| The movement of Chinese overseas students in Japan launched in the end of Qing Dynasty is not the earliest in the history of Modern Chinese studying abroad. But it is a movement having historical influence on Chinese modern education history and relationship between China and Japan with a grandly large number and rare scale. From the perspective of China, it was s a special overseas experience ranging from knowledge, habits and customs to some many other fields. For Japan, it was the first time of accepting such large scale of foreign cultural exchange tour. Lots of adjustments were made by Qing government during this period that also caused a enormous cultural shock.A general survey of modern Chinese history points to the fact that there are three main factors contributing to the upsurge of Chinese overseas students in Japan during the late Qing Dynasty:the establishment of Embassy in Japan by the Qing government, the first batch of Chinese overseas students in Japan in1896, and Japanese educator Kano Jigoro. In the research community of history of Chinese studying abroad, the first batch of Chinese overseas students in Japan, generally considered to originat in1896. In the1880s, given the fact that Embassy in Japan began to recruit school-age youths and sent them to Dongwen Guan to set inside of Embassy in Japan. These students entered the diplomatic circles and madeindelible contributions to many kinds of negotiations between Qing government and Japan.In the late Qing Dynasty, Japan, as a receiver of Chinese overseas students, was sending a large number of Japanese students to Europe and America affected by the trend of "Make Japan rich and build up its military might" and "Depart from Asia to Europe". Therefore, Chinese overseas students’ arrival was not expected by the Japanese and Japan did not foresee any significance of educating Chinese overseas students in Japan. Meanwhile, Japanese educator Kano Jigoro accepted the appointment of Foreign Minister Saionji Kinmochi and fulfilled his duty of educating the first batch of Chinese overseas students under the less-than-perfect educationalconditions. Due to limited conditions, not all the students managed to graduate though, but education for fthe irst batch of Chinese overseas students was still widely acknowledged and highly esteemed by the Qing government. Since then, the Qing government stipulated that for all those who studied abroad with official financial support, thereout, it had been a surge of Chinese studying abroad. Meanwhile, schools of receiving and educating Chinese overseas students in Japan sprung up, with Hongwen School as "base camp" playing a key role of receiving and educating Chinese overseas students in Japan.Normal education and crash education were initiated in Hongwen School. In order to enable students to learn Japanese comprehensively, teaching was conducted with the absence of class interpreter in normal education. Due to the shortterm of crasheducation, the school provided assistant interpreters to teach students. In terms of some subjects like arithmetic which requested logical way of thinking instead of typical memorizing and reciting, it was quite hard for Chinese overseas students who had received traditional Chinese education.At the same time, the inadequate of Japanese understanding made it even more difficult for the students to learn modern subjects. To overcome these difficulties, both of Hongwen School and students made tough efforts to improve learning results. Hongwen School reallocated studying time of all subjects with prolonging studying hard subjects and eased learning burden for students as possible as they can. Through joint efforts of the school and the students, learning efficiency improved significantly. Since then, Hongwen kept a stable increasing proportion of students entering schools of higher grade in normal education. For students with crash education, Kano Jigoro, the headmaster, drew upon his his personal resources byinviting lots of distinguished scholars and teachers to joinHongwen in its effort to train teachers. A large majority of Chinese overseas students studying in Japan became educators after they came back to China, which helped to improve teachers’ quality schools at all levels and expanded the team of teachers. It is really a great contribution to China modern education.In the processing of teaching Japanese to China overseas students, Hongwen created a system of Japanese teaching and Chinese overseas students contributed positively to this system, which was a terrific example of teaching benefiting both teachers and students in Japan educational history. However, objectively, there were some discrepancies about Japanese learning between Hongwen school and Chinese overseas students. Hongwen’s teaching focused on language ability to listening and speaking, which deviated from students’expectation of reading learning and did not get students’attention. Affected by Liang Qichao’s idea "learning Japanese through Chinese",s tudents paid attention to reading learning considering no importance of abilibity to listening and speaking and tried their best to get instant educational results. The disadvantage of this crash expectation of learning came out soon, as students not only had to learn Japanese language within limited time but also acquire knowledge of other sciences. Since students had little time for Japanese listening and speaking, they could not learn Japanese culture and society widely and deeply. It seriously caused misunderstandings and conflicts between China overseas students in Japan and Japanese society at that time.Though, due to the fact there were different kinds of persons in such a large group of Chinese overseas students in Japan, to some extent, students were influenced by Japanese culture through school daily life in Japan. At the same time, Japanese society placed discrimination against students’action lack of consistence, the Qing dynasty clothing and hair in plaits; due to confined living space, noise issue and difference of food culture&cutoms and habits and ineffective communication, all these caused problems to Chinese overseas students living in Japan. Some students tended to go to a small Chinese living communities to avoid conflicts with Japanese society. Therefore, in these communities relatively isolating from Japanese society, some students started to gabbling, whoring and hopping up with opium in boarding schools. Furthermore, some media in Japan like newspaper reported these phenomenona deviating greatly from facts, terrible images of students had been left in Japanese’s mind. It sped up isolation by Japanese to students, from this point, Chinese overseas students began to go far from Japanese society. As above, these isolated students in Japan were facing all sorts of life difficulties and left anti-Japanse sentiments in their minds.Judging from the the position of Japan, in the early days when students came to Japan, both government and Japanese people, to some extent, held a warm welcoming and friendly attitudes towards them. In1903, since Secret Letter of Caijun, students went out on strike, hereby Japanese society had sympathy for them. With burgeoning students and some of them behaved badly, such as being addict to opium, whoring and gabbling, which get Japanese society turned from friendly and pitiful attitude to criticism. It went even worse when students launched a anti-movement towards that Japanese issued regulations banning all the boarding places in Japan for students in1905. With media like newspapers and magazines amplifying the bad image of students, fling abuses opened from both of Japanese and Chinese, Chinese overseas students in Japan were in a dilemma.In terms of exam results of overseas students in1906, Japanese society voiced to criticize schools teaching in Japan. Especially for crash educational teaching, it is considered as being of low quality. It led to that the decision of the Qing government to stop sending students for instant education in Japan. Instant educational students was a great proportion of Chinese overseas students in Japan, so movements of studying abroad ended up with action of stopping sending students to Japan for instant education. For schools in Japan, also faced a dilemma.In the aspect of relationship between students and school, actually, there was a giant gap between them though they were supposed to be a relationship of relying on each other, the gap was digged by times of argument by Kano Jigoro and Yangdu. On the one hand, students were against Kano’s assertion of obedient education, regarding that he was a tongue of Qing Government to do slaved education to students. On the other hand, due to limitation of the times,effected by Mainland Policy(The policy’s major aim was to conquer Japan’s neighboring countries like Korea and China, dominate East Asia,according to Chinese historians,even the world.),Kano educated students with center of theory China and Japan were mutually dependent. It is key reason to be hard to form a reliable relationship between school and students. Reviewing history of studying abroad in late Qing dynasty, the changed attitudes from Chinese and Japanese towards students and schools, opposition between students and school, all these became added fuel to fire out Chinese overseas students movement.At present, more than one hundreds of years passed, speaking of the relationship between China and Japan, we may say two countries have a long historical standing, separated by just a strip of water. Sometimes, people might say two are of the same culture and race although there are some disputes, misunderstandings and conflicts between the two countries. Since time of late Qing, all these have hardly changed. However, no matter they like or dislike each other, it is also a fact that the two countries need each other. Nowadays, the number of Chinese students overseas students in Japan is increasing greatly, they will learn similarities and differences of China and Japan and assure the possibility of cross-cultural exchanges. Hopefully, this dissertation on the Chinese students overseas in Japan Movement would have some implications for the interaction and cooperation between China and Japan in Century21st. |
