Bansho Shirabesho and Japan’s road to a modern nation-state: A historical survey
List of Authors
  • Mohamad Firdaus Mansor Majdin

Keyword
  • Bansho Shirabesho, Meiji, Tokugawa, modernization

Abstract
  • This paper argues that the establishment of government-sponsored and private schools during the Meiji era that specifically embraced Western learning into its curriculum and syllabus were considered to have played an important role in leading Japan to become a modern nation-state. In fact, the Meiji leaders had given a strong emphasis on education in the country as it will serve as a long-lasting platform through which reforms and progress could be translated on one hand and to prepare the young Japanese for a new future that was envisioned by the Meiji Government on the other. Such an example was Bansho Shirabesho which came into being at the time of the later years of the Tokugawa administration and it primarily focused on western learning. It was discontinued for a while following the Meiji Ishin in 1868, nonetheless, it was reopened in the following year to become what is known today as Tokyo University in the 1870s. It rose to prominence since the new Meiji Government took the country’s leadership in 1868. Using a method of content analysis, the study examines a wide range of published scholarly works and relevant archival documents on the subject matter under discussion. In the end, the study suggests that the creation of such a westernized institution that later became the predecessor of the University of Tokyo became an indispensable tool for the Meiji Government to achieve its mission.

Reference
  • 1. Abosch, David. (1964). Kato Hiroyuki and the introduction of German political thought in modern Japan: 1868-1883 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley. 2. Beasley, W. G. (1995). Japan encounters the barbarian: Japanese travellers in America and Europe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 3. Beasley, W. G. (1973). The Meiji restoration. London: Oxford Univ. Press. 4. Beasley, W. G. (1963). The modern history of Japan. Tokyo: Charles E. Turtle. 5. Blusse, Leonard., Remmelink, Willem., and Smits, Ivo. (2000). (Ed.). Bridging the divide: 400 years The Netherlands-Japan. Leiden: Hotei Publishing. 6. Brown, Alexander D. (2005). Meiji Japan: A unique technological experience. Student Economic Review, 19, 71-83. 7. Burks, A. W. (1985). The modernizers: Overseas students, foreign employees, and Meiji Japan. Boulder: Westview Press. 8. Cullen, L. M. (2003). A history of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and external worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 9. Goodman, Grant K. (2000). Japan and the Dutch: 1640-1853. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. 10. Dore, R. P. (1965). Education in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley: University of California. 11. Duke, Benjamin. (2009). The history of modern Japanese education: Constructing the national school system, 1872-1890. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 12. Futami, Goshi. (1979). Bansho Shirabesho no seiritsu shijo (Documents related to the founding of the Bansho Shirabesho). Journal for the Study of Moral Culture, 10, 15-56. 13. Hara, Heizo, (1992). (Ed.). Bansho yogakushi no kenkyu. Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Oraisha. 14. Hoare, J. E. (1994). Japan's treaty ports and foreign settlements: The uninvited guests 1858- 1899. Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library. 15. Hommes, J. Mitchell. (2004). The Bansho Shirabesho: A transitional institution in bakumatsu Japan (Unpublished Masters’ thesis). University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 16. Japanese Department of Education. (1876). Outline history of Japanese education prepared for the Philadelphia international exhibition 1876. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 17. Jansen, Marius B. (1957). New materials for the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Japan. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 20(3/4), 567-97. 18. Jansen, M. B. (1980). Japan and its world: Two centuries of change. Princeton University Press. 19. Jansen, Marius B. (1984). Rangaku and westernization. Modern Asian Studies, 18(4), 541-553. 20. Jansen, M. B. (2002). The making of Modern Japan. California: Harvard University Press. 21. Jansen, M. B., & Rozman, G. (2014). Japan in transition, from Tokugawa to Meiji. Princeton University Press. 22. Jansen, B. Marius. (1983). The Meiji modernizers. In Clark L. Beck & Ardath W. Burks (Eds.), Aspects of Meiji modernisation: The Japan helpers and the helped (pp. 11-39). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 23. Japan International Cooperation Agency (2022). Overview of the history of Japan’s education. Retrieved from https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/IFIC_and_JBICI-Studies/english/ publications/reports/study/topical/educational/pdf/educational_01.pdf 24. Jiro, Numata. (1964). The introduction of Dutch language. Monumenta Nipponica, 19(3/4), 243-253. 25. Jiro, Numata. (1964). Japan and Western culture. Tokyo: International Society for Educational Information. 26. Jiro, Numata. (1990). Western learning. Leiden, Netherlands: Netherlands-Japan Association. 27. Jones, H. J. (1980). Live machines: Hired foreigners and Meiji Japan. Paul Norbury Publications. 28. Kikuchi, Baron Dairoku. (1909). Japanese education: Lectures delivered in the university of London. London: John Murray. 29. Kosaka, Masaaki. (1958). Japanese culture in the Meiji era (Vol. 8). (David Abosch, Trans.). Tokyo: The Tokyo Bunko. Reprint, 1969. 30. Liu, Jia (2019). On the education reform of the Meiji Japan. International Journal of New Developments in Engineering and Society, 3(4), 21-27. 31. Maki, John M. (1983). The Japan helpers. In Clark L. Beck and Ardath W. Burks (Eds.), Aspects of Meiji modernisation: The Japan helpers and the helped (pp. 21-39). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 32. McMullen, James. (2010). Confucianism, Christianity, and heterodoxy in Tokugawa Japan. Monumenta Nipponica, 65(1), 149-195. 33. Mehl, Margaret. (2003). Private academies of Chinese learning in Meiji Japan: The decline and transformation of kangaku juku. Denmark: NIAS Press. 34. Motoyama, Yukihiko. (1997). Proliferating talent: Essays on politics, thought, and education in the Meiji era. J. S. A. Elisonas and Richard Rubinger (Eds.). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 35. Noboru, Yamashita. (2015). A short introduction to the history of Dutch studies in Japan. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58763791.pdf 36. Ohno, K. (2019). Meiji Japan: Progressive learning of western technology. In Arkebe Oqubay and Kenichi Ohno (Eds.), How nations learn: Technological learning, industrial policy, and catch-up (pp. 85-106). Oxford University Press 37. Okuma, Shigenobu. (1990). Fifty years of new Japan (kaikoku gojunenshi) (Vol. II). Marcus B. Huish (Ed.). London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 38. Passin, Herbert. (1965). Society and education in Japan. New York: Columbia University’s Bureau of Public Teacher’s College and East Asian Institute. 39. Rubinger, Richard. (1982). Private academies of Tokugawa Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 40. Rubinger, Richard. (1986). Education: From one room to one system. In Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (Eds.), Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji (pp. 195-230). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 41. Scott, Paul Duncan. Constitutional thought in bakumatsu Japan: Kato Hiroyuki’s Tonarigusa (Unpublished Masters’ thesis). University of Virginia, New York. 42. Sims, R. L. (1991). A political history of modern Japan 1868-1952. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Ltd. 43. Steele, Marion William. (1976). Katsu Kaishu and the collapse of the Tokugawa bakufu (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. 44. Wataru, Masuda. (2000). Japan and China: Mutual representations in the modern Era. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 45. Yukichi, Fukuzawa. (1973). The speeches of Fukuzawa Yukichi: A translation and critical study (Wayne H. Oxford, Trans.). Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. 46. Yukichi, Fukuzawa. (1985). On education: Selected works (Eiichi Kiyooka, Trans.). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.