This essay was published in Chūgaku Bungei Special Extra Issue: ‘Famous Figures in Their Middle School Days’, June 20, 1906. In this essay, Aizan explains how he had little formal education and, because of family circumstances, had to engage in ‘self-study’ or ‘independent study’.
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The Shibukawa, Adachi, and Yamaji families were known as the three families serving as the Shogunate’s astronomers. My own family had been mathematicians for generations. Amidst the turmoil of the Meiji Restoration, when war broke out and my father had to join the military, it was deemed too dangerous to remain in Edo, so the elderly and children evacuated to Shizuoka; I grew up there from that time on.
The local primary school was established in 1872, when I was eight years old; it was right around that time that I, too, began my own studies. My family possessed a large collection of rare and unusual books, the sort not found in other households, and I read them voraciously from childhood. This was because my family had previously served as censors for Dutch texts; any Dutch book intended for translation and publication had to be brought to our home for review before it could be released, and the publishing office itself was located on our premises. Thanks to that connection, I had a mountain of books on Western learning at my disposal. I would indiscriminately pull out works on subjects ranging from astronomy to traditional herbal medicine, some I understood, others I didn’t, but I read through them all voraciously.
Once, when my elementary school teacher assigned ‘magnets’ as the topic for an essay, I wrote a piece summarizing the gist of a book on the subject, a work translated by a famous mathematician (whose surname I have forgotten, though his given name was Guntaro) that I had previously read in a Dutch text. The teacher, unfamiliar with such advanced material, was greatly astonished, wondering where on earth I had found the information. Since I spent my childhood reading nothing but books like this and, given that my family were mathematicians for generations (figures like Yamaji Yazaemon are known as great masters of their era), it seems I inherited that aptitude, and my mind developed in a mathematical and scientific direction.
Back in elementary school, I believe I was twice as good at mathematics as the teacher. Whether viewed in terms of heredity or the influence of reading during my childhood, my mind was, and I remain convinced still is, entirely scientific; it was certainly never literary. However, since my grandmother was a composer of waka poetry, I naturally fell under her influence and eventually came to appreciate the aesthetic of the genre; around the age of fourteen or fifteen, I read works like the Kokin Wakashū avidly.
Up until then, things had been peaceful, and I had spent my time happily reading books;
but a short while later, when I was around seventeen or eighteen, I found myself in a situation where I had to take charge of managing the household affairs myself. At times, the struggle to keep things running was grueling, and from then on, I was so consumed by domestic duties that I could only manage to read in the spare moments between tasks. Although my family were impoverished former warriors, we were relatively well-off compared to others of that class in the Shizuoka area; my grandfather had been a frugal man who had managed to save up some government bonds, so even though we lived a tight, austere life, we never actually went hungry. Families have all sorts of circumstances. To help with the household finances, I started earning a monthly wage at an early age.
While I am technically a student even today, the only ‘student life’ I experienced in the conventional sense was limited to attending elementary school and briefly going to a private academy; any reading or study I pursued thereafter was done alongside other work, and I have received no formal schooling since then, my education has been entirely self-taught. Around the age of seventeen or eighteen, I enjoyed reading the works of Rai San’yō and Arai Hakuseki; notable examples included Sanyō Ikō (Posthumous Manuscripts of Sanyō), Sanyō Shishō (Selected Poems of Sanyō), Dokushi-ron (Essays on Reading History), Oritaku Shiba no Ki (Told Around a Brushwood Fire), and Hankanpu (Genealogical Records of the Feudal Lords). However, I came to dislike Hakuseki after I started reading the works of Ogyū Sorai.
When I was around twenty years old, the Ministry of Education issued a call for textbook submissions; the prize money was one thousand yen, a huge sum, so, thinking it would be a tremendous achievement to win, I boldly decided to enter the competition and immediately began preparations. At that time, a mathematician named Kawakita Asachika was living in Shizuoka. A former Army instructor and a true scholar, he owned a vast collection of excellent books, which he made available for loan through a certain secondhand bookstore. I used to go there to borrow various volumes, such as the Shiseki Shūran (Collection of Historical Records), and would read them avidly in preparation for writing the textbook. However, I became so engrossed in the reading itself that the submission deadline passed before I had even produced a draft.
However, having read a great many books on history during that time, I developed a profound interest in the subject. It occurred to me that, while San’yō made his mark on the world through his historical writings, a person need only pour their full energy into a single pursuit and excel at it, for that alone is enough. I, too, became fiercely determined to make my way in the world through historical writing.
At the time, I held a minor official post; however, I began studying classical Chinese under a scholar named Okumura Ōson, I would diligently visit his home whenever I had spare time, whether in the morning or after returning from the government office. He may not have been much of a scholar in the conventional sense, but he was a man of impeccable character, possessing a truly scholarly temperament and utterly devoid of any concern for profit or loss. He was completely indifferent to tuition fees; whether one brought a large sum or a small one, he would accept it silently without comment. There were even some truly shameless individuals who would bring a mere fifty sen or so during the mid-year and year-end gift seasons yet expect him to provide them with clothing as well. The professor owned a vast number of books and would lend them to anyone; indeed, he lent them out so freely that, for any given title, one or two volumes were invariably missing, and it was rare to find a complete set. I, too, used to borrow and read those books.
Coming from the sort of background I mentioned earlier, I began learning English at a very early age; just as I was entering elementary school and learning the Japanese syllabary, my parents were already teaching me the ABCs, and I read books like Parley’s Universal History alongside my elementary school readers. Although I made considerable progress in this way, I eventually stopped for a time, and consequently, I ended up forgetting most of it. Of course, I had not taken the initiative when I first began learning it; by the time I came to understand the world a little better and felt a pressing need to study a foreign language, I had already forgotten what I had previously learned, and, moreover, I was so occupied with household duties that I could not study as I wished.
There was a school called the Shizuoka English School, which was something like one of the earliest schools of its kind. Takagi Ōtarō and others attended this school. Nōbe, who served as governor of Tochigi Prefecture, Muramatsu, who is now an administrator at Azabu Middle School, and Shibue Tamotsu were among the teachers there at the time. Most of the people who have since distinguished themselves in Shizuoka are alumni of that school. I, too, attended and studied there for a while, but if I had to characterize it, I learned very little in the classroom; the rest was self-study. Consequently, my pronunciation differs significantly from the standard even now. The authors I most enjoyed reading were Macaulay, Carlyle, and Emerson; I read Macaulay’s essays so avidly that I practically wore out the pages. I read those books with such intense devotion that their ideas became deeply ingrained in my mind; even now, it seems that those thoughts exert the greatest influence over me.
My acquaintance with Tokutomi Sohō began under rather peculiar circumstances. At the time, I was resolved to make my mark in the world through historical writing; however, I found no satisfaction in remaining a tedious minor government official. Determined to go to Tokyo to further my studies, I wrote to Sohō, though it may seem amusing, to recommend myself. I explained that I aspired to establish a career through my writing; while I believed my greatest asset was my proficiency in foreign languages, I felt that by working as a journalist, I could successfully build a life for myself. I wrote to him explaining that I wanted to go to Tokyo but was concerned that such a sudden move might cause significant trouble, so I was consulting him about it. Sohō replied promptly, stating that since he was merely a student himself, he couldn’t immediately arrange anything specific, but if the opportunity arose for me to come to the capital, he would certainly be willing to discuss the matter with me. We exchanged letters occasionally after that, but we did not actually meet until quite some time after I had first arrived in Tokyo. I had come to Tokyo intending to prepare to become a pastor, though I did not actually enroll in a seminary or anything of the sort, because I had been attending a Christian church in Shizuoka and had been baptized in 1886, and the pastor there had earnestly urged me to become a missionary.
I hadn’t originally intended to pursue this path, but I was so earnestly urged to do so that I eventually decided to give it a try; consequently, I traveled to Tokyo to make the necessary preparations. At that time, I confided in Sohō for the first time, explaining that although I had previously aspired to make my living through writing, I now intended to abandon that entirely and become a minister. Sohō, however, disagreed. He argued that such a course was unwise, pointing out that many religious figures in the West had also been accomplished writers. He told me that while he wouldn’t tell me not to become a minister, giving up writing would be a waste of my potential. He advised me to engage in evangelism while continuing to write.
After spending about a year in Tokyo, I returned to the countryside and spent roughly two years preparing for the ministry; however, I concluded that someone of my impulsive and straightforward nature was unfit to be a pastor. I therefore firmly abandoned the idea of entering the ministry and resolved instead to make my way in the world through historical writing. I returned to Tokyo at the age of twenty-six. At that time, writers such as Ozaki Kōyō, Kōda Rohan, Yamada Bimyō, and Miyazaki Kōshōshi had already achieved great renown and established themselves as masters, despite being young men of the Meiji era, a phenomenon I found truly rare in the annals of history.
At that time, I moved to Tokyo to become the editor-in-chief of a magazine called Gokyō (Defender of the Faith); I suddenly found myself cast in the role of a ‘master’ or authority figure, writing extensively for newspapers and magazines. Although I knew very little back then, there were evidently people who knew even less than I did, for there were those who actually read my work, so I continued to study even while holding that position of authority; indeed, to this day, I continue to learn with the mindset of a student.
The studies I pursued in my youth were not undertaken systematically through formal schooling; my reading lacked any particular order, it was simply a matter of reading whatever caught my fancy. My reading habits as a child were utterly haphazard. I loved buying books and did so frequently, though my choices were dictated by the money I had on hand: if I received five sen from home, I bought a five-sen book; if I received ten sen, I bought a ten-sen book. I still remember buying and reading works like Inkyō (Mirror of Rhymes) and Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders) simply because I had acquired them. I had read most of the well-known kusazoshi (illustrated storybooks) of the time, including Inaka Genji, though I found them rather uninteresting, as they seemed to feature little more than a parade of female characters. However, as I have mentioned before, I was born into a family of mathematicians and inherited that trait; combined with the influence of the Japanese tales I read in childhood, my mind is inherently scientific. I believe I am sorely lacking in the literary sensibility required to appreciate poetry and the like through an emotional lens.
