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Abstract
This article examines stories of ideal subjects published by the Ministry of Education within three months of Japan's most devastating natural disaster, the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. The education materials, entitled Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, are a collection of stories of exemplary behaviour based on experiences of the earthquake and are imbued with moral values, such as loyalty to the Emperor and self-sacrifice. In this article I will demonstrate that widespread concerns about decaying moral values in Japanese society compelled the government to use these education materials in order to extol the moral values they considered necessary for creating ideal Japanese subjects.
Notes
1 This paper was originally presented at the Workshop on Modern Japanese History (Fourth Murdoch University Japanese Studies Symposium), Perth, 25–27 November 2003.
2 Tōkyō hyakunenshi henshū iinkai, Tōkyō hyakunenshi, Vol. 4, 1113–1118.
3 Monbushō futsū gakumukyoku, Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō.
4 Borland, ‘Capitalising on catastrophe’. My PhD thesis explores the larger issues of how the state used this earthquake to further strengthen national ideology.
5 The best-known studies are Seidensticker, Low City, High City; and Busch, Two Minutes to Noon. These, however, are more narrative in style and provide little scholarly analysis of the earthquake.
6 For example, Hastings, Neighborhood and Nation in Tokyo, 1905–1937; Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, 1910–1923; Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan; Humphreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword; Tipton, ‘The café: contested space of modernity in interwar Japan’.
7 Fujino, Tōkyō-to no tanjō, 131–132. A more detailed description of the rumours can be found in Kang and Kum, Kantō daishinsai to Chōsenjin, Vol. 6, 39–41.
8 See Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, Chapter 6; also Allen, ‘The price of identity’.
9 9 Pyle, ‘The technology of Japanese nationalism’.
10 Harootunian, ‘Introduction: a sense of an ending and the problem of Taisho’; Oka, ‘Generational conflict after the Russo-Japanese War’; Garon, Molding Japanese Minds.
11 ‘Education Minister's instructions’ issued by Okano Keijirō, 9 September 1923, in Bureau of Social Affairs, Home Office, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 559–560.
12 Sakurai, ‘Saigaichi kotoni Tōkyōshi no kyōiku o dō subeki ka’, 399.
13 Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 349.
14 Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 128.
15 Tsukahara, ‘Kantō no shinsai to kyōikujō no higai’, 360.
16 Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 190.
17 Ishino, ‘Barakku kōsha no biteki shisetsu’, 26–28.
18 Kyōju shiryō: Kantō daishinsaishi, 225–226.
19 Kyōju shiryō: Kantō daishinsaishi, 225–226.
20 Tōkyōshi (ed.), Fukkō to jidō mondai.
21 Tōkyōshi, Fukkō to jidō mondai, 53–54.
22 Tōkyōshi, Fukkō to jidō mondai, 55.
23 Tōkyōshi, Fukkō to jidō mondai, 56.
24 Tomoeda, ‘Shinsai to dōtokuteki fukkō’, 60.
25 Tomoeda, ‘Shinsai to dōtokuteki fukkō’, 60.
26 Tomoeda, ‘Shinsai to dōtokuteki fukkō’, 61.
28 Kyōju shiryō, 235–237.
27 Kyōju shiryō, 235–237.
29 Gotō Shinpei monjo, microfilm reel no. 56, 21–11. I am grateful to Dr Charles Schencking for providing me with a copy of these materials.
31 Contained in A General Survey of Education in Japan, 1.
30 Nihon tōkei kyōkai, Nihon chōki tōkei sōran, Vol. 5, 212.
32 Fridell, ‘Government ethics in late Meiji Japan’, 825; Caiger, ‘The aims and content of school courses in Japanese history, 1872–1945’, 60.
33 See Fridell, ‘Government ethics in late Meiji Japan’, 825; Wray, ‘A study in contrasts’, 70; also ‘Kokuteiki Monbushō chosaku kyōkasho shiyō nendo ikken 1904–1945’ (‘Period of use for national Ministry of Education textbooks according to year, 1904–1945’), table obtained from the National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan, Tokyo.
34 Karasawa, ‘Changes in Japanese education as revealed in textbooks’, 365–383.
35 Karasawa, ‘Changes in Japanese education as revealed in textbooks’, 378.
36 Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vol. 2, 1.
37 Monbushō futsū gakumukyoku, Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vols 1–3.
38 ‘The voice of the Imperial Portrait’, in Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vol. 3, 7–9.
39 A General Survey of Education in Japan, 1.
40 Large, Emperor Hirohito and Shōwa Japan, 11, 27.
41 I am grateful to Dr Gregory Clancey for sharing details concerning imperial activities after the 1891 Nōbi earthquake following his presentation at the International Convention of Asia Scholars in Singapore, 20 August 2003. The title of his presentation was ‘Modernity and catastrophe: the Meiji earthquake’.
42 ‘The people who saved Shin Ōhashi Bridge’, in Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vol. 2, 23–26.
43 Tōkyō hyakunenshi henshū iinkai, Tōkyō hyakunenshi, Vol. 4, 1118.
44 Mark Metzler points out that government officials attempted to discourage extravagant spending in the 1920s, in Metzler, ‘Woman's place in Japan's Great Depression’, 315–352. Sheldon Garon has also documented the efforts of Finance and Home Ministry officials to encourage saving in Japan in the same period, in Garon, ‘Saving for “my own good and the good of the nation” ’.
45 ‘A noble victim’, in Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vol. 2, 39–41.
46 ‘Life is more important than a notebook’, in Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, Vol. 2, 68–69.
47 Harootunian, ‘Introduction: a sense of an ending and the problem of Taishō’, 15.