Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the role played by some of Shimazaki Tōson's works in shaping the periphery of the "kokugo" and "bungaku" education, while shedding light on the way other peripheries, such as the Japanese countryside, the colonies, and the world outside Japan, are represented therein.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I focus on the roles that romantic poet-turned- naturalist novelist Shimazaki Tōson was assigned, or assumed himself, in bringing together modern Japanese literature and education in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. I begin with an analysis of the meaning behind the inclusion of Tōson's poems, and later prose, in the kokugo (national language) textbooks, and attempt to trace the impact such texts had on defining the shifting boundaries of (modern) Japanese language and literature for young learners. Next, I intend to look at the supplementary reader Tōson Tokuhon (1925-26), which consists of a wide array of fairy tales, poems, translations, and essays written and compiled by Tōson himself, and in which special attention is paid to introducing faraway lands as well as their languages and cultures, but also to describing the nature and local dialects of countryside Japan. For comparison, I will also refer to other extracurricular readers, compiled by literati such as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (Nihon kindai bungei tokuhon, 1925) and Kikuchi Kan (Shōgaku dōwa tokuhon, 1925) around the same time. In examining these works, I argue that they are central in shaping the very important "periphery" of the kokugo and bungaku education, while also attempting to shed light on how other peripheries, such as the Japanese countryside, the colonies, and the world outside Japan, are represented therein.