The European Imprint on Japan’s Commercial Schools in China, 1890–1945

ABSTRACT

This article revisits scholarship on the Tōa Dōbun Shoin, an innovative international business school operated by the Japanese in Shanghai from 1901 to 1945. After reviewing the school’s history, we carefully examine the institution’s course mix, language programming, product-studies focus, and research trips. We conclude that Japanese educators did not design the Tōa Dōbun Shoin curriculum all on their own in China, which has been the assumption of scholars since the end of the Second World War. Instead, architects of the institution amply borrowed from a flourishing commercial school system in late nineteenth-century Europe, showing particular interest in the curriculum at the Institut Supérieur de Commerce at Antwerp in Belgium. Both the European and Japanese business schools, it is argued, need to be re-examined in the context of the burgeoning global trade in which they operated.

KEYWORDS:

• Commercial education
• language education
• Japan
• China

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This study leaves the definition of “curriculum” loose to include all of the experiences planned by educators for students at Japan’s schools in China. Practically speaking, “curriculum” generally refers to the array of courses offered at institutions we discuss, including practicums and study trips.

2. Reynolds, “Chinese Area Studies.”

3. Ibid., 954.

4. Ibid.

5. See, for example, a typical treatment of the institution in Duus et al., Japanese Informal Empire in China.

6. For a helpful overview of Chinese-language research done on the Tōa Dōbun Shoin going back to the 1960s, see Zhou and Chen, “Dongya tongwen shuyan yanjiu.”

7. Huang, “Riben zai-Hua wenjiao huodong.”

8. Huang, “Riben zai-Hua diebao jigou.”

9. See Li, ed., Diaocha shougao congkan.

10. See Feng, ed. Diaocha shougao congkan xubian.

11. Li, “Congkan de chuban yu qi jiazhi.”

12. Yoshihisa Fujita, Nicchū ni kakeru.

13. See Ohtsuki, “Changes in the Pacifism of Akamatsu Kaname.” Ohtsuki notes that 40 professors, students and other affiliated individuals from Tokyo University of Commerce (successor institute of the Tokyo Higher Commercial School featured later) cooperated on research projects for the Japanese Army in East and Southeast Asia, beginning in 1943.

14. The concept of “area studies” was first articulated by the American armed services in the Foreign Area and Language Program of April 1943. It proposed that language education offered in tandem with content related to history, culture, politics, geography, etc. of the “area” was much more effective than learning language in isolation from its context. See Matthew, Language and Area Studies.

15. Hooper and Graham, Commercial Education at Home and Abroad.

16. Koyūkai, Tōa dōbun shoin daigakushi.

17. Curious English readers interested in an overview of the institution should begin with Douglas Reynolds’s research in the 1980s, particularly Reynolds, “Chinese Area Studies in Prewar China.”

18. For a tidy English summary of the Kishida story, see Reynolds, “Before Imperialism.”

19. For a more cynical perspective on activities at the Hankow store, see Orbach, “The Military-Adventurous Complex.” Ample evidence suggests that the store was originally conceived as an intelligence-gathering operation.

20. Koyūkai, Tōa Dōbun Shoin daigakushi, 31.

21. Hitotsubashi Daigaku, “Hitotsubashi daigaku hyaku nijū nenshi.”

22. Layton, “Commercial Education,” 690.

23. Ibid., 692.

24. Hooper and Graham, Commercial Education at Home and Abroad.

25. Ibid., 10.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., 29.

28. Ibid., 691.

29. James, Education of Business Men in Europe, xvii.

30. Nishizawa, “Management Education in Pre-War Japan.”

31. Many authors reproduce the claim that the École Spéciale de Commerce et d’Industrie was Europe’s first commercial school and that it was established in 1819 in Paris by trader Vital Roux and economist Jean-Baptiste Say. Adrien Jean-Guy Passant points out that the first commercial school was probably a commercial school established in Lisbon in 1859, an institution that remained in operation for 85 years. Meanwhile, the founders of the ESCP Business School were not as illustrious as they have been made out to be. The actual founders were Germain Legret, a ruined septuagenarian who had already set up two unsuccessful commercial schools in Paris, which soon closed, and Amédée Brodart, a 30-year-old former soldier of Napoleon who became a merchant after having his leg amputated in the war against Spain in 1809. The author is grateful to Passant for this insight and other comments on the manuscript. For more on the topic, see Passant, À l’origine des écoles de commerce; Passant, “The Organizational Identity of Business Schools.”

32. Hooper and Graham, Commercial Education at Home and Abroad, 27.

33. Ibid., 52.

34. Kaplan, “European Management.”

35. Japanese scholars have published fine work in English on Japan’s adoption of the Antwerp commercial curriculum. For example, see Nishizawa, “The Making of Japan’s Business Elites”; Ohtsuki, “The Legacy of Belgium.”

36. A reviewer of this manuscript helpfully pointed out that while Japan’s commercial schools were enthusiastically adopting the practically oriented Antwerp educational model, higher commercial schools like the one in Otaru, Hokkaido also embraced empirical research on economics as practised in the United States. Obviously, it is a simplification to assume that the Japanese schools unreservedly adopted the European commercial school model or that they never embraced the academic study of commerce.

37. Kaplan, “European Management.”

38. Hooper and Graham, Commercial Education at Home and Abroad, 113–14.

39. Matsuoka and Yamaguchi, Nisshin Bōeki Kenkyūjo.

40. Curiously, this mix of Chinese and western language education had been tried in Shanghai by Japanese educators at least five years before the Nisshin Bōeki Kenkyūjo was set up. In 1884, the Tōyō Gakkan was established as a private school in Shanghai but closed in 1885, lacking support from the government and facing budgetary difficulties. This curriculum (in its conception) included an intriguing mix of law, commerce, language, history and economics and tackled topics related to China, Japan, France, Germany and Britain. It is hard to imagine that the school did not draw some inspiration from Europe’s higher commercial schools given that Japan was in the process of setting up a commercial school in Tokyo in 1884 modelled on the Antwerp model. Equally hard to imagine is Arao Sei being unaware of the experimental curriculum when the Nisshin Bōeki Kenkyūjo was established in 1890. For more on the curriculum, see Fujita, “Arao Sei to Nihon hatsu no bijinesu suku-ru.”

41. Beckmann, Vorbereitung zur Waarenkunde.

42. Iwashita, “Shōhingaku no dōkō.”

43. Reynolds, “Before Imperialism.”

44. Records indicated that Arao advocated for commercial activities at the store as a cover for intelligence activities, something mentioned in the present article. However, “product studies” fever in Europe, which had already spread to Japan by at least 1885, is a better explanation for the direction education at the store ultimately took.

45. Nisshin Bōeki Kenkyūjo, Shinkoku tsūshō sōran.

46. Inoue, Kyojin Arao Sei.

47. Koizumi and Tezuka, “Hitotsubashi Daigaku shōhin chinretsushitsu.”

48. Koyūkai, Tōa Dōbun Shoin daigakushi, 35.

49. Fujita and Yoshihisa, Nicchū ni kakeru.

50. Pietsch, “Many Rhodes: Travelling Scholarships.”

51. Layton, “Commercial Education,” 692.

52. Sugi, “Shūgaku ryokō hōkokusho.”

53. After van Stappen left Japan in 1885, graduates from the Institut Supérieur de Commerce in Antwerp were long employed in Tokyo Higher Commercial School: Arthur Marischal from 1886 to 1892, and then Edward Joseph Blockhuys from 1892 to 1930. Thanks to a reviewer for pointing this out. See Ohtsuki, “Legacy of Belgium.”

54. Koizumi and Tezuka, “Hitotsubashi Daigaku shōhin chinretsushitsu.”

55. Times, “Commercial Education in Japan.”

56. Oshima, “Ajia-Taiheiyō sennsō shita.”

57. Fujita, Nicchū ni kakeru.

58. Ishi’i, “Negishi Tadashi to Chūgoku no girudo no kenkyū.”

59. See Koyūkai, Tōa dōbun shoin daigakushi, 103, 119, 132 for samplings in the Tōa Dōbun Shoin history.

60. Hitotsubashi, Hitotsubashi daigaku hyaku nijū nenshi, 22.

61. Shibusawa, “Denki shiryō.”

62. Nishizawa, “Making of Japan’s Business Elites,” 210.

63. Fujita, Nicchū ni kakeru.

64. Nishizawa, “Business Studies and Management Education.”

65. Passant, “Educating Indigenous Commercial Executives.”

66. Ohtsuki, “Legacy of Belgium.”

67. Fujita, Nicchū ni kakeru.

68. Orbach, “The Military-Adventurous Complex.”