1900年代、イギリスは日本の陸軍教育訓練制度をどうみていたか

─General Report on the Japanese System of Military Education and Training 1906の分析を中心として

抄録

The purpose of this study is to find out how the British Government evaluated modern Japanese army officer education through an analysis of the “General Report on the Japanese System of Military Education and Training 1906”. The General Report is a report on army education and training in Japan, prepared in 1906 after the Russo-Japanese War. This report remained a classified document of the British Government until 1972 and has not, to the best of my knowledge, been the subject of any research into the history of modern Japanese education or comparative studies of modern Japanese and British education. During the Meiji period, the type of person sought in Japan’s education policy was important. In Meiji era Japan, where the slogan was ‘wealthy nation, strong army’, it is not surprising that the character required by the military would also influence the character aimed for in Japanese general education. As you know, Japan was a latecomer to the modern world and used education as a ‘lever’ to achieve modernisation. In this sense, Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War in September 1905 demonstrated to Japan and to the rest of the world that Japan’s modernisation policy had succeeded in a short time. The British Government took note of the educational training in the Japanese Army as a factor in this success, and organised a survey in Japan in 1906. The General Report is unique in that it refers not only to army education and training at Japanese military academies and army infant schools, but also to general education, i.e. primary and secondary education. The General Report, prepared in 1906 after the Russo-Japanese War, summarised the British Government’s investigation into why Japan had won the Russo-Japanese War and why it had been able to triumph over the great power of Russia, focusing on the army officer education system. The British had clearly realised between 1899 and 1902 that the Second Boer War had ushered in a period of ‘Crisis of the British Empire’. It then began to explore whether this crisis of empire could be overcome through the power of education. The fact that Japan had defeated Russia was of great interest to the British, who wanted to overcome the crisis of empire through the power of education. It is against this background that the report was produced. It is worth noting that in 1906, Japanese education was attracting attention from Britain, which was an advanced country at the time. The following two points became clear from this study: (1) The British authorities were interested in the education at Japanese army elementary schools modelled on the German model. (2) The British authorities were interested in the education policy that had a consistent moral education as its core in the education at ordinary high schools and junior high schools that were connected to the army elementary schools to compensate for the wartime shortage of officers.