Investigation on the English Textbooks Listed in the <I>Annotated Library Catalogue of Aichi Daiichi Secondary School</I> (1997)

Abstract

The Catalogue (1997) is a compiled list of the books which have been housed in the library of Aichi Prefectural Asahi-gaoka High School since its foundation at early Meiji Era. It consists of two divisions : Japanese and Chinese classics and Western books. The division of Western books lists 943 books, of which 21 books are German and all others are English.Based on thorough investigation of the Catalogue, some noteworthy facts in the history of English learning have been recognized. Firstly, from the inscription of ownership stamp (s) on each book, we can tell when it was added to the school library. It has been confirmed that 33 books were transfered from or disposed by some institutions like Imperial College of Technology, Daigaku-nankou or Kaisei-gakkou in Tokyo.Secondly, the ownership stamps are also helpful to find out the textbooks used and the details of teaching at school back in the Meiji Era. Shoyo Tsubouchi and Setsurei Miyake, for example, wrote in their memoirs that they used a textbook with many sentences extracted from Shakespeare's works. We can safely infer that the textbook was probably one of Willson's Readers', namely M. Willson's The Third or The Fifth Reader of the School and Family Series (1860), both of which bear the stamps of their alma mater, Aichi English School, which is the name of the school when they studied there.Thirdly, some additional information of the 'imported' books tells us that many of them were imported by Haltry in Osaka and Yokohama foreign residents. Others were imported or published by Z. P. Maruya & Co., Tokyo.Lastly, 'Teachers' Library' published by A. S. Barnes & Co. in America is included. The Ministry of Education at early Meiji Era had a positive policy of importing this library and translating it into Japanese. In the Catalogue, we can identify seven books from 'Teachers' Library'.