明治期から大正期日本の高等学校入学試業と中学校の外国語教育：第一高等学校における変遷を中心に • Higher School Entrance Exams and Middle School Foreign Language Education in Meiji- and Taisho-Era Japan: The Case of Daiichi Koto Gakko
Authors: Shimo Etsuko 
Published: February 2020

本稿では、明治期から大正期、特に1880年代から1910年代にかけて、高等学校の入学試業で英語・ドイツ語・フランス語がどのように扱われたのかを第一高等学校の入試を中心に明らかにし、その位置づけが中学校の外国語教育に与えた影響を考察する。重要な転機として、（1）1895年の第一部（法文学志望者）の一部においてドイツ語受験が可能とされ、また第三部（医学志望者）はドイツ語のみ受験が可能とされたこと、（2）1899年に第三部の受験がドイツ語に加えて英語でも可能となったこと、（3）1919年の規定により、文科乙類・理科乙類ではドイツ語による受験が、文科丙類ではフランス語による受験が可能となったことが挙げられる。ドイツ語やフランス語が入試科目に加えられたことは、高等教育におけるこれらの言語の重要性を維持する一助となった。しかし、どの専門であれ英語での受験が可能となった状況では、東京府立第一中学校の例が示すように、中学校でのドイツ語・フランス語教育推進にはつながらなかった。

Extensive research has been conducted on English entrance exams in Meiji- and Taisho-era Japan (e.g., Erikawa, 2011; Imura, 2003; Matsumura, 1997; Sasaki, 2008). However, very few studies have explored how other foreign languages were treated in entrance exams during this period of secondary and tertiary educational development. This paper, therefore, offers an examination of how English, German, and French were treated in higher school entrance examinations during this period, especially from the 1880s to 1910s, with a focus on Daiichi Koto Gakko (the First Higher School; named Daiichi Koto Chu Gakko, the First Higher Middle School, between 1886 and 1894), a predecessor of several university programs in the current system. How the treatment of these languages in entrance exams influenced foreign language education at middle schools, many of which turned into senior high schools after World War II, is also discussed.

During the Meiji and Taisho eras, foreign language education in Japan received criticism from education experts for its English-only focus (Shimo, 2018; cf. current criticism in, e.g., Morizumi, Koishi, Sugitani, & Hasegawa, 2016; Otani, 2007). Foreign languages other than English that were important at that time were German and French. An advisory committee to the Prime Minister, Rinji Kyoiku Kaigi (Extraordinary Education Committee: September 21, 1917, to May 23, 1919) proposed in its report on May 2, 1918, that German and French, in addition to English, be promoted as foreign language subjects to be taught at middle schools. Discussion in the advisory committee was reflected in Higher School Order, which was promulgated in December 1918. According to the National Higher School Higher Course Entrance Examination Regulations promulgated in the following year, English, German, and French were included in the foreign language subjects for entrance exams. A unified-test system—with all higher schools using the same test questions—was also introduced. Until 1919, most higher schools offered only English, with an exception of Daiichi Koto Gakko.

Daiichi Koto Gakko had three departments: The First Department was for candidates for law and literature majors; the Second Department for candidates for science, engineering, and agriculture majors; and the Third Department for candidates for medicine majors. Back in 1886, the school announced that they were going to offer only English from the 1891 entrance examinations, but their entrance examination rules also went through further changes. Among the changes, important turning points were as follows: (a) the change in 1895 allowed the First Department to offer German language as an entrance exam subject for certain groups of majors and the Third Department to offer German as the only foreign language option in their entrance exam; (b) in 1899, the Third Department started to offer English, in addition to German, as an entrance exam subject; and (c) in 1919 (two departments, Humanities and Sciences, were then formed instead of three), one section of Humanities and one of Sciences allowed German exams, and one section of Humanities allowed French ones. The last regulation was implemented nationwide, but not all higher schools offered French and German.

By including German and French as entrance exam subjects, their importance in tertiary education was made stronger or at least kept the same. In spite of all these changes, however, the number of middle schools that taught German or French did not increase; it was limited to a few private middle schools. One notable case was Tokyo Furitsu Daiichi Chu Gakko [Tokyo Prefectural First Middle School]. German was added as a foreign language subject in their curriculum in 1902 when Tomoo Katsuura was the principal. In 1901, Katsuura attended the sixth meeting of Koto Kyoiku Kaigi (Upper-Level Education Committee; the first advisory committee of the Ministry of Education: 1896-1913), where the committee agreed on their proposal to the Ministry that German be taught in addition to English at one middle school in each prefecture. Katsuura’s effort turned out to be ineffective in promoting German education at the middle-school level because Daiichi Koto Gakko had already added English to the entrance exam for the Third Department in 1899. This historical examination indicates that when English was offered as an entrance exam subject for all majors at the tertiary level, simply providing other languages in entrance exams was ineffective in promoting those languages at the secondary level.