Resumen de Reformpädagogik aus dem Osten? Körperauffassung und Körpererziehung
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Reformpädagogik movement exerted considerable influence on Japan. The new Western educational concepts were adopted quite smoothly despite the vast differences between the two cultures. What are the main reasons for this smooth adoption? Two plausible answers to this question have been suggested so far. The first answer claims that there is nothing extraordinary about the phenomenon since Japan adopted, in a highly selective fashion, only methodological concepts. Cultural differences, therefore, did not play an important role and any elements that might have proved difficult to adopt because of differing cultural backgrounds were filtered out in advance. The second answer stresses a cultural contingency, the predominance of a Buddhist sect whose doctrines were compatible with those of the Protestantism favoured by most proponents of educational reform in German-speaking countries. The Japanese educators who adopted Western teachings were either close to this Buddhist sect or were Christians to begin with. Is it possible to propose a third answer to the question of why Japan adopted the new educational ideas so smoothly? The heyday of the Reformpädagogik movement in Europe coincided with a wave of orientalism. Since the new educational concepts were already steeped in Eastern ideas, they may have been all the easier to adopt in Japan for this reason. The author analyses Das Werdende Zeitalter, a sister magazine of Pour l'ère nouvelle and The New Era, in order to examine this potential connection.
