‘Educational Affairs Annual Report, for the years 1905 (Meiji 38) to 1915 (Taishō 4)’
Document Summary
This document is a collection of the Annual Reports submitted to the Minister of Education from the dean of the Tokyo Academy of Music, and has been bound into a single document.[１]
The entries recorded include information on the general situation, official regulations, facilities, the school building and grounds, the employment and wages of the staff members, information about the students and graduate destinations, and so on.
In the ‘Overview’ section of 1905’s (Meiji 38) document, it is recorded that “On May 3rd, his highness Karl Anton von Hohenzollern of the German royal family came to the academy and listened to the performances of the staff and students”. Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern (1868−1919) was a member of the Kingdom of Prussia’s Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen nobility, and came to Japan as a spectating military officer in connection with the Russo–Japanese War. Also, for this Russo–Japanese War, Colonel Pertev Paşa (Pertev Demirhan, 1871−1964) of the Ottoman Empire’s military also came to Japan as a spectating officer for the Japanese military but, in his memoir and diary, it is written that he rode the same boat as Prince Karl Anton from Egypt to Japan.[２] However, as for Prince Karl Anton’s visit to the Tokyo Academy of Music and information of the concert on that day, this entry from the Annual Report document is, at present, the only piece of evidence surviving at this university related to this event. It was not even included in the Hyakunenshi (100 Year History) publication of Tokyo University of the Arts, so this information still needs to be researched in detail from now.
From the Annual Report for 1907 (Meiji 40) in the “Regulations” section, the Committee for the Compilation of Songs and the Hōgaku Investigation Committee that was established in October that year and for the Music Terminology Investigation Committee, established in January 1908 (Meiji 41), the following information is reported:
- Committee for the Compilation of Songs aimed to compile collections of songs, as well as it was in the middle of deciding from the collected songs which would be used as materials for the songs and texts that would be used as school songs for middle-school students.
- Hōgaku Investigation Committee aimed to preserve and investigate Hōgaku music, and commission technical specialists from each of the Hōgaku schools to re-investigate Heikyoku, Itchū, Tomimoto, Kiyomoto, Nagauta, etc.
- Music Terminology Investigation Committee, mainly aimed to translate and investigate the musical vocabulary that was necessary for the teachers at the academy, and was in the middle of investigating written materials that were to be compiled into a reference list for music vocabulary.
From 1908 (Meiji 41), in the “Overview”[３] sections, the Hōgaku Investigation Committee’s progress and reports on the repertoire performed in public etc. are especially covered in detail.
In the 11 years covered by this document, there is a consistent complaint about the poor condition of the academy’s facilities in the “Facilities” sections. The school building, built in 1890 (Meiji 23), was also described as “old fashioned”, “small in scale”, “faulty”, and “dangerous”. The acoustics for singing and instrumental playing could be heard extremely easily from other rooms and disturbed the studies of classes. Also, there were several educational difficulties such as the need for a concert hall that could hold around 2,000 people,[４] and several students were using pianos for 12 hours a day in rotation, every day.[５] There are also complaints that, despite there being several unusable instruments, they could not be replaced and repaired as was necessary. In the academy’s records of the staff’s work-related travel activities, there appears to be a director of the students’ field trips listed and it can also be seen that the students travelled to Shizuoka, Enoshima, and Hakone on these trips.
Information about the Digitalisation Work
- The condition of the original document: there is a title page cover for each of the Annual Reports contained in the document. The contents are bound together for each year or particular sections. The paper size is approximately between B5 and A3 sizes. Regardless of the report contents, every year uses the same kind of paper. Paper discolouring and deterioration are not correlated with the age of each Annual Report, but rather seem to depend on the quality of the paper used.
A large part of the document was written with brush and Asian black ink, but it can be seen that some parts of 1915’s (Taishō 4) report was written with a fountain pen in blue ink. Corrections were done by the affixing of correction papers, written with a brush in Asian black ink. Red ink was mainly used for supplementary explanations. Overall, there are no signs of insect damage or serious deterioration; it can be said that the document has been preserved well and is in good condition.
- About the scanning: the corners of the paper are often curved so it was scanned while being flattened out. As for the pages being removed from the binding, only those that could be returned to their original condition were taken out from the binding and scanned; others were scanned without being removed from the binding and in their original state of being folded in two. The correction papers were scanned separated into images so that the corrected state and also the pre-correction state can be understood.
- Image-correction method: about the image colour, the brightness of the image was first decided by placing the document under the workroom’s fluorescent light and, where the page seemed dark or difficult to read, the image’s colour tones and resolution were corrected individually. Adobe Photoshop’s image-correction functions were used for this. It was endeavoured to make sure that sections of the original document that were under the same content headings (content written on the same sheet of paper) had the same image-correction settings, but, as the original document’s colour was of an uneven nature, there was not an overall adjustment of the image-correction settings that could suit all the pages of the document as a whole.
Work undertaken by: Yuasa Nozomi (specially appointed specialist for the Tokyo University of the Arts Digital Archive) (also author of this “Information about the Digitalisation Work” section).
Time period over which the work was undertaken: July–November 2016.
Machine used: Epson ES-H7200.
Number of pages scanned: 324.
Scan settings: 24bit mode, 600 dpi.
Adobe Photoshop Resolution: Between 610 and 622 dpi.
[１]The reports for 1905 (Meiji 38) and 1906 (Meiji 39) are the same as those from previous years in that they start from September 11th and end in September 10th of the following year. From 1907 (Meiji 40) the report starts from April 1st and ends on March 31st.
[２]Yokoi Toshihide “Aru Torokogunjin no Nihonjinron (1) Nichirosensou Kansenbukan Peteve Pasha no Mita Nihon”, A Turkish Officer Pertev Paşa’s Observation on Japan (1), Toyamadaigaku Kokusaikyōyōgakubukiyou , vol.4（2008.03）pp.165-174. Also, on the homepage of Kyoto’s Hotel , the chronological table “Meiji 34 (1901)nen – Meiji 43 (1910)nen” (information taken from “Kyōto Hoteru 100nenmonogatari”) it is recorded that “On October 22nd 1904 his highness Karl Anto[n] von Hohenzollern of the German royal family came to the Ministry of the Imperial Household by horse carriage. April 22nd 1905 his highness Kaninnomiya and his highness prince Anton of the German royal family came to Kyōto and came to the Ministry.” (http://www.kyotohotel.co.jp/100th/photo_nenpyo/nenpyo02.html)
[３] This section title became “Gaiyou” rather than “Gaikyō”, from the first year of the Taishō era (1912).
[４] For the report for 1912 (Taishō 1) there was the following appeal: “The Sougakudō should increase scale to allow an audience capacity of over 2000 people”. In 1915’s (Taishō 4) report it is noted “ The Sougakudō becoming a suitable facility for the accommodation of an audience capacity of around 3000 people is a pressing and urgent task.
[５] The explanations on the situation of the usage of pianos, number of hours used etc. changes a little depending on the year.
English Translation by Thomas Cressy
Contents developed by KAMURA,Tetsuro
Educational Affairs Annual Report
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