Taxes and School Funding
The government’s finances were far too fragile in its early years to support such a radical program of education reform on its own. Therefore, it needed tax dollars from the Japanese people, the majority of whom were peasants, to finance this expenditure. From the Meiji Restoration until 1870, eighty percent of all Japanese reforms were financed through a land tax on the Japanese people, and school funding was no different when the movement was institutionalized by the Fundamental Code. Schools were funded not only through the land tax but through extraneous school fees. In order to assess these fees, though, the government was dependent upon a sizeable reported harvest to create a taxable base, and antagonizing farmers with new taxes and compulsory education laws was not helping to create a base of willing taxpayers.[1] Indeed, education funding sources in 1873 included 88 percent from peasant taxes. That same year, education-based taxes amounted to two yen twenty-nine sen per family, or just under ten percent of yearly income.[2] Peasants had long been accustomed to the idea of paying for schooling at the terakoya, but only those who sent their children to school had to pay; now taxes were assessed on everyone. The Meiji government was dedicated to a system of public education that was dictated by Tokyo, but the predominant funding sources of local peasants created a contradiction that led to numerous instances of anger-induced revolt.[3]
[1] Duke, 164.
[2] Michio, 57-58.
[3] Brian Platt, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 193-194.
[1] Duke, 164.
[2] Michio, 57-58.
[3] Brian Platt, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 193-194.