Idea of Recuperation （Hoyō） and School Hygiene in Modern Society: From Restoration to Discipline

This monograph purpose considering the ideas and practices regarding the “recuperation” of school children in the process of revolting school hygiene, which has developed in close connection with the education of children with disabilities, especially the education of sickly and frail children, children with intellectual disabilities, and how health disorders were attempted to be assimilated to normal health status in the process of thought formation and implementation of school hygiene as a practice that assumed equal educational opportunities as early as the development of school education. In a general meaning, the period when hygienic considerations were taken from a social perspective was after the end of the 18th century. Protecting and promoting the health of the public, especially that of children, has come to be seen as a common social benefit. From this perspective, the concept of school hygiene was established in Western society, focusing on school environment maintenance and children’s health management. From the latter half of the 19th century, school hygiene gradually became organized as a health and welfare consideration for people who had difficulty making a living or attending school. In Japan as well, with the establishment of the modern school education system, school hygiene ideas and practices based on Western school hygiene ideas became widespread from the 19th century to the early 20th century in order to address health issues associated with attending school. In this process, a trend has emerged in which the concept of “recuperation’’ as a hygienic response to sickly and frail children in school education includes the connotations of rest and medical treatment, and this concept was being developed concretely. Children’s recuperation activities, which were popular mainly in Switzerland and Germany as Ferienkolonie, were called “Kyukashuraku” in Japan and developed in various forms. These recuperation activities, which are part of school hygiene activities in modern Japan, were aimed primarily at helping children with mild health disorders return to regular education in a short period of time, with an emphasis on physical and mental rest. Nevertheless, it also included hygiene discipline as an essential activity, and had the aspect of normalizing the lives of students. This was one of the characteristics of recuperation activities in Japanese schools as a policy of “lagging social state”.