Browse Primary Sources
Locate primary sources, including images, objects, media, and texts. Annotations by scholars contextualize sources.
Preamble to the Fundamental Code of Education
The following paragraphs came at the beginning of a 109-article plan, promulgated in 1872, to establish a national school system under the direction of the new Meiji government. This ambitious plan divided the country into eight university districts, each of which was divided into 32 middle-school districts. This plan drew upon a close examination of educational systems in the West—the U.S.
An Encouragement of Learning
Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) is one of the most famous figures of modern Japan. He was an intellectual, journalist, and educator who was the most visible advocate of modernization and Western Learning in the 1870s and 1880s.
Imperial Rescript: The Great Principles of Education
During the 1870s, the Meiji government established many institutions based on the examples from Europe and the U.S., and many intellectuals advocated a thoroughgoing transformation of Japanese society and culture patterned after the model of civilization they observed in the West. Others, however, were uncomfortable with the pace of change and the sudden influx of Western influences.
On Education
This essay was printed in the periodical Meiroku Zasshi in May 1874. The magazine was produced by a small group of intellectuals committed to the study of Europe and America. This journal, and the individuals who contributed to it, were at the core of the "Civilization and Enlightenment" movement in Japan in the 1870s.
The Imperial Rescript on Education
During the first two decades of the Meiji era, the new government invested a great deal of effort into building the institutions of the modern Japanese state. By the 1880s, officials and other commentators had begun in earnest to articulate the moral foundations that should undergird those institutions and unify the Japanese people.
Explanation of School Matters
This document was written one year after the "Imperial Rescript on Education" by Education Minister Oki Takato. In it he affirms some of the basic principles in the Imperial Rescript–morality, reverence for emperor, patriotism–and articulates more concretely the shifting emphasis within the educational system.
Legal and Political Status of the Infant
This Qin-dynasty legal text (c. 217 BCE), written on bamboo strips, was excavated in China in 1975. According to Qin law, men guilty of killing children born to them were punished by becoming wall builders; the equivalent punishment for women was servitude as grain pounders. Next to the death sentence, these were most drastic forms of penal servitude.
Biography of Empress Deng
This biography details the childhood of Empress Deng of the Later Han dynasty. Here she is noted for her precocious intelligence, beauty, and filial piety. She was named empress to Emperor He in 102 CE. The emperor died four years later and Empress Deng served as virtual regent for one infant emperor who died in 106 CE.
The Book of Rites, The Birth of a Child
The "Patterns of the Family," is drawn from The Book of Rites, a text that defined Confucian rituals of all kinds. It is important to note that Confucianism was not an organized religion, but viewed the family as the main locus of worship and the head of each family was, in essence, the "priest" or person in charge of religious observances.
The Book of Rites, Early Education and Gender Differentiation
In early China, aristocratic boys are said to have studied the Asix arts. Specifically, this referred to ritual, archery, charioteering, music, writing, and mathematics, all skills associated with government, warfare, and religious and court ritual.
Learning begins in the Womb: Fetal Instruction
Han dynasty intellectuals such as Liu Xiang (c. 77-6 BCE) advocated "fetal instruction" [taijiao] as a means to influence the moral development of the child at the earliest possible opportunity. Fetal instruction demands that the pregnant mother take care in what she allows herself to see, eat, hear, and say, and requires her to be ritually correct in her deportment.
Mourning Rituals for Deceased Children
This moving tribute, carved in the stone of an elaborate shrine, honored a five-year-old boy who died in 170 CE. While the emotions expressed in this inscription seem universal in nature, it is important to note that in Chinese antiquity, mourning a small child was considered to be highly irregular.
The Child as Microcosm
In this passage, fetal development is described in terms of Daoist cosmogony in which all things in the universe emerge from one source, the Dao (meaning "the Way"). All matter divides first into the two powers, Yin and Yang, polar opposites understood in terms of categories such as male and female, dark and light, Heaven and Earth, round and square, etc.
The Child in Early Chinese Social Hierarchy: The Biography of Li Shan
The society of early China was organized into a hierarchy where elders were generally deemed superior to and expected deference from their juniors, principles that also guided the relationship between men and women, parents and children, and nobles and commoners.
Sieyès, "What Is the Third Estate?" (1789)
Emmanuel–Joseph Sieyès was born at Fréjus, 3 May 1748. He was educated at a Jesuit school, became a licentiate of the canon law, and was appointed vicar–general by the bishop of Chartres.
Antislavery Agitation: Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770)
Abbé Guillaume–Thomas Raynal (1711–96), known by his clerical title [abbé refers to ecclesiastical training], first published his multivolume history of European colonization anonymously in French in 1770.
Zalkind–Hourwitz, Vindication of the Jews (1789)
In 1789, 40,000 Jews lived in France, most of them in the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. In some respects, they were better treated than Calvinists under the laws of the monarchy; Jews could legally practice their religion, though their other activities were severely restricted.
Rousseau’s The Social Contract
Jean–Jacques Rousseau was the maverick of the Enlightenment. Born a Protestant in Geneva in 1712 (d. 1778), he had to support himself as a music copyist. Unlike Voltaire and Montesquieu, both of whom came from rich families, Rousseau faced poverty nearly all his life.
Montesquieu, "The Spirit of the Laws"
In The Spirit of the Laws published in 1748, Montesquieu took a less playful tone. Rather than lampooning French customs as he did in The Persian Letters, he offered a wide–ranging comparative analysis of governmental institutions. He argued that the type of government varied depending on circumstances.
Voltaire, Selections from the Philosophical Dictionary
Voltaire was the pen name of François–Marie Arouet (1694–1778), an Enlightenment writer known for his plays and histories and his acerbic criticism of the French Catholic Church. This set of selections is from his Philosophical Dictionary of 1764.