A STUDY ON THE KANAZAWA PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND & THE DEAF

In 1880, at Kanazawa, Seiichiro Matsumura started the Shiritsu Kanazawa Mo-A-In (the Kanazawa Private School for the Blind and the Deaf) in Japan. In this report, the author would like to summarize his personal history, social and educational circumstances in Ishikawa from the close of the Tokugawa regime to the early years of the Era of Meiji, his motives for the establishment of it, the process of the birth of it, a major cause for closing it, and a characteristic of the founder. It is purposing to supplement those to some reports which has been made public by the students up to this day. This study made use of his letters and historical materials of education for the handicapped. The results were as follows. 1. Matsumura, S. was a Confucian scholar of European idea who disabilities besides hearing impairment such as speech impediment and moter deficiency on account of smallpox which he was taken at six. 2. He was educated by the teachers, Shukuen Miyanaga, Genken Nagayama, Kenkichi Inesaka, and Masanao Nakamura, who had a good knowlege of a way of teaching the deaf, and he had a friend, Tomokichi Tanimura, who lavished money on the establishment of the Mo-A-In. 3. American and European education for the handicapped was introduced by the books for enlightenment and with medicine of the Netherlands to the Kaga clan. S. Matsumura was affected by them indirectly. the Mo-A-In to educate the blind and the deaf was as follows. (1) He had gained a great deal of information on the Rakuzen-kai Kunmo-In (the Tokyo School for the Blind) from Masanao Nakamura who was his teacher at the Dojinsha (the School for Western Learning in Tokyo) and a member of the foundres of the Rakuzenkai Kumo-In. (2) He happened to meet Seiran Ouchi who had been at Kyoto to make researches into education for the blind and the deaf. He visited the Kyoto Mo-A-In to see classes at work with Ouchi, S. who was first president of the Rakuzenkai Kunmo-In. These had an influence on his work of the Mo-A-In directly and indirectly. 5. S. Matsumura and Kyuei Umeda called at the Osaka Mohan Mo-A School and the Kyoto Mo-A-In to make a study of education for the blind and the deaf and conducting the school in 1880. 6. In 1882, this school was closed at last because the number of new students was few every year. A major cause for closing it was a small number of new students. However, the author would like to add further a sudden rise in prices, an epidemic of cholera, a change of a prefectural governer, and want of an effort to enter the blind and the deaf to school to the cause of closing it. The reported research is supported by the Fukumitsu Town Library. I wish to thank all the staff member at the library for their kind cooperation.