guidelines the private academies could teach a wide variety of subject matter including: "Western languages, Western military science, navigation, coastal defenses, and natural sciences" (Beauchamp and Rubinger, 1989, p. 23). Given the threat of military aggression from the West, these schools served as training grounds for Japan's future military specialists.
Despite its increasing presence in Tokugawa Japan, education was hardly free of social class bias. The main status division during this period was between the samurai and the rest of society. Few children of commoners or soldiers of low-rank could attend the samurai schools. And a significant number of the children of higher-ranking officials were educated at home by private tutors. But even within the samurai there were sharp divisions of rank, which presented a problem among the status conscious Japanese. Considerable social embarrassment would occur if, for instance, the son of a high-ranking samurai turned out to be intellectually inferior to the son of a samurai of low-rank. According t
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