🏫Article 7 │ Educational Administration in Modern Japan, Military Drill, and Extracurricular Activities
The two main channels by which karate spread to mainland Japan were the university club and the physical education of secondary and normal (teacher-training) schools. This was no accident: the structure of Japanese educational administration, designed during the Meiji period (1868–1912), happened to be well suited to absorbing the martial arts. This article surveys the Japanese school system from the Meiji era to the 1945 defeat — its foreign models, the “martial curriculum” (buka) of elite schools such as Gakushūin, and the history of the extracurricular club culture that survives to this day.
The Meiji School System — Imitation, Then Adaptation
1872: The Gakusei (“Education System Order”) — A French-Style Ambition
In 1872 (Meiji 5) the new government promulgated the Gakusei (学制, the “Fundamental Code of Education”). It was a grand plan that divided the whole country into 8 university districts, each university district into 32 middle-school districts, and each middle-school district into 210 elementary-school districts — some 53,760 elementary schools in all — with the aim of putting every citizen through school. Its model was the centralized school-district system of France, though the content of the curriculum and the teaching methods also drew on American influence.
Reality, however, did not cooperate. The enrollment rate at first stood below 30 percent (about 28 percent in 1873/Meiji 6) and remained in the low-to-mid 30s throughout the 1870s and early 1880s. In several regions there were even “school-burning incidents” (gakkō yakiuchi jiken) — popular uprisings in which newly built schools, resented as a tax burden and an intrusion of the state, were attacked.
1879: The Kyōiku-rei (“Education Order”) — An American-Style Experiment
In 1879 (Meiji 12) the government switched to an American-style, decentralized Education Order (教育令), which handed much authority to local districts. It proved too laissez-faire, and the very next year (1880) a revised Education Order pulled authority back toward the center.
1886: The Gakkō-rei (“School Orders”) — Convergence on a German Model
The first Minister of Education, Mori Arinori (森有礼, 1847–1889), took as his model the centralized, statist education system of Prussia (Germany). The set of School Orders issued in 1886 (Meiji 19) comprised:
- Elementary School Order — ordinary elementary school of 4 years (later 6), higher elementary school of 2 years (later 2–4).
- Middle School Order — the 5-year ordinary middle school (the later kyūsei chūgakkō, “old-system middle school”).
- Normal School Order — teacher training, run as a boarding system with full dormitory life and military-style discipline.
- Imperial University Order — Tokyo Imperial University (later joined by Kyoto, Tōhoku, Kyushu, Hokkaidō, Keijō [Seoul], Taihoku [Taipei], Osaka, and Nagoya).
The system had a two-tier logic: at the elementary level it manufactured a common “Japanese” citizen for the entire population; at the secondary and higher levels it selected and trained an elite. The German research-university model (taking the University of Berlin as its template) was adopted for the imperial universities and became the foundation of modern Japanese academia.
1890: The Imperial Rescript on Education — Codifying a National Morality
The Imperial Rescript on Education (教育勅語, Kyōiku Chokugo) set out virtues such as loyalty and filial piety, benevolence, diligence in study, and obedience to the law, prescribing a national morality in the name of the Emperor. Until 1945 it stood at the center of school ritual, read aloud at ceremonies on national holidays and formal school days.
The Rescript fused Confucian virtues with the idea of kokutai (“national polity,” the doctrine of an Emperor-centered state), and it was tightly bound up with martial-arts education. The values of “loyalty to the sovereign and love of country” and “selfless devotion to the public good” were integrated with the spiritual cultivation claimed for the martial arts, and together they shaped the bodily culture of prewar Japan.
Gymnastics, Physical Education, and the Martial Arts
Swedish Gymnastics and German Gymnastics
The 1872 Gakusei introduced “physical technique” and “gymnastics” into elementary schools. The form of school physical education that first took hold in early Meiji was the ordinary gymnastics / light gymnastics (futsū taisō / kei-taisō) introduced by George Adams Leland, an American physician invited to the government’s Gymnastics Training School (Taisō Denshūjo); it centered on calisthenic and apparatus exercises performed for health. From the later Meiji period, alongside German-style apparatus gymnastics and military-style drill, Swedish gymnastics (a system of free-standing calisthenics derived from Pehr Henrik Ling) was introduced and popularized by educators such as Kawase Motokurō, Iguchi Akuri, and Nagai Dōmei.
Military-Style Drill (Heishiki Taisō)
In the mid-1880s, under Mori Arinori, military-style gymnastics (兵式体操, heishiki taisō) was fully institutionalized within the school system. It adapted the army’s group training to school physical education: on a single command students formed ranks and practiced marching, about-face, and drill with wooden rods standing in for rifles. It reflected the idea of “the school as a preliminary stage to the barracks” — a device for accustoming young men to military discipline before their conscription physical.
The Martial Arts Enter the Schools
- 1905 (Meiji 38): At the Okinawa Prefectural Middle School and the Okinawa Normal School, tūdī (唐手, “Chinese hand,” the older written form of karate) was adopted as a regular physical-education subject, and Itosu Ankō (糸洲安恒, 1831–1915) was appointed as a part-time tūdī instructor. This is the starting point of school karate at the secondary and normal-school level. As a precursor, tūdī had already been brought into the gymnastics curriculum of Shuri Ordinary Elementary School in 1901 (Meiji 34) — reportedly under Itosu’s own instruction — and some regard this as the true origin of school karate.
- 1911 (Meiji 44): On the mainland, fencing (gekken) and jūjutsu were approved as elective teaching materials in middle and normal schools.
- 1913 (Taishō 2): The official syllabus of school gymnastics adopted gekken and jūjutsu as electives for middle-school boys.
- 1926 (Taishō 15): The revised syllabus renamed these subjects from “gekken / jūjutsu” to “kendō / jūdō.”
- 1931 (Shōwa 6): Kendō and jūdō were made compulsory regular subjects in middle and normal schools.
- 1941–1942 (Shōwa 16–17): With the National School Order and the creation of the “physical training” subject (tairen-ka), martial arts were built into the upper grades of the national elementary schools as well; boys took kendō, jūdō, and bayonet fighting (jūkendō), girls the glaive (naginata).
Karate was grafted onto this framework as follows:
- Within Okinawa Prefecture: from 1905 onward, tūdī was taught as physical education in middle and normal schools. Around Itosu Ankō, instruction was carried by figures such as Yabu Kentsū and Tokuda Anbun at the normal school, Hanashiro Chōmo at the prefectural middle school, and Kyoda Jūhatsu at the Second Middle School.
- On the mainland: karate spread from the 1920s through university clubs. It later reached old-system middle and high schools, but it was never made compulsory in the way kendō and jūdō were.
The “Martial Curriculum” of Gakushūin
Gakushūin (学習院, the “Peers’ School”) was a special institution organized in the Meiji period for the education of the children of the imperial family and the nobility (kazoku, the peerage). It opened in 1877 (Meiji 10) as a school for the peerage and became a government school under the Imperial Household Ministry in 1884.
One distinctive feature of Gakushūin was its martial curriculum (武課, buka). The school regulations of 1879 (Meiji 12) placed fencing and jūjutsu among the subjects of the boys’ division, and jūdō was introduced around the time Kanō Jigorō (嘉納治五郎, 1860–1938, the founder of jūdō) joined the staff. In the Taishō period, kendō, jūdō, archery, and horsemanship were organized into formal clubs as “out-of-hours martial activities.” This was one element of an elite education meant to embody the ideal of bunbu ryōdō (“the twin ways of the pen and the sword”), and it was often linked to a military career.
Gakushūin’s martial curriculum shows that the martial arts were not merely physical education but also a status-marking accomplishment of the ruling class — analogous to the place of rugby and cricket in the English public school. It is a case in which elite identity and bodily culture were bound together.
Old-System Higher Schools, Imperial Universities, and the “School Friendship Associations”
The old-system higher schools (kyūsei kōtō gakkō, 1886–1950) were established across the country, in stages, as preparatory institutions for entry to the imperial universities. Built around a three-year residential (boarding) model and drawing on Western secondary and higher education, they nonetheless produced a distinctive “bankara” culture — a deliberately rough, anti-dandy, masculine student style.
At the higher schools and imperial universities, various club activities were set up under student bodies called kōyūkai or gakuyūkai (“school friendship associations”). These are the origin of the club / extracurricular culture of present-day Japan.
- Athletic clubs: baseball, tennis, rowing, kendō, jūdō, sumō, kyūdō (archery), rugby, soccer, track and field, swimming.
- Cultural clubs: debating, literature, music, English, German, French, photography.
The way karate spread through university clubs must be understood in this context. In 1924 a tūdī research society (Karate Kenkyūkai) was founded at Keiō University — the first university karate club in Japan — and from there the art spread to Tokyo Imperial, Meiji, Waseda, Takushoku, Hōsei, Nihon University, and others. The university karate clubs were institutionalized by riding on the existing “friendship association / athletic association” framework, acquiring its functions: recruiting new students, training camps, inter-school matches, and alumni (OB) associations (Kadekaru 2009).
This university club culture inherited the boarding life, the strict senior–junior (senpai–kōhai) hierarchy, and the athletic-club ethos that had run from the old-system higher schools onward. The reason karate was, from early on, spoken of in terms of “spiritual cultivation” and “the molding of character” is precisely that it was received within this university club culture.
Old-System Middle Schools and the Army Cadet Schools
The old-system middle schools (1886–1947) were five-year secondary institutions that provided the basic education of the elite. They too had friendship associations and athletic clubs, and kendō and jūdō clubs were common.
The Army Cadet Schools (陸軍幼年学校, Rikugun Yōnen Gakkō, 1896–1945) were secondary institutions for training career military officers, located in Tokyo, Sendai, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Kumamoto. There, too, the martial arts were compulsory.
The Military and the Martial Arts
The officer-training academies of the army and navy also built the martial arts into their curricula.
- Army Military Academy: fencing and jūjutsu (later kendō and jūdō), and bayonet technique.
- Naval Academy: kendō and jūdō.
- Toyama School (戸山学校): the army’s research institute for hand-to-hand combat and swordsmanship, which systematized military swordsmanship (later the Tōyama-ryū).
The bond between the military and the martial arts extended to karate as well. From the 1930s, karate was studied as a practical combat method in the army, the navy, and special units. One route by which karate spread to the colonies and occupied territories ran through Japanese residents and military personnel stationed in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria.
Education in Wartime
In 1941 (Shōwa 16) the National School Order (国民学校令) reorganized the elementary schools into “national schools” (kokumin gakkō), and education was folded entirely into the total-mobilization system. The martial arts became compulsory, moral-training (shūshin) education was intensified, and the aim of education was declared to be “the forging of subjects of the imperial nation.”
In this period, the “dialect tags” (方言札, hōgen fuda) were once again strictly enforced in Okinawan schools, compelling the use of standard Japanese. This was assimilation policy that was inseparable from the discrimination against Okinawa (see Article 11).
Postwar Educational Reform
After the defeat of 1945, education was reformed under the guidance of GHQ (the Allied Occupation authorities).
- The Fundamental Law of Education and the School Education Law (1947): a single-track 6–3–3–4 school system, on the American model.
- The ban on martial-arts classes (1946): imposed because of their association with militarism. They were revived in the 1950s as part of physical education.
- The nullification of the Imperial Rescript on Education (1948): the Diet passed resolutions confirming its repudiation and invalidity.
Because karate, unlike jūdō and kendō, had never been made a compulsory school subject before the war, its postwar revival was if anything quicker. From 1945, dōjō reopened on both the mainland and in Okinawa, and in 1948 (Shōwa 23) the Japan Karate Association (Nihon Karate Kyōkai) was formed around disciples of the Funakoshi Gichin line. (The association itself dates its founding to 1948, though some sources date its formal incorporation to 1949 [Shōwa 24].) In the lineage of protective-gear karate (bōgu-tsuki), meanwhile, the Kanbukan was founded in 1945, leading on to the Renbukan in 1951, the (old) All Japan Karate-dō Federation in 1959, and ultimately to today’s Renbukai.
The Modern Inheritance of Extracurricular Activities
The club / bukatsu culture that remains so deeply rooted in Japanese middle schools, high schools, and universities today descends directly from these Meiji-era friendship associations. The defining features of the Japanese athletic club — the senior–junior hierarchy, residential training camps, inter-school competition, and long, year-round practice — have no exact counterpart in the German Gymnasium or the Anglo-American public school. They are an institution developed uniquely in Japan.
This is the foundation on which the martial arts, karate included, are still practiced as school club activities. In the United States and Europe the martial arts are practiced essentially in private dōjō, whereas in Japan they are practiced as an extension of school education. That difference is a historical legacy of modern Japanese educational administration.
A Note for Western Readers
School physical education and extracurricular clubs exist in Western countries too, but the Japanese athletic club — with its long hours, practice six or seven days a week, rigid senior–junior hierarchy, and training-camp culture — is unusual by world standards.
These features are less an expression of some timeless “Japanese spirit” than a historical product of educational administration as it was designed in the Meiji period: military-style drill, residential normal schools, the bankara culture of the old higher schools, and the continuity between the military and education. When one finds these elements within the training culture of karate, they should be understood not as the ancient “way of the samurai” (bushidō) but as the imprint of a modern Japanese educational apparatus.
Coming Next
Article 8 will take up the effect of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) on the Japanese sense of self. Through these wars, Japan acquired both a pride in belonging to the ranks of the great powers and a self-image as the “liberator of Asia.”
References
- Kaminuma Hachirō, Kindai Nihon no kyōiku [Education in Modern Japan]. Tamagawa University Press, 1981.
- Terasaki Masao and Matsuura Yoshimitsu, eds., Kindai Nihon kyōiku-shi [A History of Modern Japanese Education]. University of Tokyo Press, 2008.
- Kinoshita Hideaki, Heishiki taisō kara mita gun to kyōiku [The Military and Education as Seen Through Military-Style Gymnastics]. Kyōrin Shoin, 1982.
- Takahashi Hidemine, Bukatsudō no shakaigaku [The Sociology of Club Activities]. Iwanami Shoten, 2018.
- Kadekaru Tōru, Daigaku tūdī kurabu no seiritsu to tenkai [The Formation and Development of University Karate Clubs] (article), 2009.
- Nakajima Tetsuya, Kindai budō no keifu [The Genealogy of Modern Budō]. Miyabi Shuppan, 2017.
- Roden, Donald T. Schooldays in Imperial Japan: A Study in the Culture of a Student Elite. University of California Press, 1980.
- Cave, Peter. Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary Education. Routledge, 2007.