[Tangozu + Rengozu].

School screen

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Tokyo, Monbusho1874 (Meiji 7). Folding screen, a byobu, of six panels; paper over a timber frame. Each panel is 176x64cm, ie it's close enough to four metres opened right out. Each panel has a Tangozu wall chart mounted above a Rengozu chart, with colour woodcuts, numbered one to six. Each chart is about 77x54cm, some a bit larger or smaller. The back is patterned green paper printed by stencil or block. Bugs have been busy in places but only in the mounting paper, not the charts. Some holes or bashes in the back of the first panel - what would be the front cover if you imagine this as a book - have been repaired with Japanese tissue. Browning. The holes are mostly down low, where small children or errant bits of furniture operate. This was made as a six panel screen, it is complete with the black timber border strips at each end. And it was made by professionals. It's possible that whoever ordered it decided that more plants and animals were a waste of time but it's more likely another panel would make it too large and cumbersome for the space they had. When I bought this I thought the photos showed it sitting on a table and the dimensions were of the whole screen opened out. I realised I was wrong when I got the bill for shipping. What I thought was a table mat was a floor rug. These are the elementary school wall word charts (Tangozu) and collocation or phrase charts (Rengozu) issued by the Ministry of Education. There were eight of each produced but six is what made it on to this extraordinary piece of furniture. I can only guess it was made to divide a classroom. Charts seven and eight of the Tangozu series were plants and animals. The various editions and versions of the Shogaku Nyumon and similar elementary primers show that these wall charts were used, revised and adapted for some years. The miniature versions in the books are changed and reorganised but these originals can still be recognised; who could mistake that hairpiece and nose? Included with the screen is an 1875 edition of the teachers' Shogaku Nyumon with a date stamp showing that it was still being used fifteen or twenty years later. Commercial colour woodcuts of the charts in use were also produced by canny publishers: teacher pointing and attentive kids on the floor. The charts were exaggerated so that they could still teach even in such reduced form. Kiyochika did at least three in 1874. "The lower elementary school curriculum established by the Normal School stipulated that students should first study vocabulary using wall charts such as word charts and collocation charts, as a prelude to learning materials like the Elementary School Reader . The eight word charts published in 1873 were created by the Normal School editorial office, a liberal faction that actively sought to absorb Western civilization. They incorporated Pestalozzi's educational philosophy and focused on illustrations to allow children to understand intuitively through their own eyes. The first and second word charts were designed to teach historical kana spelling, while the third through eighth word charts were written in kanji or katakana, allowing children to learn the properties and uses of familiar objects through a question-and-answer format. However, the following year, 1874, a revised edition was published by the Ministry of Education, and the Normal School version was discontinued after just one year. Looking specifically at the revised sections, out of the 210 words, there are four changes to the word itself and 29 changes to spelling." (A rough translation from 'Dictionaries and Beyond' published online by Sanseido. They illustrate it with images from one of the elementary books, not the charts). Pretty much every reference I can find works from the books and prints rather than original charts. The Library of Congress has both sets of eight Department of Education charts. The Miyaki Library at Tsukuba University has six very similar but not identical Tangozu charts mounted on.

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• Titolo: [Tangozu + Rengozu].
• Condizione: very good