THE INFLUENCE OF FRENCH GYMNASTICS ON THE FORMULATION OF MODERN JAPANESE PHYSICAL EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE MEIJI ERA.

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This research is concemed with following two points. One of which is the contents of French Gymnastics which were introduced into Japan during the end of the Edo period and to the Meiji era. The other is their influence on the growth of the modern physical education in Japan.In 1866, a party of French military advisers, whose leader was Charles Sulpice Chanoine, were called in by the Tokugawa Shogunate, and they brought in the French Army's textbook on gymnastics instruction "Ministere de la guerre (1st Ed.1847) : Instruction pour l'enseignement de la gymnastique". The contents of this book can be classified roughly as follows : exercices elementaires (exercices plus particulierement propres a l'assouplissement ; equilibres ; developpment elementaire de la force des muscles ; exercices du chant), and exercices d'application (franchir des fosses, des ravins, etc. ; escalades ; courses ; voltige). They also contained the designs, layout and descriptions of 31 kinds of gymnastic apparatus … More es, for example baares parallieles fixes, cheval, perche, octgone, etc. From them, the French advisers adopted some of the gymnastics and instructed Japanese soldiers in them as their training. "Mokuba no Sho" is about the Wooden Horse exercise and a translation of part of the "Instruction". The translator, Hayashi Shojuro, was a professor at Kaiseisho and also acted as interpreter for the Japanese army at that time. His translation is faithful to the original, so the book is highly estimated. In addition, it is recognized as the first definitive study of the modern Japanese physical education.The adoption of French gymnastics by the party motivated its study in Japan, and it was taken over by some official military organizations, for example Osaka naval academiy (Osaka heigakuryo) or Toyama naval academy (Rikugun Toyama Gakko) etc. Consequently, many books about French gymnastics were translated into Japanese. From these translations, the Ministry of Education nominated "Taisou no Sho" as a school textbook in 1874 (Meiji 7) and "Taisou Kyouhan" as a military guidebook in 1875 (Meiji 18). Both of them had a great influence on the evolution of modern Japanese physical education system in the Meiji era. Less