Abstract
In 1873, the second year after the start of the modern elementary school system (gakusei) in Japan, the Ministry of Education published several textbooks, among which Chiri-Shoho was one. It was believed that the original text of Chiri-Shoho was Cornell's geography textbooks that had been used widely in the USA.
There have been two views of the original text held by different scholars. One argued that Cornell's Primary Geography was used as the source book and Cornell's High-School Geography was referred to for supplements. The other contended that Cornell's First Steps in Geography was the original text. Neither of those views was based on minute verification.
This paper aims to ascertain the original text of Chiri-Shoho. There were six Cornell geography textbooks in print when Chiri-Shoho was published. In addition to the three mentioned above, they were Cornell's Intermediate Geography, Cornell's Grammar-School Geography and Cornell's Physical Geography. All six books are candidates for the original text. This paper compares the text of Chiri-Shoho to the six Cornell geography textbooks sentence by sentence and illustration by illustration.
As a result, the author concludes that the original text of Chiri-Shoho was Cornell's Primary Geography, written for elementary school students. However, there are several sentences and illustrations in Chiri-Shoho not found in Cornell's Primary Geography. Those are mostly from Cornell's First Steps in Geography, Cornell's Intermediate Geography, and Cornell's Grammar-School Geography.
Cornell's First Steps in Geography is an introductory textbook and precedes Cornell's Primary Geography. Chiri-Shoho uses it for easier or supplementary explanations.
Cornell's Intermediate Geography and Cornell's Grammar-School Geography are textbooks for students who completed Cornell's Primary Geography. Chiri-Shoho adopts some topics from these two textbooks which Cornell's Primary Geography does not teach.
A few sentences and illustrations in Chiri-Shoho cannot be found in any of the Cornell geography textbooks. Interestingly, those are all related to shipping and navigation. Also Chiri-Shoho changes or rewrites some contents of the Cornell geography textbooks based on the Japanese context.
