The evolution of the concept of cultivation in modern Japan: The idea of cultivation in the 1930s
Watanabe, Kayoko
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/21625
Description
Title
The evolution of the concept of cultivation in modern Japan: The idea of cultivation in the 1930s
Author(s)
Watanabe, Kayoko
Issue Date
1993
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Feinberg, Walter
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, History of
Education, Philosophy of
Language
eng
Abstract
The Japanese word Kyoyo (translated as cultivation in this study) embodies a concept which has had significant influence on intellectuals and has shaped higher education in Japan from the 1910s until the present. Kyoyo (cultivation) is a common Japanese word to indicate characteristics of educated persons, but its meaning is different from education or school education in the strict sense of the word. Kyoyo (cultivation) has much to do with the substance of the effects of education or self-education such as character building.
This dissertation seeks to correct a post World War II misinterpretation of Japanese intellectual history involving the idea that the concepts of cultivation (personal cultivation) or Kyoyo as articulated in the 1930s by people like Eijiro Kawai (1891-1944) were essentially identical with the Taisho Culturalism articulated in the 1910s by people like Jiro Abe (1883-1959) with a few exceptions like Jun Tosaka (1900-1945) or Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945). This dissertation shows not only that the idea of cultivation in the 1930s is essentially different from that developed in 1910s but that the development of this idea in the 1930s took a number of different and sometimes conflicting forms. This study traced these conflicting arguments which have been almost completely neglected by contemporary intellectual historians.
Based on the analysis of books and articles entitled cultivation from 1925 to 1945, this study found three dimensions of interest in the discussion of cultivation in the 1930s, namely, (a) political aspect of cultivation, (b) reconstruction of the idea of cultivation by eliminating class bias, and (c) cultivation as an insight into social connectedness to cope with the over-specialization.
This study concludes that the idea of cultivation in the 1930s was vulnerable as an educational idea, but it prepared an intellectual basis for acceptance of the U.S. general education after World War II.
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