(1) The Educational Thought of Kanjiro Higuchi

We can discern two different periods in the development of the educational thought of Kanjiro Higuchi: one before, and the other after 1899 when he left Japan for France and Germany to study. His educational thought in the earlier period was not unrelated to such trends as were represented in the idea of "individualism" that arose in Japan after the Sino-Japanese War. The idea was connected with those desires to express one's own feelings freely. His theory of "activism" in education aimed at liberating the oppressed energies of children from the oppressive Herbartian theory of "Regierung" and the formalized "Formalstufen" through complete admission of their self-expression and self-assertion and through constraint of teachers' leadership. On this point, we can admit that Higuchi "put a period to the golden age of the Herbartian theory in Japan and marked a turning-point to the new educational thought" (Satoru Umeno). His "activism" intended to restore the spirits among the younger generation and to make them take a most active part in the arena of competition with other countries in the world. His opinion in "activism" was, in this sense, directed by a kind of " National Romanticism." It interests us that his educational thought was influenced by that of F. Parker who was generally regarded as the pioneer of "the New Education" in the United States. His "activism" had a kind of positiveness and progressiveness so far as liberation from the Herbartian formalism was concerned, but once this liberation became only that, it fell into mere self-satisfaction and disorder-self-complacent liberation. When Herbartianism was formalized and was dethroned from its absolute and authoritative position in education, his "activism" lost its object to confront. He gradually ceased to advocate "activism" and instead began to pTeach "National-socialistic New Education" that found its positiveness in confronting socialistic thought arising at that time. This marks the characteristics of his educational thought in his later period. His "national-socialism" was a kind of nationalism that might "auf heben" both "individualism" and "socialism" in its theoretical appearence. His theoretical structure could be regarded as the theoretical reflection and rationalization of partial absorption and systematization of the educational needs of labour and the middle classes so far as these needs might agree with those of the national authority. We might conclude that his "activism" was inherited by the New Education Movement in the earlier Taisho period, especially in its liberalistic and individualistic aspects.