Terakoya and Learning in the Bakumatsu — The High Literacy the Common People Built
Many foreigners who visited Bakumatsu Japan are said to have been surprised that even common children could read and write. Behind this lay the terakoya, the schools for commoners that had spread across the land.
Contents
Schools for the common people
The terakoya were places where the children of towns and villages learned reading, writing, and the abacus. Separate from the domain schools meant for samurai, the children of merchants, artisans, and farmers gained the basic skills they needed for daily life.
The teachers were often the learned people of the area — monks, samurai, Shinto priests, doctors. Instruction is said to have been carefully tailored to each child according to age and progress.
What they learned
What the terakoya prized above all was reading, writing, and the abacus. The content centered on the practical — how to write a letter, how to read a contract — directly tied to commerce and daily life.
Manners and morals, the conduct proper to a person, were taught as well. They were places not only for the knowledge of learning but for acquiring the etiquette of getting on in the world.
A high literacy culture
Because such terakoya had spread throughout the country, literacy among the common people of the Bakumatsu is thought to have reached a level high even by the standards of the time worldwide.
That many people could read meant information traveled widely through broadsheets and books. Word of great events such as the arrival of the Black Ships reached people quickly.
A foundation for the modern age
When the Meiji era came, the government built a modern school system. Its relatively smooth spread is attributed in part to the fact that the habit of "learning" had already taken root among the common people through the terakoya.
Education quietly built up by nameless teachers was preparing the foundation of a modern nation. The terakoya are an emblem of the underlying strength that Bakumatsu Japan possessed.
The daily life and culture of the Bakumatsu are explored across Bakumatsu Culture.
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