He was born in the castle town of the Takatō domain in Shinano, the son of a domain samurai. His father was a low-ranking samurai with a small stipend, and the family is said to have been very poor. Growing up amid hardship, the boy resolved to make his way through learning. He would later leave great work in the teaching of music and speech.
He entered the Shintokukan, the Takatō domain school, and began his studies. Though it was the school of a small domain, he studied hard and discovered the joy of learning. What he learned there became the foundation for later going to Edo and Tokyo to take on new fields of study.
He went to Edo and studied English with Nakahama Manjirō, who had lived in America after being shipwrecked. When Manjirō went abroad, he continued studying English with an American missionary living in Tsukiji. He also studied Dutch learning in Kyoto and later, recommended by his domain, entered the Daigaku Nankō.
After working at the Ministry of Education, he became principal of the normal school in Aichi Prefecture. At its attached kindergarten he began singing games in which children played while singing Japanese children's songs. The idea of raising children through song was the first step toward his later work in music education.
To study normal-school education, he went to America with Takamine Hideo and others and studied at a normal school in Massachusetts. There he learned how to teach music from the music educator Luther Mason, and is thought to have encountered songs that later became the basis of Japanese school songs.
In America he learned methods of teaching pronunciation to people who had difficulty speaking from Graham Bell. When Bell invented the telephone, he is said to have visited Bell's lodgings with Kaneko Kentarō and tried a call. It is said to have been the first time the telephone was used in a language other than English.
After also studying science and chemistry at Harvard and researching the education of people with hearing and speech disabilities, he returned to Japan. Building on the knowledge from his studies abroad, he set to work bringing new teaching methods into Japanese schools, from normal-school instruction to music and physical education.
He became principal of the Tokyo Normal School and was appointed head of the Music Investigation Committee, preparing to bring Western music into schools. He invited his teacher Mason to Japan and worked with him to find a form of music education suited to the Japanese. He also submitted a plan for the music research to the education minister Terashima Munenori.
With Mason he compiled the Shōgaku Shōkashū, a collection of songs for school, and its first volume appeared. Many songs set Japanese lyrics to Western melodies, and the tune of Chōchō, still sung today, is thought to have come to Japan in this way. It was the beginning of a culture of singing at school.
He became principal of the Tokyo Music School and also of the Tokyo School for the Blind and Deaf, where children with visual or hearing disabilities studied. He later formed an education association and threw himself into a campaign for state subsidies for elementary school costs. Seeing education as a pillar of the nation, he kept urging its improvement.
When Taiwan came under Japanese rule after the First Sino-Japanese War, he crossed to Taiwan and became head of educational administration. He opened a school at Zhishanyan north of Taipei and began Japanese-language education. The next year, while he was back in Japan, the school was attacked and six teachers lost their lives in a tragic incident.
After also serving in the House of Peers, he founded the Rakusekisha for people troubled by stammering and devoted himself to teaching correct pronunciation. It drew on the methods he had learned from Bell in America, and later it taught students who came from Korea, Taiwan and Hawaii.
He died of a brain illness at the age of sixty-five. His work ranged widely, from music and the education of people with disabilities to pronunciation teaching and building the national education system. The sight of children singing at school is one of the seeds he sowed, and it continues today.
Takaki KanehiroLafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo)Hoshi TōruOgino GinkoTakamura KōunKodama GentarōJosiah ConderKitasato Shibasaburō
People of the Meiji period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.