and girls." At the school, they reportedly cut out parts of novels and miscellaneous reports in newspapers that they judged should not be read, and they did not allow young women to read political newspapers or novels because they were harmful. This was based on the idea that "it is not good to let young women, whose brains are not yet fully formed, read too many different things."

He could be called a representative of the educators of that time who favored a Confucian view of women. Figures like Kawahara, who advocated for the education of "good wives and wise mothers," remained the standard among teachers involved in women's education until after the war.

The foundation of Kawahara's educational view was the Imperial Rescript on Education.

In other words, the controversy over women between Kaibara's "Onna Daigaku" and Fukuzawa's "The New Onna Daigaku" was a conflict between the Imperial Rescript on Education and the Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code, and between Confucianism and Civilizationism. An editorial in the "Jiji Shinpo" described this confrontation as the "final decisive battle." This editorial loudly proclaimed that this was a decisive battle between old and new morality, and that they wanted to overthrow Confucianism from its roots and have the new morality of Civilizationism adopted.

However, the year 1900 was two years after 1898, when Minister of Education Kinmochi Saionji, with the approval of Emperor Meiji, began work on revising the Imperial Rescript on Education with his secretary Yosaburo Takekoshi, only to resign due to illness, leaving the project unfulfilled. Although more than ten years had passed and even the Emperor recognized that the Imperial Rescript on Education no longer fit the times, education based on it was still being carried out on the ground, and it was treated as an infallible golden rule.

Criticism of Fukuzawa continued even after his death in 1901.

At an "Onna Daigaku" research meeting in 1909, prominent educators of the time launched criticisms against Fukuzawa.

The attendees included Tetsujiro Inoue (philosopher), Dean of the College of Literature at Tokyo Imperial University (now the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo); Motomichi Miwada, Vice-Principal of Miwada Girls' High School (now Miwada Gakuen Junior and Senior High School); Kumaji Yoshida, Jiro Shimoda, and Sumiko Miyagawa (Sumi Ooe, founder of Tokyo Kasei Gakuin), professors at Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School (now Ochanomizu University); Rikizo Nakajima (ethicist, first-class graduate of Doshisha English School), lecturer at Tokyo Higher Commercial School (now Hitotsubashi University) and professor at the Women's Higher Normal School; Shizuyuki Yoshida (ethicist), professor at Tokyo Higher Normal School (now University of Tsukuba); Sukemasa Arima (philosopher), professor at Gakushuin; Keishi Nishida, manager of Tokyo Jogakkan; and Motoma Sudo. Inoue was the person who, in 1900, had criticized the "Shūshin Yōryō: Fukuzawa's Moral Code" on the grounds that its advocacy of independence and self-respect conflicted with the Imperial Rescript on Education, which upheld loyalty.

Although some had experience studying abroad, the tone of the research meeting was one of finding significance in "Onna Daigaku" and unleashing criticism of Fukuzawa. The basic perception of women among the attendees was that humility and obedience were virtues, and that women were beings who should not hesitate to sacrifice themselves to give birth to and raise children who would become subjects. Therefore, the conclusion was that the spirit of "Onna Daigaku" must be utilized even in the society of that time.

Miyagawa, the only woman among the attendees, also argued based on her experience studying in the UK that for Japan to stand shoulder to shoulder with the West, mothers needed to have a spirit of obedience and humility and raise children capable of dying for their country, and for that purpose, women must be made to hold the ideas of "Onna Daigaku."

In addition, Ayako Tanahashi, who was a teacher at Tokyo Women's Normal School and left the school at Fukuzawa's request to educate the children of the Count Ogasawara family within the Keio University campus, criticized Fukuzawa's "A Critique of Onna Daigaku" as extreme and leading Japanese women in the wrong direction, asserting that there were no inconveniences in "Onna Daigaku." Tanahashi later founded the private Tokyo Girls' High School (formerly Tokyo Joshi Gakuen, now Shiba International Junior and Senior High School) and became its first principal.

On the other hand, there were also women who were moved by Fukuzawa's educational theory and established schools. In 1896, 15-year-old Kimi Takagi, who directly heard Fukuzawa's lecture at the Yokohama Port Opening Memorial Hall, strongly resonated with the content that a woman's economic independence leads to the independence of her character. In 1905, she opened the Takagi Girls' School to teach sewing, and in 1908, she reorganized it into the Kanagawa Sewing School (later Takagi Girls' Commercial School, now Eri Girls' High School).

In this way, many educators involved in private girls' schools supported the Confucian "Onna Daigaku." Fukuzawa's spirit, which aimed for the realization of a society where even women acquire learning, achieve independence and self-respect, and men and women become equal, was subject to criticism and was in the minority. Considering that gender equality cannot be said to have been realized even today, it seems that the "final decisive battle" of Fukuzawa and Keio University is not yet over.