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OOSUGI Yuka Faculty of Sports and Health Science Department of Sports Science Professor

■ Title
A statistical analysis of long-term data related to not-school attendance in prewar Japan: Focusing on rights of children and disparities among them caused by gender and residential areas

■ Outline
The cabinet order of primary schools in prewar Japan permitted exemption and postponement of school attendance in compulsory education for poor children and disabilities and would not guarantee the right of education among children equally. In spite of it, rates of not-school attendance improved in the long term. However, there were many different ways of decreasing the rates among prefectures until the1910s. On the contrary, the trend of rates changed and indicated negligible numbers in the middle of 1920s in almost all of Japan because of the spread of district welfare commissioners and revised The Factory Acts to prohibit manufacturers from using children under 14 years old. Therefore, problems related to not-school attendance became to be considered as trivial one after then. Though the numerical values of not-school attendance did not reflect the real situations in which there were many illiterates, on the other hand, they proved socio-economic circumstances then, gender bias and disparities of educational conditions among prefectures. Many previous studies of not-school attendance in prewar Japan focused only on the trends of national average or tended to concentrate on situations of certain mega-cities and would not show the differences and disparities among prefectures. This research tried to clarify regional disparities from the view of long-term school statistics from 1910 to 1937 and brought out the fact that there were serious rates in not only mega-cities but also remote areas far from the central government of Japan. At the same time, we can see more terrible facts about not-school attendance in Taiwan, which was a Japanese colonial area. Moreover, we can find tragedies that economic recession pushed up rates of not-school attendance even in the end of 1920s especially in prefectures whose rates were worse than the national average.
On one hand, disparities between male pupils and female ones in rates of not-school attendance had dwindled for a long time and almost disappeared until the end of the 1920s for changing industrial structure from light industry to heavy industry and female school-attendance increased. After the 1930s, male rates of it became higher than female ones in many prefectures. It seemed reflection of lessening gender bias, although it was untrue and rather than expression of gender discrimination among disabilities. The Japanese central government had been inactive to reform such as disparities and discrimination in general and continued to take irresponsible attitude to prefectures in prewar time.
Single Social-Human Environmentology Social-Human Environmentology Society (28),pp.25 2022/03