ough this period saw the flowering of urban culture, the Tokugawa eventually pursued a policy of almost total seclusion from the outside world: "It was a system designed to perpetuate itself unchanged" (Dore, 1965, p. 10).
The Tokugawa period marked the beginning of popular education in Japan. This accomplishment was facilitated by the establishment of small-scale local schools called terokoya (the parish school). Such schools were attended by commoners and the curriculum emphasis was on Confucian ethics. So widespread was this educational movement that by the end of the Tokugawa period about 40 to 50 percent of commoner males, from 10 to 15 percent of girls, and almost all the children of the court nobility and samurai class had achieved some level of literacy (OERI, 1987, p. 1).
In addition to the schools established by private initiative, during the 1860s official schools were also opened. These schools had graded curricula, were mostly co-educational and unrestricted by social class. The subject matter taught in these schools was not limited to Confucian precepts: "Its practical value gained appreciation by the townspeople who, without decree or compulsion, increasingly undertook voluntarily to have their children educated" (Duke, 1986, p. 61).
The most innovative of the Tokugawa schools, however, were the private academies. These academies introduced specialized training in occupational areas, and taught a wide variety of subject matter including: "Western languages, Western military science, navigation, coastal defenses, and natural sciences" (Beauchamp and Rubinger, 1989, p. 23). Cognizant of the threat of military aggression from the West, the Tokugawan academies served as training grounds for Japan's future military specialists.
By the 19th century, Japan's Tokugawa socioeconomic order had virtually collapsed, a condition that was to have a profound effect on the country's education system. In 1854, U...