Paper short abstract:

This paper presents an ideological analysis of Tayama Katai's novel Inaka Kyoshi from the point of view of the country teacher in late Meiji. Drawing on contemporary sources such as novels written for teachers and a teacher's diary, Katai's critical stance as well as its limitations are discussed.

Paper long abstract:

In his famous novel Inaka Kyōshi (『田舎教師』, The Country Teacher), published in 1909, Tayama Katai depicts a young, romantic middle school graduate who dreams of higher education in Tokyo and becoming a successful author but, due to economic and familial circumstances, has to take up a job as a teacher in a provincial elementary school. Much scholarly attention has gone to the so-called heimen byōsha, the impressionist style of this naturalist novel which depicts small human action against the larger backdrop of indifferent nature. However, the ideological position of this work is less clear, with scholars having inconsistently pointed out both its latent support, and its criticism of unbridled capitalism, nationalism and imperialism.

This paper analyses Inaka Kyōshi from the point of view of the country teacher in late Meiji questioning the concrete meaning this novel had for the teachers at the time. A comparison of Inaka Kyōshi with contemporary novels specifically written for teachers, and with the diary by the elementary school teacher Kobayashi Shuzo, which Katai used as the main source for his story, reveals a deliberate critical stance towards official expansionist Meiji policy and the supportive role elementary education played in spreading the underlying ideology. However, it also shows that Katai's portrayal of 'the country teacher' is a heavily distorted one, a caricature not necessarily representative of the actual teachers at the time. While arguing that Katai's naturalism was more than stylistics and had an important ideological agenda of raising a critical social awareness among his readers, this paper also clarifies that his Tokyo-based perspective and one-sided depiction of education left no room for the suggestion of an alternative, eventually leaving his readers in the periphery with the only option to keep dreaming of a way out of the country.