The study aims to clarify a fact of Tomio Sakurai's instruction of reading music for lower grades in Egota elementary school.

  He recognized the necessity and importance of the instruction of reading music in lower grades. And therefore he devised various original teaching materials and used it for his class. He made much of teaching musical a scale in his instruction of reading music for lower graders. He devised the following teaching materials in sequence for lower graders to understand a musical scale : “Iroonpu (color notes), Irokotoba (color words)”, in which he connected each syllable of a scale to the color names, “Chawannoonngaku (the music of bowls)”, performing a scale using bowls, “Ehu (picture notes)”, and so on.

  He was not a music specialist, but a classroom teacher. This led him to produce his original teaching devices. He made much of “life”, “play”, “interest” of the child. He tried to connect children's life with learning of music reading. He let his pupils memorize syllable names of a scale, and understand the pitch difference between each note through a sense, however this was limited.

  The aim of this paper is to elucidate the music education at Kyoto Prefectural Girls' School and Kyoto Prefectural Girls' High School in the Meiji 10s-20s before the formation of a music course. Research is based on the historical materials in Kyoto.

  At Kyoto Prefectural Girls' School, music education through sōkyoku using Shōka, the books of new lyrics set to jiuta familiar to people there, began in 1879. From 1882 to the next year, teachers at this school learned music at Ongaku-Torishirabe-Gakari. Then, from 1884, the ‘shōka-denshū’ method was started at the school. However, the school moved a part of school teachers training to the teacher's college in 1886. After the school renamed Kyoto Prefectural Girls' High School, sōkyoku, an optional subject, and a special training course of music containing vocal music and instrumental music were based at the school. At this girls' high school, students were able to elect to learn both Japanese music and Western music from the Meiji 20s.