One of the main elements which have prevented us from studying Japanese students abroad in detail during Meiji Era may be the difficulties in distinguishing the facts from pageant in their biographies and autobiographies.
For instance, Kentaro Kaneko, who studied in the United States from 1872 to 1878, has written two autobiographies. By reading them we find that Kaneko's academic background is very unique : He did not attend a private academy before entering Harvard Law School, which was very unusual then. Instead, Kaneko pursued public education. Kaneko's autobiographies or letters do not give us any reason for his choice.
Kaneko's autobiographies tell us that Ryoichi Inoue had a great influence on Kaneko. Inoue was from Fukuoka, Kaneko's hometown and he attended Harvard Law School from 1872 and 1874, when Kaneko was there. Inoue mentions in one of his writings why he preferred public education to private one. At that time Harvard Law School required no entrance examinations. There was no reason to attend an expensive private academy as long as public education could also lead him to Harvard. We can easily assume that Inoue advised Kaneko not to go to a private academy.
In Meiji Era, what seemed most helpful was the advice from other students who had already attended schools in the United States.
Though Kaneko depended much on Inoue in various ways, in Kaneko's biography Inoue is given no importance. Kaneko's biographical materials may mislead us into overestimating him. Unfortunately we fall into the same problem when we study heroes in Meiji, who tend to stimulate our patriotism. Therefore, critical reading of biographical materials must be the first priority.

抄録全体を表示

In 1886 a new school, Seisei-Gakkan, was founded in Sakaide, Kagawa Prefecture by Katsutaro Kamada and others. The aim of the school was to provide middle-school level education to the children from primary schools, who had been deprived of the chance to study at that level of education due to the Promulgation of Middle School Order in 1886.
The school is said to have given a general education with an emphasis on using English-language materials, although the curriculum is no longer accessible, nor is the list of the textbooks used in the school. We can, however, guess which textbooks were used through the Regulations of Hanyo English Club, which had been established a few months before Seisei-Gakkan. It is probable that Seisei-Gakkan staff made reference to the regulations of the club when they designed the school's curriculum, since one of the founders of the club joined the teaching staff of Seisei-Gakkan.
The school closed in 1893. During the seven-year operation they invited from the metropolitan area six headmasters, among whom we can identify the name of Sentaro Nishida, who later moved to Matsue Middle School in Shimane and became a reliable colleague of Lafcadio Hearn. In Nishida's diaries we can find how warmly he was welcomed to the school.
Seisei-Gakkan thus successfully played the role of a substitute public middle school until the establishment of the two prefectural middle schools in Takamatsu and Marugame in 1893.

抄録全体を表示

Unlike the Jusuits missionaries who succeeded in gaining several converts in the Chinese ruling class, the Protestant missionaries had to compile their own dictionaries right at the start of evangelization, in order to keep them in contact with the lower classes.
This paper is an attempt to search for the origin of the Chinese words contained in the following dictionaries :
An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect (1844)
A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1874)

抄録全体を表示

In the preface of Dictionnaire Francais-Anglais-Japonais (DFAJ) by Mermet de Cachon, in 1866, Léon Pagès, who was in charge of its Japanese translation, mentioned the precedent work of lexicography including A Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese Language (PDEJ) by 'japonais Hori Tatsnokay' (sic), in 1862.
Mermet de Cachon played an important role as an interpreter at the time of the conclusion of the Commercial Treaty between France and Japan.Since he had made up his mind to compile a French-Japanese dictionary, when PDEJ was published in 1862, he must have secured a copy in Edo. It is highly probable that after he went back to France he handed the book to Léon Pagès, a Japanologist, so that Pagès could translate the English part of DFAJ into Japanese referring PDEJ.
By making a comparison between DFAJ and PDEJ, the writer explicitly points out that 33.8 % of the translations in DFAJ are quite the same as those of PDEJ. In consequence, the comparative study reveals the fact that PDEJ had influence not only on English and Chinese Dictionary by W. Lobscheid published in Hongkong, but also on DFAJ by Mermet de Cachon published in Paris.
The writer also attempted to decipher the handwriting in Roman letters in French style on every page and that in French on the page of Explanations of abbreviations found in a copy of PDEJ which is currently in the possession of Tenri Central Library.
This report is based on the paper read by the writer at the regular monthly meeting on Dec. 2, 2000.

抄録全体を表示