The Use of Visual Media for National Education in the Meiji Era: Focusing on the Changes in the Magic Lantern of “Moral Science”

Abstract

This paper clarifies the important role that visual media, especially Magic Lantern, played in “Moral Science” education in the early Meiji period. During the rapid modernization of Japan, Western studies, Shintoism, and Confucianism were engaged in a fierce battle for supremacy over the direction of national education. At that time, the Ministry of Education paid the most attention to the latest Magic Lantern brought over from the West as a tool for “enlightenment” in education, but its educational policy shifted from the Western Enlightenment to Confucianism. Tsurubuchi which was one of the first companies to start making Magic Lanterns under the orders of the Ministry of Education, became involved in Japanese moral education for the first time with the “Yogakukoyo” slides compiled by Motoda Nagazane at the order of Emperor Meiji. Now that a set of these slides has been newly discovered, I will examine the ideological background of the view of national education at the time in which they were produced.

In addition, moral education at that time was not only based on Western studies and Confucianism recommended by the government, but also on a mixture of various moral views that had continued since the Edo period. Based on actual historical materials, I will historically and empirically clarify the process by which the image of “morality” was diffused by Magic Lantern slides made by Utsushi-e artist Ikeda Toraku and Nishiki-kagee artist Terada Seishiro etc.