Schooling Artlessness: New Media and Children's Arts Education in 20th Century Japan

Abstract

How does the concept of the child re-write the social and material relations not only between art and education, but also between the components and parties entailed therein? In this dissertation, I present a series of critical investigations into early 20th Century Japanese children’s arts education movements, and their experiments with new media technologies in the efforts to establish a more “natural” or “child-oriented” mode of learning. With close attention to the material conditions, practices, and reception of these experiments, I demonstrate how the process of applying the arts and new media technologies to pedagogy, on one hand, served as a means of intervening in or re-shaping existing educational models, and, on the other, necessitated key shifts in artistic forms, production methods, and discursive positioning that directly affected their subsequent afterlives. In particular, I highlight the ways in which these new practices and modes of engagement – at times, to the benefit of movement’s intended goal, and at times, to its own unintended detriment – unsettled, if not completely re-arranged the very terms and relations of instruction and learning. Given how densely these movements have been interwoven with discourses about trajectories of children’s development – which, in turn, have been used all too frequently as stand-ins for those of societies or nations – I argue that these movements, together with their interventions and frustrations, present a productive opportunity to critically reassess our preconceptions about temporality, utility, and their place in the ever-contested field of children’s education.

The case studies that constitute each of the core chapters follow a roughly chronological, if looping order. Chapter 1 opens with a close examination of the geijutsu jiyū kyōiku (free arts education) movement, which advocated for pedagogical change primarily through print magazines, a great deal of which were edited by or featured the poet Kitahara Hakushū. While the movement’s prioritization of the child served as the driving force for advocates’ demands, the terms that defined their view of the child ultimately challenged the student-instructor relation at the heart of the movement’s operations. Chapter 2 extends this inquiry into the “natural” to the issue of space in arts education, specifically as it was articulated in the kateiyō jidōgeki (children’s plays for the home) movement, spearheaded by writer and literary critic Tsubouchi Shōyō. I pay particular attention to the ways Tsubouchi conceptualized and utilized different spaces to advance his cause, as well as to how he located the role of women/girls and the possibility of collective betterment in the navigation of these spaces. Similarly, Chapter 3 critically analyzes the discursive connections between space and education, while diving deeper into the temporalities entangled therein. In particular, this chapter presents a close reading of Seo Mitsuyo’s animated film Momotarō: Umi no shinpei, its place in the tradition of re-working histories through children’s tales, and its visions of shared futures extended to the children it was intended to educate in Japanese colonies in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, Chapter 4 examines the re-application of dōyō – a key component in Kitahara’s advocacy, as well as in Seo’s film – as language re-education materials in Japan-occupied Philippines. This chapter identifies key parallels between dōyō’s mediatic transformations and the projection of a larger, imperial body, while also highlighting the ways in which the specificities of engagement complicate the issue and fulfilment of even an imperial demand.