Mass Education Of Edo Period-Terakoya

Among a group of educational institutions in the Edo period, the terakoya was one of the fastest-growing and most eye-catching, and the most typical representative of the Edo period's mass education. To a large extent, it stood for the development of education and standard of the mass education. The main part of the Edo period education is the mass education, and the main part of the mass education is the terakoya. The terakoya had a positive effect on Japanese modernization and played an important historical position of the Japanese history.The social characteristic of the Edo period decided the nature and characteristic of the education. Although the terakoya sprang from the temple's secularity education in the 15th century, its entity was the private education organization which was born in folk by idiopathic. The terakoya achieved the development and popularization in the folk and exited the stage of history in the wave of the Japanese modernization reform.The development and popularization of the terakoya was affected by political factor. But in a word, it was reflected by the social needs: The daily life and production of the civilian needed to have a certain degree of text literacy and numeracy skills objectively. Receiving education had already become a kind of natural and necessary needs.The complexity of the Edo period self made the terakoya had the double nature of the feudal and modern society. The mass's educational idea reflected to the terakoya's educational activities. The features of the education in accordance with individual differences, flexibility's model, practical tendency of the teaching objectives and students'autonomous learning of the teaching methods all showed the terakoya's educational idea which was the student first and emphasizing on capacity-building. The terakoya made a contribution to enhancing the cultural level of society as a whole and spreading education and moral. It also laid a solid foundation for the success of the Japanese modernization.This paper is on the basis of predecessor's research, from the view of the historical point, and makes the terakoya as a clue. The paper studies the terakoya's historical trace of the Edo period and early Meiji . It also explores the terakoya's educational idea, nature and status in historical and so on.