Makeshift Schools and Education in the Ruins of Tokyo, 1923

Abstract

A range of issues confronted government officials in the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake, but almost immediately they began efforts to resume education. This article examines how educators overcame numerous challenges in order to recommence primary school education and return children to makeshift classrooms in the ruins of Tokyo. Education was viewed as an important means to help restore a sense of normality in the lives of displaced school children at this time of extraordinary upheaval. Educators were concerned not only with the material reconstruction and recovery of schools, but also the physical and mental recovery of children.

Notes

¹Kawakami Yoshino was a third grade student attending Kiyoshima Primary School in Asakusa ward. This poem, titled ‘Yaketa Tōkyō’[Burnt-out Tokyo] was published in a collection of essays written by children who survived the earthquake and fires, in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 353.

²Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 47–49. This figure of 117 primary schools includes 111 jinjō shōgakkō (normal primary schools) and 16 kōtō shōgakkō (higher primary schools). A total of 563 primary schools were destroyed throughout the Kantō region, including: 155 in greater Tokyo, 229 in Kanagawa prefecture, 74 in Chiba prefecture, 70 in Saitama prefecture, 22 in Shizuoka prefecture and 13 in Yamagata prefecture. See Tsukahara, ‘Kantō no shinsai to kyōikujō no higai’, 358.

³Lincicome, Principle, Praxis, and the Politics of Educational Reform in Meiji Japan; Marshall, Learning to be Modern; Wray, ‘A Study in Contrasts’.

⁴For recent studies which examine the political and social use of the Great Kantō Earthquake, see Schencking, ‘The Great Kantō Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan’; Schencking, ‘The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the Japanese Nation’; Borland, ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe: Reinvigorating the Japanese State with Moral Values through Education following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake’; Schencking, ‘Catastrophe, Opportunism, Contestation’; Borland, ‘Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923’.

⁵Balaban, ‘Psychological Assessment of Children in Disasters and Emergencies’; Saylor, Children and Disasters; Neuner et al., ‘Post-tsunami Stress’.

⁶‘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.

⁷Monbushō, Nihon teikoku Monbushō nenpō, 35.

⁸Bureau of Social Affairs, Home Office, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 559–560.

⁹Masuko and Sakai, Taru o tsukue toshite, xii.

¹⁰Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 155–158.

¹¹Ibid., 158–159.

¹²Ibid., 127–128.

¹³Ibid., 130. For an itemised list of donated materials ranging from pencils and paper to socks and umbrellas, see 192–195.

¹⁴Ibid., 127–128.

¹⁵Ibid., 166–167. For a list of standard items supplied in the barracks schools, see 179–180.

¹⁶Tōkyōshi Ogawa jinjō shōgakkō, Fukkō kōsha rakusei kinen, 2.

¹⁷Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 163–164.

¹⁸Masuko and Sakai, Taru o tsukue toshite.

¹⁹Ibid., 41.

²⁰Shiina, ‘Shinsaiji ni arawareta shakaisō’, 318.

²¹Ibid., 318–319.

²²Masuko and Sakai, Taru o tsukue toshite, 44.

²³Ibid., 45–47.

²⁴Ibid., 48.

²⁵Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vols. 1–7.

²⁶Furuyama Sada, ‘Ame’[Rain], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 8–9.

²⁷Ino Chōko, ‘Watashi domo no gakkō’[Our School], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 398.

²⁸Kosuge, ‘Shinsaichi no kyōiku o ika ni subeki ka’, 450. For other examples of delinquent behaviour, see Borland, ‘Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923’, 23–24.

²⁹David Ambaras examines the historical roots of concerns about juvenile delinquency as a social problem in Japan, in Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan.

³⁰Masuko and Sakai, Taru o tsukue toshite, 62–66.

³¹Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 358–386.

³²See Borland, ‘Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects’; Borland, ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe’.

³³Hara, ‘Risai gakkō kara’, 54.

³⁴Ibid.

³⁵Sano Sumiko, ‘Yakeato no gakkō’[Our School in the Ruins], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 379.

³⁶Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 166–167. For information on the efforts of local artists to decorate barracks buildings, see Weisenfeld, ‘Designing after Disaster’, 229–246.

³⁷Machida Takeko, ‘Atarashii kyōshitsu’[My New Classroom], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 417–418.

³⁸Takatsu Shin'ichi, ‘Boku no ichinichi’, in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 60–61.

³⁹Kondō Kameko, ‘Inaka no tomo e’[To my Friends in the Country], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 88–89.

⁴⁰Fukushima Aiko, ‘Manto’[My Cloak], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 332–333.

⁴¹Tanabe Kōzō, ‘Shinsaigo no Tōkyō’[Tokyo after the Earthquake], in Tōkyō shiyakusho, Shinsai kinen bunshū, vol. 3, 255.

⁴²Tōkyōshi, Tōkyōshi kyōiku fukkōshi, 325–326.

⁴³Watanabe, ‘Shōgakkō no kenchiku fukkō ni tsuite’, 223.

⁴⁴Ibid.

⁴⁵The reconstruction of Tokyo's primary schools is explored in greater detail in my PhD thesis. See Borland, ‘Rebuilding Schools and Society after the Great Kantō Earthquake, 1923–1930’.