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The School Diary in Wartime Japan: Cultivating morale and self-discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2018

L. HALLIDAY PIEL
L. HALLIDAY PIEL*
Affiliation:
Lasell College Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

During the Second World War, the Japanese state enacted sweeping education reforms designed to prime the population for Total War. The policies of the National Education Ordinance of 1941 aimed to strengthen collective loyalty and self-sacrifice for the state. Military drill and ceremonial rituals were the outward manifestation of wartime education. But this article examines how teachers borrowed an aspect of progressive ‘whole-person’ education from the more liberal pre-war era—‘daily life writing’ (seikatsu tsuzurikata)—to shape children's dispositions and consciousness. Through such reflective diary writing, children would learn to internalize the ideal behaviours and attributes of the Total War civilian. By comparing education discourse with samples of children's writings, teachers’ written feedback, and interviews of former students of an elementary school affiliated with the Ministry of Education, I show how reflective diary writing, despite its progressive origins as a means of self-expression for self-actualization and social critique, could be co-opted by right-wing Japanese ultra-nationalism for its potential as a means of self-censorship, self-monitoring, and self-control. At the same time, its practice did help children endure the hardships of war and defeat.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 1004 - 1037
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I thank Peter Cave and Aaron W. Moore of the University of Manchester for supporting my research through the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council project, ‘Remembering and recording childhood, education and youth in Imperial Japan, 1925–1945’ (AH/J004618/1). I would like to thank Atsuko Koido and Kakuko Shōji for help with transcriptions and translations of diaries respectively. I am grateful to my informants for their generous time, and to Dr Nobuko Nagase and librarian Sakamaki Junko for access to Ochanomizu University Library.

References

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26 Somei Chika, email correspondence, 29 December 2016.

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34 A slogan for national unity.

35 Refers to the imperial cult.

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42 Nisho Hiroshi, interview, 11 June 2015, Piel (trans.).

43 Mikawa Sueko, email correspondence, 25 November 2013, Piel (trans.).

44 Mikawa, interview, 17 June 2015, Piel (trans.).

45 Maeda Tokuko, interview, 3 June 2015, Piel (trans.).

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Maeda, interview, 14 January 2014, Piel (trans.).

49 Maeda, interview, 3 June 2015, Piel (trans.).

50 Mikawa, interview, 15 January 2014, Piel (trans.).

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55 Ibid., pp. 1, 444–446.

56 Ibid., pp. 7, 37.

57 Ibid., pp. 39, 446.

58 Ibid., pp. 27–28.

59 Ibid., pp. 18–19, 135.

60 Ibid., pp. 95, 102–103.

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77 Even at the height of Taishō liberalism, these two positions were not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, in Moore's words, ‘the teacher-dominated classroom tradition was being replaced by a philosophic perception of self’ (Moore, ‘From individual child’, p. 4).

78 Ibid., p. 348.