Textbooks and Standardization
The use of military-style teacher training was complemented by the introduction of new patriotic ethics texts in Japanese classrooms. They reinforced the old Confucian ideals, supported by conservatives such as Motoda Eifu and Motoda Nagazene, of benevolence, sincerity, filial piety, friendship, and modesty, among others. This was on the orders of Mori, who believed that citizens ought to “understand their duties as Japanese subjects” and “conduct themselves in an ethical fashion.”[1] Textbooks, in addition, portrayed Japan as a vast, interconnected hierarchy that extended from the emperor down to the poorest peasants, with unlimited obligation on the part of every Japanese to he who is directly above him.[2] The government also wished to prevent any sort of political dissent that had given birth to the riots of the 1870s. To this end, as early as 1881 the Ministry of Education issued a list of textbooks it considered to be satisfactory, and by five years later every book used in a public school required Ministry approval. By 1903, every elementary school was required to adopt Ministry-distributed textbooks.[3] That meant that no matter where a student was in Japan, he or she would be learning the same patriotic narrative, and incubating in the same nationalist sentiment.
[1] McClain, Japan, 264.
[2] Duus, Modern Japan, 128.
[3] McClain, Japan, 264.
[1] McClain, Japan, 264.
[2] Duus, Modern Japan, 128.
[3] McClain, Japan, 264.