This is a paper attempting to explore the traits of the curriculum study by analyzing the achievement of the principal Kyunojo Uenuma at Fuji Elementary school in the early Showa period. In particular, I focus on Uenuma's experiences of observing schools in foreign countries, which influenced the process of conceptualizing his ideas of curriculum study at Fuji Elementary School. Uenuma had been interested in the "inventive" and "creative" aspects of children's learning activities before he went to foreign countries. After he came back to Japan, he struggled for embodying theoretical and practical "creative life" in the whole school curriculum principle. Uenuma assumed that "creative life" consists conditions such as respecting one's originality, initiative, self-reliance and persistence, besides pursuing sociality and cooperativeness. Uenuma's idea was inspired by the materials that he observed and collected through his experiences in foreign countries. In particular, he was concerned with Decroly's educational theory on the basis of genetic psychology. Uenuma had studied Decroly's educational theory before and after his experiences in foreign countries. Therefore "creative life" was based on Decroly's educational theory. However Washburne's theory of the socialized and creative activities in Winnetka system was also studied for embodying "creative life" at Fuji Elementary School. For example, Sugimoto, one of the best teachers at Fuji Elementary School, pursued the individual expression through his practices of the critique and appreciation, while respecting diversity of the individual children's expression. The final characteristic of Sugimoto's practices was to pursue individual children's self-realization. As has been stated, the development of studies and practices of the children's expressive activities, namely, the expressive education, was one of the traits of curriculum studies at Fuji Elementary School in the early Showa period. Sugimoto was a leader of developing the practices of realizing "creative life" in the expressive education though there were some differences. It was a curriculum development emphasizing the expressive activities for pursing individual uniqueness on the basis of Decroly's educational theory. The most previous studies of Fuji Elementary School had been concerned with children's social development. On the contrary, this paper explores the curriculum development of "creative life" as a foundation of individuality at Fuji Elementary School. This implies that the European philosophy of "life", Decroly's educational theory, was underlying in the development of "creative life" at Fuji Elementary School.