ABSTRACT
For him as a professional recorder of the community, civilian life at the start of a new era seemed to be characterized by violence, exploitation, egoism and indifference. It was an unsatisfactory report card on four decades of nation building, compulsory national schooling, and military service. Social commentators naturally agreed that the future of Japan lay in the hands
of educated youth; they were to be the material producers and the military protectors of the nation. However, the dominant theme of public opinion since at least 1905 was that Japan’s teenaged males were soft, self-centred and, in their exaggerated concern over their appearance, disturbingly effeminate. Indeed, they were generally regarded as precisely the kind of modern materialists criticized by the Takayama Shimpo-. In January 1913, the Education Ministry again intervened in another attempt to toughen the minds and bodies of male pupils. This involved adopting the army infantry manual as the new textbook for lessons in physical education and changing the name in the curriculum from ‘military-style exercises’ to ‘military drill’. Individual educators also called on the public to do more to steel the character of children. For example, Kishibe Fukuo (whom we encountered during the RussoJapanese war telling his pupils that the enemy had already invaded Japan and it was now up to them to march off and fight) encouraged readers of Women’s World (Fujin Sekai) in October 1914 to teach martial songs at home as a form of spiritual education. This was his antidote to the mass of recent popular songs which he condemned as ‘all weak and girlish’ (yowayowashii josei-teki mono bakari). He also urged mothers to buy toy swords and bugles for their sons.2 What this suggests, of course, is that Japanese songwriters and mothers up to World War I did not view themselves as duty bound to uphold military values. It also suggests that the emphasis on these values in schools and song in the previous two decades of war and peace had not produced a generation of militarized young men. For local educators, the propagation of military ideals was merely one task
among many. This can be seen in a general meeting of rural teachers and
officials at Yoshiki county, north of Takayama, in January 1914. The agenda began with ways to commemorate the enthronement of the new emperor, and then moved on to the educational budget and school projects for 1914. Later, there was discussion about taking groups of children mountain climbing (an increasingly popular form of youth exercise from this time). Next, there was consideration of various topics, including the problem of rabid dogs, followed by the teaching of military ideas.3 Clearly, the immediate public health fear of rabid dogs took, perhaps temporary, precedence over lessons in warrior values. One historian of education in Gifu prefecture, Tobe Ho-bun, adds that, at a separate meeting of Gifu primary school teachers in June 1914, it was agreed to use teaching materials both with more local rather than national emphasis, and which would stimulate individual rather than group learning.4
This shows that schools were ready to teach other values alongside those of the military. Thus, while there was an increasing militarization of some aspects of school life, most notably in physical training, it would be misleading to describe provincial schools in Japan as the cradles of militarism. As we saw earlier, one of the bodies set up to assist with the moral and
spiritual education of male youth was the reservist association. Early in 1910, before the army ministry merged them into a national organization, a local assessment of their general success or failure in Gifu was given in a new journal called Citadel (Kanjo-), published by the Gifu-ken Shifu-kai or Gifu Prefectural Society for Samurai Ways. The Shifu-kai was created in about 1909 and based in Gifu city. Along with the existing Butokukai or Military Virtue Society, plus the many swordsmanship clubs (sho-bukai) around the prefecture, it promoted traditional military ideals and practices among local men. There was, however, some crossover between these groups. For example, there were many members of the O
