In the revised guidelines for the teaching of kokugo at an elementary and a junior high school there is a new article concerning the “education of traditional language and culture.” Most new school textbooks seem to take advantage of it for a more flexible and comprehensive way of teaching. Then how should we teachers make an effective use of those textbooks as we are expected to do? In teaching classical works with them, as I will suggest in this paper, we can achieve the goal of the “education of traditional language and culture” by redefining, reinterpreting, and reviewing each text as the “archive of knowledge.”

Makura-no-sōshi is a standard teaching material for junior high and high schools. But the new teaching guidelines stipulate that the teaching of classical works should start at elementary schools. This paper will examine several textbook versions of Makura-no-sōshi to consider the educational and literary problems which may be caused by the introduction of classical literature into the program of kokugo on an elementary school level.

The aim of this paper is to compare the three different versions of “Nomi-no-kago-nuke,” one of the episodes in Saikaku-shokoku-banashi; the original one published in the second year of the Jōkyō Period, the printed adaptations of the episode issued in the Meiji Period, and the school textbook version used as teaching material in the Taisho Period. The way of adaptation or revision in each modern text provides useful information on the educational policy of kokugo and the reception of early modern literature such as “ukiyo-zōshi” popular fiction in the prewar period.

In the early Showa Period Kunio Yanagida advocated the necessity of regional education for the making of a good democratic constituency in each local area. Therefore he opposed any standardized curriculum with school textbooks authorized by the government. But after the war he abandoned his educational regionalism and devoted himself to the completion of standard textbooks to disseminate his theory of teaching all over the country. Such a drastic change in his pedagogical policy, however, occurred as a logical consequence of his philosophy of education that was essentially nationalistic.

1. Is the servant really horrified in “Rashōmon”?

In “Rashōmon” the servant “feels every bit of his hair thicker” on the top of the gate. The metaphorical phrase is usually explained to mean “[he] feels extremely horrified” in the footnote of the school textbook. But when one correctly understands the servant's state of mind in the scene, one can instantly know how irrelevant such an explanation is.

2. Why couldn't Richō restrain his “unnatural instinct” in “Sangetsu-ki”?

In the footnote of the school textbook the adjective “unnatural” is wrongly paraphrased into “selfish” or “demented.” To understand the correct meaning of the word one must take into account Confucian connotations characteristic of the work of Atsushi Nakajima, a writer versed in Chinese classical studies.

3. Does the author tell the truth?

Probably nothing is more ridiculous than this kind of question because fiction is by definition not truth. But the school textbook doesn't stop asking it in the footnote. Such a meaningless questioning may come from the false belief that any literary work in a certain way reflects the author's real life.

When was modern literature established as an academic discipline in Japan? When did its standard textbooks start to be written? How were those textbooks used to cultivate the intellectual liberalism of academic elites? In the attempt to answer these questions, by closely reading primary sources this paper will trace the history of modern literary textbooks from the Meiji Period until the prewar Showa Period.

Sakura-jima by Haruo Umezaki has been often reprinted in high-school textbooks to teach the importance of peace. Because of editorial abbreviation, however, in most textbooks it is reduced to a simple story of a struggle between “good” anti-militarism and “evil” militarism. This paper will show quite a different aspect of the original text and then find deconstructive moments even in such tampered textbook versions.