Since Toju's Shingaku (Toju's Philophy) spread to Kitakata district in Aizu territory, it reached for the first its full growth as the popularized educational philosophy. Though the leaders there were farmers themselves, they governed their village as headman, district-headman, rich farmer, etc., and instilled their philosophy into the general farmers as the mental support by which the people could conduct themselves, set their families in satisfactory conditions, and make their village prosperous. As, among those who had the same customs and cultivated together, there were one who taught and one who was taught, educational activities on such relation were different from so-called clan-educotion, that is educational activities compelled by clan politics, in the respect that they awaked “sympathy” from learners in receiving education.
Referring to the guidance conciousness and the guidance method of leaders in above-mentioned case, in this treatise I analysed the problem from the standpoint of teachers. In this educational philosophy in Aizu territory which prospered from the 17 th century to the middle of 19 th, we may find out an ideal image of a teacher unparalleled in Japanese history of education.

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The definion of a teacher and his proper task is not one and the same in all places and in all times; different societies in different ages demand different definitions. As the human society grows increasingly civilized, the structure of society and the set of values underlying it accordingly undergo certain changes, and these changes in turn ask for the modification of the idea about the nature and significance of a teacher's work. What has brought about the successive evolutions of educational ideals from the Ancient times, through the Middle Ages, to the modern times, is after all nothing but the development of human civilization in general. In short, the fundamental factor determining a particular type of the conception of a teacher's work is the system of values presupposed in a particular society.
Now what should be our own definition of a teacher and his work in this democratic society? Some answer that a teacher is a ladourer in the same sense that a factory-worker is one. Some think that he is a specialist, an expert in the technique of education. According to others he is simply an employee, and there is even such people as assert that he is a craftmen. Perhaps we have to say as the true definition that his work is a highly specialized work that is expected to fulfill a widely social and cultural function. In this sense a teacher's profession belongs to the same category as those of a lawyer or a doctor. Besides, his task is very unique to the extent that it can never substituted by any other profession.
The purpose of this article is to show the theoretical bases of this uniqueness of a teacher's work and to demonstrate the position he occupies and the duty he is to fulfill in this democratic society of ours.

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Our age may be said to be eminently paradoxical. There has been no age when humanistic values are so noisily advocated and at the same time so grievously neglected. No age has seen the ideal of harmonious perfection of individual personality so vigorously upheld and at the same time so calmly ignored. Various causes of this paradoxical situation may be enumerated, but the following three are to be listed as the most significant ones : 1. the emptiness of spiritual life, the loss of some definite and positive system of values of the Japanese people since the end of the war, 2. dehumanizing effects of mechanistic mass-society which is now the reality in modern Japan, and 3. the false conception of humanity inherent in pragmatism on the one hand and Marxism on the other, which exercised predominant influence upon the intellectual climate of the post-war Japan, including the educational circle. Especially noteworthy is the third factor, namely the idea of man proposed by pragmatism and Marxism, which, in spite of their professedly humanitarian assertions, in effect aggravated the dehumanizing tendency,
The conclusion propounded after these considerations is that an existentialistic view of man firmly based upon Christian conception of human nature is the idea of humanity most needed in this 'paradoxical' age of ours.

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Thinking' is obviously essential and indispensable to education. A great many schools in the nation put forward as their principal aim in education the training of the pupils to think for themselves actively and independently. But in fact neither the philosophical basis nor the systematic method of the training of this sort is, it must be admitted, not necessarily clearly conceived among the teachers. It is thus up to us the students of pedagogical theories to provide them with such a basis as well as practical directions.
For the proper understanding of the problem first of all is it necessary to make an historical survey of the question as it has been treated in conventional logic or psychology. Among the divergent interpretations proposed by various scholars, the author finds Dewey's theory of 'reflective thinking' most revealing and helpful; particularly important is his book How to Think, in which he systematically propounds the method of the training of this sort in pedagogical terms, making at the same full use of the results of psychological analysis of the process of 'thinking'. The importance of the theory has been justly recognized by subsequent scholars, and the discussion, development and readjustment of his theory have been continued ever since.
The conclusion deducible from all these considerations may be summarized in one word that the training in 'thinking' must always be done in direct contact with real, concrete objects the pupils find around themselves. But at the same time it must not be overlooked that such objects can only be effectively utilized in classrooms when they are handled by teachers under some kind of theorectical guidance or principle. The significance of Dewey's theory lies in the fact that he for the first time successfully combined these two aspects of the problem. We have to follow his example and endeavour to find out our own synthesis in accordance to our own circumstances which are naturally different from his.

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