田沢義鋪の人間形成論 : 青年団教育に追求した国民主義の課題
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
Tazawa Yoshiharu (1885-1944) was an influential educator who founded and promoted the Dai Nihon Seinendan (the National Youth Organization). This organization was most active among the vast number of youth in farm or rural areas all over Japan during the period 1910-1940. Tazawa began his career as a district headman having been appointed by the Department of Home Affairs in 1910 soon after being graduated from Tokyo Imperial University. Around this time a national policy to re-organize rural communities through the joint efforts of the Ministries of Home Affairs, Education and Army was being pursued. The emphasis was on nationalistic moral education in order to overcome the moral vacuum after the Japan-Russo War, and to strengthen the physical and spiritual potentiality of the nation. Thus the government was anxious to re-organize Seinendan (youth organizations) in rural communities as the core for this movement. Tazawa Yoshiharu, although a bureaucrat in the Dept. of Home Affairs, was a sincere and influential educator and youth leader. He emphasized the importance of personality development in each individual and his initiative and creative role in the youth movement. He was definitely against militarism, totalitarianism and despotism. Thus he was liberal and democratic in his life philosophy. Under his leadership Seinendan grew rapidly throughout Japan and was organized on a national basis. He had an ideal to re-build the character of Japanese people as moral and righteous people. At the same time he was a romantic idealist who believed in the myth of the Imperial Household and regarded the Emperor as the spiritual basis of ethics and of the peace-loving nature of Japanese people. Meiji Shrine, as the spiritual symbol of nation, was built by the voluntary manual labor of fifteen thousand young people through Tazawa's efforts. Through these kind of activities Emperor worship and romantic nationalism were propagated among rural youth throughout the nation. This energy was cleverly mobilized later toward ultra-nationalism by reactionary nationalists. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the nature and role of Tazawa's nationalistic educational thought and activities in order to determine the positive and negative elements which were embodied in the nationalism of the pre-war Japan, and to search for the indigenous roots of humanism out of the Japanese spiritual soil.
- 国際基督教大学の論文