Traditional Childhood Met the Sudden Arrival of Western Schooling
Life in late nineteenth-century Imabari centered on traditional crafts, private Yamabushi tutors, and unheated paper-partitioned classrooms. Schoolboys practiced calligraphy on black-soaked copybooks and calculated sums on wooden abacus frames before government reforms introduced American-style textbooks. Domestic habits required meticulous skills, from cooking rice to enduring freezing rooms with foot-warming hearths. Shigemi reveals a world where discipline meant holding bowls of water steady and personal devotion was expressed through clay shrines.
CHAPTER I. → CHAPTER V.
