Old Mitsuke School is near this street and about 2.5 km from Iwata Station. It was a 5-storied building and looked splendid.
On the first floor, there was an old classroom. Unfortunately, they had a handbell concert inside the room, so the usual exhibits were changed. The children in olden days and their desks weren’t there. I could see only the teacher beside the blackboard.
On the second floor, however, I saw a boy studying at home. There was an abacus on the desk. It was an important work tool for a merchant family.
These children are a big sister and a little brother going to school. They have textbooks in their furoshiki or wrapping cloth.
I suppose this girl used to play with beanbags like my grandmother, who once showed me how to juggle them. She did it very well though she was around 70 at that time.
In the 19th century, school children used a slate to learn how to write. When I saw it, I remembered the episode of Anne of Green Gables in which Anne hit Gilbert with her slate.
This is an old reed organ of Yamaha. Torakusu Yamaha, the founder of the company, succeeded to make the first full-fledged reed organ in Hamamatsu in 1888.
There were also textbooks displayed according to the birth years of children. I could see those used by my grandparents. In my grandfather’s textbook, there was an episode of the childhood of Ninomiya Sontoku, a famous agrarian reformer in the Edo period. In his childhood, he was called Kinjiro, whose statue was set in the yard of every elementary school of Japan. The statue of Kinjiro reading a book while carrying firewook on his back was a symbol of diligence.
Even after the industrialization in Japan started in the Meiji period (1968 - 1912), children were busy helping their parents with their work after school. On the third floor of Old Mitsuke School, you can see old farm implements and household articles. These are baskets to carry young rice plants to rice fields. During the rice-planting and harvest seasons, children had days off from school to help with their parents’ work.
This is a thresher.
In this school, I read some essays written by children in olden days. Their handwriting and wording were like those of adults. They were incredibly mature compared with my generation and younger generations. It may be because they spent much time working with adults and learned their language. They might have much more opportunities to talk with their neighbors and relatives as well, in addition to their parents.
The life of children in the olden days was very different from our childhood. However, even the children in my grandmother’s generation enjoyed school excursions. I was very impressed by this picture taken in an excursion in 1920’s. Both children and teachers were laughing very happily, and I also felt happy to see it.
On the fifth floor, the top of the building, there was once a drum to tell the hour. Its sound could be heard even from a distance of 1 km away. From 1875, This school has been a real landmark of the town.
Old Mitsuke School
Address: 2452 Mitsuke, Iwata-shi, Shizuoka
Open hours: 9:00 - 16:30
Closed: Monday, the next day of national holidays, December 29 - January 3
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