<論文>国定修身書における二つの家族像 : 「小さく不完全な大人」と「子ども」の併存

Abstract

This paper aims to examine how families, particularly in terms of the relationships between parents and young children, are described in text-books on morals used in Japanese primary schools in the years between 1904-1940. These text-books may be considered as an appropriate source of images of the family for school children in those days. The text-books described two types of families. The first type is where both parents and children were engaged in labor as contributors to the household economy. The second type is where children were taken care of and educated by their parents and enjoyed talking with them during meals. The latter type echoes descriptions of the modern family in social history research from European countries. We cannot conclude that these two contradictory images of the Japanese family were confused in the text-books. When the 'pre-modern' type is described, Leading characters are famous persons from before the Meiji era. By contrast, the leading characters in accounts of families of the 'modern' type, are fictional. However, they are contemporary with the pupils' social reality. We therefore conclude that in the text-book model of the 'ordinary' Japanese family, domestic life was centred on mutual enjoyment, and that parents had an affectionate and nurturing attitude toward their children.