THE JAPANESE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

The aim of this paper is to consider how, through the medium of literacy and writing, boys constructed a public sphere in parallel with the move to the virtual perfection of the compulsory education system and the reorganization of regional communities in the latter part of the Meiji era. The process by which the boys constructed a commonality in terms of their contributions to the magazine has much to say to us about the characteristic methods in the modern period by which individuals were able to retain their own singular voices. The paper takes the most popular boys' magazine at this time, Shonen Sekai (The World of Boyhood), published by Hakubunkan, termed the "publishing kingdom" at the time. Through analyzing the contributions to the magazine, three points of view are revealed. Firstly, the unification of the spoken and written language proposed by the chief editor of the magazine, Sazanami Iwaya, created the conception of a simple and innocent "boy" around 1903. In addition, the editorial staff of the magazine revised the regulations for writings from contributors and demanded that the boys write in colloquial Japanese. As a result, the magazine clearly separated simple and innocent "boys" from anguished "youths", and sought its readers among those in the former category. Secondly, the magazine provided boys with a communication forum linking them to named third parties. However, this forum was abstract and homogeneous in terms of its spatial and temporal parameters. For this reason, while boys felt, as a result of being separated from their regional communities, a solitude they had never before experienced, they were able, by using the contributors' column, to generate in themselves the desire to write something to someone with a view to compensating for the solitude and enjoying fraternization and hence an exchange of emotions with that other person. In some cases, the boys were able to form through an exchange of letters a communication network of like minds. In this context, the unification of the written and spoken language constituted a suitable style because it enabled boys to imagine the voice of invisible others. This was the time when a systematic base for the exchange of correspondence through letters was formed as a result of the establishment of a national postal service. Thirdly, boys published small magazines created by their own efforts. It is noteworthy in this context that the magazines made by the boys themselves were published in manuscript, hectograph or mimeograph form, quite different from the printing type used in general magazines, and being handmade, took on a special coloring of their own. The production of magazines by boys formed a foundation for the small magazine culture which flourished from the latter part of the Taisho era and would later generate a large number of literary works.

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Since J. F. Herbart's definition, it has been recognized as self-evident that the methodological aspect of modern pedagogy owes much to psychology. However, this definition of psychology has to be grasped historically not as the refining process of educational methodology but as the consequence of the teleological development of Seele (soul/heart) in early modern pedagogy. With the aim of elucidating this logic, this paper sets out to clarify the position of Seele in philanthropism in which thought of Seelenlehre (the doctrine of the Seele) occupied pivotal position. Chapter 1 examines the educational thinking of J.H. Campe, since this is regarded as the most psychological within Philanthropism. Confronted as he was with sentimentalism influenced by the literature of the time, his Seelenlehre consisted of instructing children in concepts of faculty psychology from the stand-point of internalizing Seele within themselves. This instruction was inseparable from religious teaching insofar as it depended teleologically upon both the existence of God and the immortality of Seele. Chapter 2 focuses on C.G. Salzmann. While he had a shared view with Campe of the problematics, he developed a separate theory of instruction based on a different understanding of Seele. The task ahead of Salzmann was the task of the systematization of the instruction of sensibility on the basis of an understanding of Seele as revealed social relations. Above all, his idea of religious instruction was methodologized in an extremely psychological way with the aim of enhancing belief in revelation. It is from this point of view that Chapter 3 examines J.B. Basedow as the central figure of Philanthropism. His educational thinking shows most clearly the relationship between revelation and psychology in the educational thought of Philanthropism. In the case of Basedow, he became able to instruct children in revealed religion as a result of the incorporation of the teleology of revealed human relations in the world into his psychological categories. However, the choice he made provided the psychology that came after him with an incentive for self-development. In this way, in the educational thought of Philanthropism, which forms the nucleus of the thought of revealed social relations, their psychology straddled both the method and the content of education. Hence Seele was mind in the context of psychology as well as soul in the context of theology. However, for the various thinkers, each confronted with their own problematics, the position of Seele occupied a variety of positions, ranging from psychological methodologism to the metaphysical definition of social relations. It was not until the educational thought of the Enlightenment lost the ambiguity of Seele as its fundamental element that modern pedagogy had an opportunity to be formed. Since the gradual abolition of the metaphysical definition of social relations, pedagogy has been thoroughly methodologized psychologically by means of external teleology.

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