History of Japanese Education Translation Series

History of Japanese Education, Volume 1 (1999)

Umihara Tōru, “Yoshida Shōin and Shōka Sonjuku: The True Spirit of Education”
Translated by Charles Andrews

Volume 1 is an original article by Kyoto University Professor Emeritus Umihara Tōru titled “Yoshida Shōin and Shōka Sonjuku: The True Spirit of Education,” translated by Indiana University graduate student Charles Andrews. In this article Professor Umihara analyzes the well-known activist's views on education.

History of Japanese Education, Volume 2 (2000)

Aizawa Seishisai, “Preprandial Chat”
Translated by Todd Munson

Volume 2 is a translation of late Tokugawa scholar Aizawa Seishisai's essay, “Taishoku kanwa,” translated as "Preprandial Chat" by Todd Munson, also an Indiana University graduate student. Originally written in 1841, this essay was an attempt to make some of Aizawa's more difficult concepts comprehensible to beginning students and the unlettered. 

History of Japanese Education, Volume 3 (2008)

"New Materials for the Study of Literacy in History: Report of the Indiana Conference on Literacy in Japanese History”

Volume 3, the proceedings of a 2006 international conference on literacy in Japan, consists of essays by seven of Japan's most notable scholars of educational history who focus on issues related to the history of literacy.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Richard Rubinger)
• Written Characters in Ancient Japan: The Use of Kanji for National Unification (Suzuki Rie)
• The Development of Buddhism and Literacy in Japan (Ohto Yasuhiro)
• The Ability to Sign by Farmers of the Ōmi Region from the Fourteenth to the Early Seventeenth Century (Umemura Kayo)
• The Calculation of Literacy Rates Using Ninbetsuchō with a Focus on Kaō (Kimura Masanobu)
• Ōraimono in Women's Literacy and Education in the Edo Period (Amano Haruko)
• How Children Learned to Read and Write in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan (Ohta Motoko)
• Report on Surveys of Literacy Rates in Meiji Japan (Yakuwa Tomohiro)