Practicing Kokugo: Teachers in Hokkaido and Okinawa Classrooms, 1895–1904

Professionally trained teachers shifted an ideological debate to a discussion of how to increase their students’ potential to navigate within new power structures of the Japanese nation and empire. While other scholars have described how many teachers opposed the idea of kokugo not least on the periphery of nation and empire, this essay analyzes concrete recommendations made by classroom teachers. I argue that teachers trained at the new normal schools authored articles for journals of the Teikoku Kyōiku Kai (Imperial Education Society) that fundamentally changed the central discourse on kokugo by introducing theoretical and pedagogical considerations tested and inspired by classroom experiences.