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 Crisis and
Disaster in
Japan and
New Zealand
Actors, Victims
and Ramifications

Edited by Susan Bouterey

and Lawrence E. Marceau
Crisis and Disaster in Japan and New Zealand
Susan Bouterey • Lawrence E. Marceau
Editors

Crisis and Disaster

in Japan and New
Zealand
Actors, Victims and Ramifications
Editors
Susan Bouterey
School of Language, Social and Political
Sciences, University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Lawrence E. Marceau
School of Cultures, Languages and
Linguistics, University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand

ISBN 978-981-13-0243-5    ISBN 978-981-13-0244-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0244-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950543

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: SHUNSUKE KIKUCHI

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
The editors dedicate this volume to the victims—and the survivors—of the
tragic events of 2010 and 2011 in Japan and New Zealand.
 Acknowledgments

A project such as this is not possible to bring to fruition without extensive

support from a variety of sources. From the Auckland side, we wish to
thank the New Zealand Asia Institute, the Japan Studies Centre, and the
Faculty of Arts/Te Wānanga Kura Tāngata at the University of Auckland/
Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau for generous support of the
November 2014 workshop. Mark Mullins, Ellen Nakamura, Rumi
Sakamoto, Gary Barkhuizen, Emily Anderson, Xin Chen, and Dinah
Towle provided advice and support throughout, including chairing the
panel sessions. From the Christchurch side, we wish to thank the Handa
Foundation and Japan Society for Promotion of Science for generous sup-
port of the October 2014 workshop, and colleagues from the Centre for
Northeast Asian Studies, Tō hoku University, and Japanese Studies
Programme in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies,
University of Canterbury, for their invaluable contributions to the run-
ning of the workshop. In particular, we acknowledge co-organizer,
Takakura Hiroki, Tō hoku University and, from the University of
Canterbury side, Masa Ogino and Rachel Payne. Additionally, for the
Tokyo workshop of October 2015, we thank the Centre for Northeast
Asian Studies for the generous support as well as the organizers of the
event. We also wish to acknowledge the participants in the workshops who
are not represented in this volume but who contributed to the discussions
from which the volume arises. Without the support and contributions
from all of the above institutions and individuals, neither the workshops
nor this volume of studies would have been possible.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In terms of editing, Connie (Yue) Li of the Springer Nature Shanghai

office has provided direction and been extremely patient with the editors
as we checked and rechecked the submissions. We are very grateful to her.
Sara Crowley-Vigneau, Senior Editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s Asia Pacific
programme Global Outreach, was our first point of contact and guided us
through the initial acceptance process. We are grateful to her, and to the
anonymous readers who provided helpful feedback early on. We acknowl-
edge also the invaluable assistance provided by University of Canterbury
postgraduates, Kirsty Dunn and Erika Pander, in preparing the index for
the book.
 Contents

1 Introduction   1
Susan Bouterey and Lawrence E. Marceau

2 One Flood, Two ‘Saviours’: Takebe Ayatari’s Changing

Discourse on the Kanpō Floods of 1742  13
Lawrence E. Marceau

3 Writing Shanghai, the Atomic Bomb, and Incest:

Homelessness and Stigmatized Womanhood of Hayashi
Kyōko  23
Yuko Shibata

4 Resilience of Communities Affected by the Great East

Japan Earthquake and Restoration of Their Local
Festivals  41
Katsuhiko Takizawa

5 Foreign Residents’ Experiences of the Flyjin Phenomenon

in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake  59
Patrick Cadwell

ix
x Contents

6 The Anthropologist as Both Disaster Victim and Disaster

Researcher: Reflections and Advocacy  79
Hiroki Takakura

7 Interpretation of Development and Representation

of Disasters in Japan’s Foreign Aid Narrative 105
Akiko Horita

8 ‘The Confidence to Know I Can Survive’: Resilience

and Recovery in Post-quake Christchurch 121
Rosemary Du Plessis, Judith Sutherland, Liz Gordon, and
Helen Gibson

9 Interpreters at the Front Line: Some Reflections

on the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake 143
Susan Bouterey

10 The Challenge, the Project, and the Politics: Lessons

from Six Years of the UC CEISMIC Canterbury
Earthquakes Digital Archive 159
Paul Millar, Christopher Thomson, James Smithies, and
Jennifer Middendorf

Index 181
 Editors’ Notes

All Japanese names are written according to the standard East Asian
convention of family name first, followed by the given name. An exception
is made for those authors with Japanese names writing in English.
Macrons are included to indicate long vowels in Japanese. An exception
is made for terms found in standard English dictionaries without macrons
(e.g., Tokyo).

xi
 Notes on Contributors

Susan Bouterey is senior lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of

Canterbury where she teaches across a range of fields, including Japanese
society, culture, literature, and film. Her key areas of research are contem-
porary Japanese literature, especially women writers’ fiction, atomic bomb
literature, and contemporary Okinawan fiction. Since the 2011
Christchurch Earthquake and Great East Japan Earthquake, she has
been engaged in ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Japan and
New Zealand on disaster related issues. She is author of Medoruma
Shun on Sekai: Rekishi, kioku, monogatari (2011) and co-editor of East
Meets West: China and the World (2013).
Patrick Cadwell is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the
School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City
University. In addition, he is a member of the Centre for Translation and
Textual Studies, the cross-institutional research centre Adapt, and
INTERACT, the International Network on Crisis Translation. He
teaches classes in translation theory, terminology, research methods,
and Japanese-English economic and scientific translation. His research
interests include translation in crisis settings, the sociology of transla-
tion, and the human experience of translation technology. He previ-
ously worked as a translator in the JA>EN language pair.
Rosemary Du Plessis, Judith Sutherland, Liz Gordon, and Helen Gibson
Research Committee, Women’s Voices/Ngā Reo O Ngā Wāhine Project,
National Council of Women of New Zealand, Christchurch Branch. The
authors are feminist researchers with a wide range of experience in ­different

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

institutional settings and non-governmental organisations. They worked

with NCWNZ members and other volunteers to document women’s
earthquake experiences in Christchurch. The University of Canterbury
provided office space, research funding, and the expertise necessary to
upload research material on UC QuakeStudies, the research component of
a digital archive about the Canterbury earthquakes, their impact, and the
rebuilding of the city and the region.
Akiko Horita is an independent scholar currently based in Auckland,
New Zealand. Recent publications include “Farming for Survival and Rice
for Investment: The Intersection of Japanese Aid and Cambodian
Development,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 57.2 (2016) and “Reframing
Japan’s Aid Model: A Case Study of Technical Cooperation in Cambodia’s
Rice Sector” in Saliya De Silva, (Ed.) Developmental Dynamics:
Transforming Societies for Sustainable Futures (Saga: Economic Association
of Saga University, 2017).
Lawrence E. Marceau is senior lecturer in Japanese at the University of
Auckland. A scholar of Japan’s early modern (Edo/Tokugawa Period) lit-
erature and culture, he is the author of Takebe Ayatari: A Bunjin Bohemian
in Early Modern Japan (2004). He recently contributed a chapter, “Bunjin
(Literati) and Early Yomihon: Nankaku, Nankai, Buson, Gennai, Teishō ,
Ayatari, and Akinari” in Shirane, Suzuki, and Lurie, The Cambridge History
of Japanese Literature (2016). He is in residence over calendar year 2018
at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken),
preparing an annotated translation and introduction with full-colour
images of a seventeenth-century illustrated handscroll of Aesop’s Fables.
Jennifer Middendorf is production coordinator in the College of Arts
Digital Lab at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, overseeing the
operational aspects of the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital
Archive. Middendorf’s recent MLING thesis involves a linguistic analysis
of within-speaker syntactic persistence of the genitive alternation in spo-
ken and written monologue from two New Zealand earthquake-related
corpora—the QuakeBox corpus and the Press database—selected for their
close match of time period, geographic location, and topic.
Paul Millar is Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the College of Arts, Head
of the School of Humanities and Creative Arts, and Professor of English
Literature and Digital Humanities at the University of Canterbury,
New Zealand. He led the establishment of New Zealand’s first Digital
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
   xv

Humanities teaching programme at the University of Canterbury,

and co-directs the College of Arts Digital Lab. Following the
2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes he initiated the development of
the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive, the cultural
heritage database of stories, images, and media about the earth-
quakes’ impacts that is discussed in the chapter he co-authors.
Yuko Shibata is a research fellow at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo
and a member of the Japan National Press Club. She is the author of
Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational
Politics (2018) and the Japanese book Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Debunking a
Myth of the Hibakusha Narrative (2015). Her articles appear in both aca-
demic and popular journals in English and Japanese. She was a staff
writer at the Asahi Shimbun and published four team-authored
books in Japanese. She received a PhD from Cornell University, and
an MA from the University of Hong Kong. She has taught at univer-
sities in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
James Smithies is Director of King’s Digital Lab (KDL) at King’s
College London. He was previously senior lecturer in Digital Humanities
and associate director of the UC CEISMIC Digital Archive at the
University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and has worked in the govern-
ment and commercial IT sectors as a technical writer and editor, business
analyst, and project manager. He has recently published a monograph for
Palgrave Macmillan titled The Digital Modern: Humanities and New
Media.
Hiroki Takakura is Professor of Social Anthropology, Tohoku University,
Japan. He is an affiliate at both the Center for Northeast Asian Studies and
the Graduate School of Environmental Studies. His main research inter-
ests are human ecological adaptation and indigenous knowledge in the
Arctic, in particular, Siberia. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, he
embarked upon disaster research and visual anthropology. He is the author
of Arctic Pastoralist Sakha: Ethnography of Evolution and Microadaptation
in Siberia (2015), and contributor to the book World Anthropologies in
Practice (ed. J. Gledhill, 2016).
Katsuhiko Takizawa is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the
School of Global Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagasaki University,
Japan. He is a sociologist of religious dynamics in Mongolia and Japan.
His main works are Religion Across Borders: Religious Revival and Rise of
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Evangelicals in the Post-socialist Mongolia (Ekkyō suru shūkyō , Mongoru no

fukuinha; 2015), Disaster Damage to Intangible Folk Cultural Assets:
Ethnography of Coastal Societies in Miyagi Prefecture Affected by the Great
East Japan Earthquake (Mukei minzoku bunkazai ga hisai suru to iu koto;
co-editor with H. Takakura, 2014).
Christopher Thomson is head of the Digital Humanities programme at
the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and a co-director of the
College of Arts Digital Lab. His research interests lie at the intersection of
literary studies and digital humanities, particularly on the way digital
media technologies shape and are shaped by cultural practices. He has
recently co-published a database and website project entitled Kō mako: A
bibliography of writing by Māori in English, and an analysis of digital
media responses to the Canterbury earthquakes. His other research inter-
ests include adaptations of literature in digital media, posthumanism in
literature, and the application of text mining as a research method in the
humanities.
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Yaegaki Shrine July, 2012 44

Fig. 4.2 Hamaori Shinji July 29, 2012. (Photo by T. Inazawa) 45
Fig. 4.3 Mikoshi Parade July 29, 2012 46
Fig. 4.4 Planning map of new town 47
Fig. 4.5 Post-quake Shinmeisha Shrine. (Photo by T. Abe) 48
Fig. 4.6 Rebuilt Shinmeisha Shrine Jan. 1, 2015 49
Fig. 4.7 Lion Dance July 19, 2015 53
Fig. 4.8 Japanese Drums July 19, 2015 53
Fig. 4.9 Sōran Dance July 19, 2015 54
Fig. 6.1 Registration card given to the participants 88
Fig. 6.2 Sample form of the confirmation letter sent to interviewees 89
Fig. 6.3 Session report sheet 90
Fig. 6.4 Guidelines for saving and naming electronic files 91
Fig. 6.5 T ōshinroku project logo (design by Nakamura Chiemi) 91
Fig. 9.1 Dust clouds above Christchurch City at the time the earthquake
struck. (Photographer: Gillian Needham) 144
Fig. 9.2 Christchurch CBD post earthquake. (Fairfax Media/The Press;
Don Scott) 145
Fig. 9.3 CTV Building pre earthquake. (Photographer: Phillip Pearson) 147
Fig. 9.4 CTV Building post earthquake. (Fairfax Media/The Press; Carys
Monteath)148

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Susan Bouterey and Lawrence E. Marceau

This volume of nine chapters originated from the disasters that occurred
in New Zealand and Japan in 2010 and 2011, respectively. On 4 September
2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake,1 centred around 40 km west of the
city of Christchurch, struck the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s
South Island, causing two injuries, but no deaths in spite of the extensive
damage to buildings and other structures. Nearly six months later, on 22
February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch City and its
surrounds. This quake, while smaller in magnitude than the September
2010 event, resulted in 185 deaths, hundreds of injuries and the destruc-
tion of a major portion of the central district of what is New Zealand’s
second largest city. This was due, in part, to the epicentre’s location
beneath the city, the extreme shallowness of the quake and the intensity of
ground movement, or ‘peak ground acceleration’ (PGA). Three weeks
later, on 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off the

S. Bouterey (*)
School of Language, Social and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
e-mail: susan.bouterey@canterbury.ac.nz
L. E. Marceau
School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, University of Auckland,
Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: l.marceau@auckland.ac.nz

© The Author(s) 2019 1

S. Bouterey, L. E. Marceau (eds.), Crisis and Disaster in Japan and
New Zealand, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0244-2_1
2 S. BOUTEREY AND L. E. MARCEAU

coast of north-eastern Japan, triggering a massive series of tsunamis that

together with the earthquake killed nearly 20,000 people, injured 6000,
and fully or partially destroyed around 400,000 buildings, including
homes. The tsunami that struck the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant caused the meltdown of three of the four reactors there, and resulted
in the long-term evacuation of the population living in the vicinity of the
plant. Altogether, 340,000 people were displaced and many lost their
businesses and livelihoods as a result of this ‘triple disaster.’
These disasters have attracted scholarly interest from a range of disci-
plines and generated gatherings of experts from around the globe to
reflect on the events and share their research. In the context of this collec-
tion, three major workshops were held, one each in Auckland and
Christchurch, New Zealand, and one in Tokyo, Japan. The Auckland
workshop was titled ‘Sainan: Discourses of Disaster in Japanese Media
over Time’ and was held at the University of Auckland on 1 November
2014. It was sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and supported by the New
Zealand Asia Institute. Participants from universities in Australia, Japan,
New Zealand and the Republic of Korea shared the results of their research
into the discourses surrounding Japanese disasters, past and present, and
how various narratives of disaster have been constructed over time to
shape our understanding of what has occurred and what significance these
events might hold for us as we move into the future. In contrast, the
Christchurch workshop, held at the University of Canterbury on 30−31
October 2014, primarily focused on the recent disasters in Japan and New
Zealand, that is, the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquake sequence of
2010 and 2011, respectively, and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake,
and their ramifications, as is evident from the title for the workshop
‘Tō hoku/Christchurch: Reflections on the Socio-cultural Impacts of the
Quakes.’ The Christchurch workshop was sponsored by the Japan Society
for Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Handa Fellowship for
International Studies, and co-hosted by Japanese Studies in the Department
of Global, Cultural and Language Studies, University of Canterbury, New
Zealand, and by the Centre for Northeast Asian Studies, Tō hoku
University, Japan. Participants were from universities in Japan and New
Zealand. Finally, the Tokyo workshop was hosted by the Centre for
Northeast Asian Studies, Tō hoku University, on 24−25 October 2015,
and was titled ‘Reviewing Humanities and Social Sciences Projects after
Natural Disasters and Exploring the Role of Researchers.’2 This workshop
had a broader agenda with participants from universities in China,
 INTRODUCTION 3

Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand sharing research on natural disasters in

their respective countries and reflecting on the contributions that experts
in the humanities and social sciences can make following a disaster.
All of the chapters in this collection, with the exception of Patrick
Cadwell’s chapter on the ‘Flyjin’ phenomenon, came out of those work-
shops on disasters, and they reflect some of the diverse interests, approaches
and disciplines represented at the workshops.
How disasters are conceptualized and the meanings we ascribe to them
differ from one region and cultural, social and political space to the next
(Mauch and Pfister 2009, 9), and are shaped by our past experiences of
disaster. Over time, those experiences lead to the accumulation of a body
of knowledge which, according to Endfield et al. (2009, 305), conditions
not only how any given society conceptualizes disasters and their associ-
ated risks but also that society’s ability to anticipate the impacts of future
disasters and forge effective responses. It is our contention, and an impor-
tant driving force behind our producing this volume of studies, that expo-
sure to other cultures’ perceptions and experiences of disasters, to their
accumulated ‘disaster knowledge’ (Endfield et al. 2009), can expand glob-
ally our collective body of knowledge and thus understanding of disasters,
of their risks and potential social and cultural impacts.
Knowledge can be grounded in actual experience, but it is also con-
tained in, and conveyed to, future generations via official records, written
and oral narratives, memorials, artefacts, ceremonies and various other
forms. René Favier and Anne-Marie Granet-Abisset (2009) point to the
major role, for example, that written records and the memorialization of
past disasters have played in the acquisition of knowledge necessary to live
with recurring risks in France. It is also from this awareness of the value of
documenting past experiences—so well illustrated by our contributors—
that we have gathered together in this volume, to share with others across
the globe, nine studies written from a variety of different disciplinary per-
spectives and capturing a diverse range of experiences of, and responses to,
past crises and disasters in Japan and New Zealand, with particular
­emphasis on the catastrophes that occurred in New Zealand and Japan in
2010 and 2011, respectively.
Neither Japan nor New Zealand has been immune from disasters in the
past, given their geographic locations as island nations on the Pacific Rim’s
so-called Ring of Fire. In Chap. 2, Lawrence E. Marceau examines a series
of disasters that occurred in the early autumn of 1742, known by the
reign-era name Kanpō (1741−1744). As Marceau points out, the ‘Kanpō
4 S. BOUTEREY AND L. E. MARCEAU

Floods and Storm Surges’ were the worst floods to hit the metropolis of
Edo (present-day Tokyo) over the course of the entire Edo or Tokugawa
Period (1603−1867). Instead of providing a macro analysis of the events,
which would have been conjectural to a degree given the limited nature of
data gathering available to the Tokugawa authorities at the time, Marceau
focuses on personal accounts written by a noted author of the time, Takebe
Ayatari (1719−1774). Not only do these accounts provide detail on the
types of damage that occurred in Ayatari’s immediate vicinity, but they
also reflect his interpretation of the possible causes of the events, and his
own experience of moving to higher ground almost against his will, not
knowing that the lowlands would be flooded that night. Ayatari’s atten-
tion to detail makes for compelling reading. In addition, the fact that he
repeats his account many years later, giving it a revised interpretation,
leads readers to understand that the actual disastrous events are in the final
analysis not as important as how those events are remembered.
The most profound disasters to date in human history are arguably the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Horrendous
in nature, these bombings ushered in the ‘nuclear age,’ and have contin-
ued to serve as potent symbols of the potential annihilation of humankind
through massive nuclear exchanges. In Chap. 3, Yuko Shibata examines
the writings of Hayashi Kyō ko (1930−2017), especially those related to
her experience as a hibakusha or atomic bombing victim. Shibata explores
Hayashi’s works within the context of the intellectual currents of the day,
and from the perspective of how one can write about the unimaginable
without making the images so horrific that readers will be repelled. For
Shibata, Hayashi maintains a personal connection in her fiction, whether
the scene is Shanghai during the Japanese invasion of China, Nagasaki in
1945 or a military base in Japan during the subsequent US occupation
(1945−1952). Shibata shows that, by placing her alter ego in her narra-
tives, Hayashi is able to tell relevant stories, while at the same time main-
taining her reader’s interest.
Many small towns and villages along the northeastern coastline of Japan
were washed away or declared disaster zones unfit for habitation after the
‘triple disaster’ of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown at
the time of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many of these com-
munities not only sustained damage to physical assets such as buildings
and infrastructure as a result of the disaster but they also suffered severe,
sometimes irreparable, damage to and loss of their ‘intangible cultural
assets’ such as festivals and folk performing arts. Due, in part, to recognition
 INTRODUCTION 5

already established in Japan that they could play a role in the revival of
flagging regional economies (Takakura and Yamaguchi 2018), these folk
assets garnered considerable attention post earthquake, and central and
local governments included support for them in their disaster recovery
programmes. It was against such a background that researchers at the
Northeast Asian Studies Centre at Tō hoku University embarked on an
extensive investigation into earthquake and tsunami damage to folk cul-
tural assets in their home prefecture, Miyagi. Katsuhiko Takizawa intro-
duces the reader to some of the case studies from the investigation in
Chap. 4 and discusses some of the challenges he and fellow researchers
faced when attempting to measure the degree of damage to, and recovery
of, cultural assets that are essentially ‘intangible’ and for which, in many
cases, there were no earlier written records. The case studies serve to high-
light the importance of these cultural assets to local communities and the
social ramifications, therefore, of their loss; as one of the respondents to a
survey noted, festivals “bear the life and spirit of the community.” While
the Japanese media have often been quick, as a result, to herald the revival
of local festivals as symbolic of community and cultural recovery, Takizawa
argues for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the
reconstruction of local communities post disaster and the revival of their
traditional festivals and folk performing arts.
The ‘triple disasters’ that struck eastern Japan in March 2011 impacted
not only the Japanese population but also the foreign populations residing
in the affected regions. Chapter 5 analyses one aspect of the post-3.11
changes in society reflected in the term ‘Flyjin,’ referring to discourses
related to perceptions of foreigners leaving the country in the aftermath of
the disasters. Based on interviews with twenty-eight foreign residents of
Japan representing twelve nationalities, Patrick Cadwell explores the
increased challenges the disasters generated for the interviewees as they
interacted with Japanese in the affected areas. A common thread identified
in the interviews related to perceptions of fatalistic stoicism on the part of
the Japanese when confronted with a disaster. Such resignation to the cur-
rent situation was not shared by many of the interviewees who tended to
feel excluded by the majority population when they reacted in ways not
shared by the rest of the community. The Flyjin phenomenon highlighted
a sense that the term reflected an actual event, that is, the relocation of
non-Japanese outside the affected areas, but the fact that the term singled
out foreigners to the exclusion of Japanese who also relocated distorted
the true situation, in which some non-Japanese left temporarily, just as
6 S. BOUTEREY AND L. E. MARCEAU

some Japanese had done. The perception of being singled out as morally
inferior to the Japanese generated significant resentment on the part of
many of the interviewees.
In Chap. 6, Hiroki Takakura reflects on the dilemmas faced by Japanese
anthropologists in the wake of the 2011 disaster. In theory, they had the
expertise and disciplinary skills to make important contributions to social
and cultural recovery in the badly affected regions but, in practice, many
lacked the necessary familiarity with local sites and local dialects to do so.
The ethics of undertaking fieldwork following a disaster presented another
dilemma. As studies in traumatic memory and Shibata’s discussion in
Chap. 3 of A-bomb survivor and writer Hayashi Kyō ko illustrate, some
survivors of catastrophic events struggle to speak or write of their experi-
ences and spurn any attempt, even at their own pen, to represent their
experiences. The Great East Japan Earthquake is of a different nature to
war and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Nevertheless, Takakura describes
feeling that it was somehow disrespectful to the survivors to visit tempo-
rary shelters in the stricken areas to conduct interviews. “Should field
research be ethically allowed for the sake of science?” he queries. How
then could these researchers contribute? To address this question, Takakura
draws on his own experiences of the Great East Japan Earthquake and of
leading a Tō hoku University project aimed at recording and archiving
earthquake narratives of a broad spectrum of members of his university
community, including visiting scholars and researchers, vendors and other
visitors on campus for meetings, business and the like at the time the
earthquake struck. Applying methods from clinical psychology that are
known to have the added benefit of assisting with healing and ‘knowl-
edge,’ in total the experiences of approximately 100 people from all walks
of life were recorded. Takakura’s discussion illustrates the relevance of an
archival project focusing on one’s own community located outside the
most severely affected areas. Within this, Takakura provides a wealth of
information on how to approach and set up such a project.
We can also interpret the relationships between Japan and the countries
in East and Southeast Asia that bore the effect of Japan’s aggression and
colonization in the first half of the twentieth century as being based on
human disasters. Akiko Horita writes, in Chap. 7, about the transition
from a reparations-based foreign policy to a development-based foreign
policy by the Japanese government in the postwar era. Drawing on sources
related to the change in US strategic policy toward Japan aimed at devel-
oping the country into a strong anti-Communist ally, Horita outlines how
 INTRODUCTION 7

this change resulted in the Japanese government providing aid to Southeast

Asian nations in the form of capital goods projects, rather than direct
monetary gifts. Development aid in this form allowed Japanese industrial
corporations to rebuild and to gain a long-term presence in these coun-
tries, since the upkeep and expansion of the capital goods projects there
would require continued technical support from Japan’s corporations.
Together with the economic benefits of the development projects, issues
of industrial pollution and its negative effects on public health have
emerged as problems that the Japanese benefactors and Southeast Asian
recipients have all needed to deal with.
Discourses of resilience, a twenty-first century ‘buzzword’ and key term
in disaster response and recovery, come under interrogation in Chap. 8 by
Rosemary Du Plessis and fellow researchers. To consider the concept and
nature of resilience—arguably the “most poorly understood and least doc-
umented aspect of vulnerability in disaster” (Mitchell 2009, 336)—in the
context of the Canterbury earthquake sequence, they refer to their work
on, and stories collected in, the oral history project Women’s Voices/Ngā
Reo o Ngā Wahine. Run under the auspices of the Christchurch branch of
the National Council of Women of New Zealand, Women’s Voices/Ngā
Reo o Ngā Wahine documents earthquake stories of more than 150
Christchurch women from a broad spectrum of society. Drawing on spe-
cific women’s stories, the authors seek to address the question, “How did
women in Christchurch, New Zealand, demonstrate ‘resilience’ as they
experienced quakes and aftershocks and lived in a damaged city?” The
authors apply actor network theory (ANT) to illustrate how in the after-
math of natural hazard events, when people are frequently left to their
own devices, resilience often requires effort, ingenuity and imagination as
well as the activation of multiple social networks and relevant technolo-
gies. If the authors draw attention to women’s “resourceful, innovative,
courageous and exhausting contributions to earthquake response and
recovery,” they warn also of potential pitfalls in overly elevating the notion
of resilience as an ideal. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in
2011, media in the West marveled at Japan’s ‘resilience’ and stoicism,
deeming it quintessentially Japanese.3 Some scholars (Bulut and Kurultay
2001) suggest that this pride in their own resilience was one factor behind
Japan rejecting much needed foreign assistance following the devastating
1995 Kō be (Hanshin-Awaji) earthquake. The authors reveal that similar
discourses surrounded responses to the Christchurch earthquake4 so that
there was an expectation that Cantabrians should be ‘brilliant and resilient
8 S. BOUTEREY AND L. E. MARCEAU

and patient’ and that they too often expected this of themselves. This, the
authors argue, can obscure vulnerability after disasters and the complex
and uneven processes associated with ‘recovery.’ To this we can add a fur-
ther risk identified by Millar and co-researchers in Chap. 10: the under-
valuing of, and underinvestment in, social and cultural capital.
Among the most vulnerable and thus potentially least resilient groups
in disasters are foreign nationals, as studies in Japan have shown (Okamoto
and Sato 2016). In Chap. 9, Susan Bouterey shines a spotlight on the
often ‘invisible’ actors in, and thus a relatively little known dimension of,
disaster—the foreign language interpreters or “indispensable intermediar-
ies” (Bulut and Kurultay 2001) working at the front line assisting foreign
nationals. In our increasingly globalized world, it is not uncommon for
foreign nationals to be caught up in local disasters. Indeed, almost half of
the fatalities in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake were foreign nationals
from non-English-speaking countries. Where the victims and their families
do not speak the local language, interpreters, frequently voluntary, are
called upon to provide support for search and rescue teams, emergency
medical teams, police and other agencies. What role, asks the author, can
interpreters play post disaster, and what insights might a focus on
­interpreters give us on disasters and our capacity to respond to disasters in
a ‘global age’? To address these questions, she draws on her own experi-
ences and those of fellow voluntary interpreters enlisted following the
2011 Christchurch earthquake to assist the police, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Embassy of Japan and other parties in working with next of kin of
the Japanese victims who, with twenty-eight fatalities, made up the largest
single group of foreign national fatalities in the quake. While some envis-
age the role of foreign language interpreters in crisis intervention and
emergency situations as very limited in scope and would seek to contain it
(Greenstone 2010), Bouterey’s case study illustrates the complexity and
challenging nature of such a role, and argues for the inclusion of interpret-
ers as important players in any disaster response management plan. The
study also identifies other areas for attention and lessons to be learned for
the various players who were part of the intricate web of responders sur-
rounding foreign nationals.
The final chapter in this volume has as its focus the Digital Humanities
Cultural Heritage Memory project, UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes
Digital Archive (CEISMIC). This was established following the 2010/2011
Canterbury sequence of earthquakes with the aim of collecting images, sto-
ries and media related to the earthquakes and their aftermath for purposes of
 INTRODUCTION 9

commemoration, teaching and research. If we accept that knowledge of past

events can condition not only how we conceptualize the risks connected
with particular events but also how we might anticipate and prepare for the
impacts of future catastrophes (Endfield et al. 2009), as discussed earlier,
then it is clear that the value and importance of disaster archives such as
CEISMIC cannot be underestimated. Indeed, Chaps. 4, 6 and 8 are, in addi-
tion to being important studies in themselves, exemplars of the knowledge
and understanding of major disasters that can be gained from these archives
and the worthiness, therefore, of undertaking such an enterprise. If, how-
ever, the archive is not readily accessible, lacks in visibility and—as a no doubt
natural consequence—fails to produce research outcomes, then it will fall far
short of realizing its potential as an important repository for the production
of knowledge now and in the future, and could most certainly be deemed a
failure as the authors suggest. So how has CEISMIC fared and what are the
some of the ingredients for success? In an open and candid discussion, the
authors draw on their experience of leading the design, creation and ongoing
activities of CEISMIC, to consider some of the challenges in creating a digi-
tal archive, pitfalls to be avoided, and keys to success. Fundamental to
CEISMIC’s continuing success, they explain, is a free, open access—to any-
one, anywhere—federated archive, committed to underpinning research,
repurposing material, creating new knowledge and forging links with similar
efforts internationally. As with Takakura’s discussion in Chap. 6, this chapter
provides invaluable knowhow and other edifying information for researchers
or institutions wishing to set up a similar archive in future.
Memories of disasters can often be extremely short lived, no more so
than those of natural disasters where, as Christof Mauch (2009) notes,
there are no veterans’ associations and few memorials. No sooner has news
of a disaster, natural or otherwise, appeared in the mass media and related
images beamed around the world than it is swiftly eclipsed by the next
catastrophe to strike somewhere else in the world. And yet we know that
the ramifications of disasters are more often than not long term; that it can
take decades for communities to recover, if at all, from such events. Seven
years on from the Canterbury earthquake sequence which caused exten-
sive damage to this editor’s (Susan Bouterey) home, as the earth continues
to rumble beneath us—part of the ‘normal decay pattern,’ according to
scientists (Gates 2018)—and having just moved into my second tempo-
rary home while our house undergoes earthquake-related repairs, I am
forced to reflect on this, and the importance therefore of bringing this
project to fruition.
10 S. BOUTEREY AND L. E. MARCEAU

Notes
1. Referred to as the Darfield earthquake, after the name of the small
Canterbury town where the earthquake was centred, and also the Canterbury
earthquake, a designation which denotes the broader area impacted by the
earthquake.
2. 「地震災害後の人文学プロジェクトの回顧と研究者の役割の探求」 .
3. The Australian Daily Telegraph ran a news story on 17 March 2011 that
described the Japanese people as displaying “an admirable stoicism and dig-
nity that has the world agape with admiration” in the face of the worst
disaster since World War II (Devine 2011). This strength and resilience,
Susan Donaldson James and Russell Goldman of ABC News contend, is
‘rooted’ in their culture (2011).
4. Miranda Devine of the Daily Telegraph points to a similar display of resil-
ience and generosity to that of the Japanese—though on a smaller scale—in
Christchurch after the earthquake, declaring that “New Zealanders’ can-do
attitude and lack of whingeing endeared them to the world” (2011). In a
study of resilience vis-à-vis the seeking and provision of support in the wake
of the Canterbury and Christchurch earthquakes, Urmson et al. (2016)
refer to New Zealanders priding themselves on their “frontier spirit of self-
help”, as noted by Marshall (2016), and posit that this value could prove
maladaptive in the wake of a major disaster.

References
Bulut, Alev and Turgay Kurultay. 2001. “Interpreters-in-Aid at Disasters:
Community Interpreting in the Process of Disaster Management.” The
Translator 7 (2): 249–263.
Devine, Miranda. “Resilience in the face of catastrophe.” Daily Telegraph. 17
March 2011.
Donaldson James, Susan and Russell Goldman. “Japanese, Waiting in Line for
Hours, Follow Social Order After Quake.” ABC News. 15 March 2011.
Endfield, Georgina H., Davies, Sarah J. and Isabel Fernández Tejedo. 2009.
“Documenting Disaster Archival Investigations of Climate, Crises, and
Catastrophe in Colonial Mexico.” In Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses:
Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History. Edited by Christof Mauch
and Christian Pfister, 305–325. New York, Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Favier René and Anne-Marie Granet-Abisset. 2009. “Society and Natural Risks in
France, 1500–2000: Changing Historical Perspectives.” In Natural Disasters,
Cultural Responses: Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History.
Edited by Christof Mauch and Christian Pfister, 103–136. New York, Plymouth:
Lexington Books.
 INTRODUCTION 11

Gates, Charlie. “Christchurch aftershocks part of normal sequence.” The Press. 22

January 2018.
Greenstone, James L. 2010. “Use of Interpreters with Crisis Intervention Teams,
Behavioral Health Units, and Medical Strike Teams: Responding Appropriately
and Effectively.” International Journal of Emergency Mental Health 12 (2):
79–82.
Marshall, R. 2016. “Variances in Levels of Individualism Across Two Cultures and
Three Social Classes.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 28 (4): 490–495.
Mauch, Christof. 2009. “Introduction.” In Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses:
Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History. Edited by Christof Mauch
and Christian Pfister, 1–16. New York, Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Mauch, Christof and Christian Pfister, eds. 2009. Natural Disasters, Cultural
Responses: Case Studies toward a Global Environmental History. New York:
Lexington Books.
Mitchell, James K. 2009. “American Disasters during the Twentieth Century: The
Case of New Jersey.” In Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses: Case Studies
Toward a Global Environmental History. Edited by Christof Mauch and
Christian Pfister, 327–354. New York, Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Okamoto, Kohei and Kumi Sato. 2016. “Distribution of Non-Japanese Residents
and Support Activities for Them in the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster-
Stricken Areas.” In Japan After 3/11: Global Perspectives on the Earthquake,
Tsunami and Fukushima Meltdown. Edited by Pradyumna P. Karan and Unryu
Suganuma, 379–397. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.
Takakura, Hiroki and Mutsumi Yamaguchi, eds. 2018. Saigai-go no Chiiki Bunka
to Hisaisha no Minzokushi. Tokyo: Shinsensha.
Urmson, Kayleigh A., Johnston, David M. and Simon Kemp. 2016. “Asking for
Help and Receiving Support After a Disaster.” Australasian Journal of Disaster
and Trauma Studies 20 (1): 3–14.
 CHAPTER 2

One Flood, Two ‘Saviours’: Takebe

Ayatari’s Changing Discourse on the Kanpō
Floods of 1742

Lawrence E. Marceau

In the mid-autumn of Kanpō 2 (1742) a 23-year-old Zen monk named

Enjū was engaged in a pilgrimage of the Chichibu circuit of 34 temples
dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon, collecting information on each of
them that would later be included in a publication, Legends of the Miracles
of the Kannon Entsū from the Thirty-four Chichibu Sites (Chichibu sanjūshi-­
sho Kannon reigen Entsū den, Edo: Tsujimura Gohei & Uehara Kanbei,
1744). As he travelled from one place to another in the area, he also kept
a travel journal that, much later, he would revise and prepare for publica-
tion. In this journal, Travel Accounts (Kikō , unpublished, covering the
period from 1739 to 1758), Enjū (hereafter referred to as Takebe Ayatari,
1719−1774, as he is currently best known) records his experience of a
series of torrential rainstorms and flooding, and ponders the meaning of
the profound sense of uneasiness he had experienced before the worst
flooding came.

L. E. Marceau (*)
School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, University of Auckland,
Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: l.marceau@auckland.ac.nz

© The Author(s) 2019 13

S. Bouterey, L. E. Marceau (eds.), Crisis and Disaster in Japan and
New Zealand, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0244-2_2
14 L. E. MARCEAU

It turns out that Ayatari had confronted, and survived, the worst flood-
ing to hit the Kanto region of eastern Japan over the course of the entire
Edo period. This natural disaster, known as “The Kanpō Floods and Storm
Surges,” actually started as a typhoon in the Kansai area of Osaka and
Kyoto, and worked its way east, reaching the Kanto region of Edo on the
first day of the eighth lunar month (hereafter abbreviated to 8.1), with the
rivers Tonegawa, Arakawa, and Sumidagawa to the east, and the river
Tamagawa to the west of the Musashi Plain overflowing their banks,
breaking through levees, destroying bridges, and flooding large portions
of the region, causing deaths in the tens of thousands (Kokushi Daijiten
Henshū Iinkai 1979−1997, “Kanpō no kō zui, takashio”). Heavy rains
continued through the night, and, with the arrival of high tide on the
morning of 8.2, all low-lying areas of the Kanto Plain were under water
(“Kanpō no kō zui, takashio”).
About a century later, the prolific writer and scholar Saitō Gesshin
(1804−1878) noted the following about the disaster in his chronological
gazetteer of the Edo metropolis, Bukō nenpyō (1850). “Kanpō 2, Year of
the Elder Water / Dog […] Seventh month, 28th day: Raining unabated.
Eighth month, 1st day: From about 11 am, torrential rain and wind, con-
tinuing nonstop through the night. Heavy flooding throughout the
nearby suburbs, submerging dwellings in Honjo and Fukagawa, and the
flow of water from the lower Sumida River was tremendous, washing away
the piles of the Ryō goku Bridge, which had been under construction, as
well as damaging Eitai Bridge and Shin’ō Bridge. The levee of the Sumida
River gave way, and water flooded the Kasai district, as well as breaching
the Senju levee” (Kaneko 1968, 144).
Ayatari’s account confirms that the flooding was not limited to the Edo
metropolis downstream, but that even the upper reaches of the river
Arakawa flooded the area in such population centres as Kumagaya, a
former post town on the highway Nakasen-dō in what is now Saitama
Prefecture. Ayatari writes about how he feels a premonition of disaster to
come, and, based on his strong sense of foreboding, ignores his host’s
wishes, and moves some 9 km to a temple overlooking the river Arakawa,
where he witnesses the events first hand. Ayatari’s account differs in tone
from the statistical records later taken by officials, and presents a detailed
and personal depiction of not only the events themselves but also the reac-
tions of the local residents, who generally lost everything over the course
of the night and the following day. (Note: In the following translation, I
have added explanatory text in brackets.)
 ONE FLOOD, TWO ‘SAVIOURS’: TAKEBE AYATARI’S CHANGING DISCOURSE… 15

Travel Account: The Chichibu Mountains

It must have been late in the seventh month when I returned to a Zen
temple in Obayashi for the first time in a while, and spent some time there.1
I then told my hosts that I should be returning to the Musashi mountains
[i.e., Chichibu] by the beginning of the eighth month. On the 28th of the
month, I visited the home of a priest who had invited me to his temple. At
first the sun shone brightly, but at about the end of the Hour of the Ram
[2:00−3:00 pm] it suddenly clouded over and started raining. The rain was
coming down so hard that it became impossible to traverse exposed places.
There was no thunder, and since the rain had cleared, my host said that it
was now a fine, cool day, so the festivities would proceed as planned. The
priest fervently tried to keep me there longer, but I said that I would have
to depart, so on the 29th I took my leave. However, by the time I arrived at
the post station at Kumagaya it was already past mid-day. I thus stopped by
at another acquaintance’s place, and he was overjoyed, saying, “Tomorrow
is the Hassaku Rice Festival [celebrated on the first of the eighth month].
You arrived just at the right time! Other [haikai poetry] practitioners are
here waiting as well.” I set my baggage down, intending to stay the night
there, but for some reason, I had an uncanny sense that I shouldn’t be there.
I thus turned to my host and said, “I know I’ve made a promise, but I’ve
got to go. The sun is still high in the sky, so I beg your pardon.” My host
appeared perturbed and responded, “What is it that you’re dissatisfied with?
Tomorrow is a fine day to enjoy ourselves, I just said! In spite of that you all
of a sudden act as though you shouldn’t be here. I just don’t get it!” I
pressed my palms together in obeisance, saying, “I just feel that I shouldn’t
be staying here. It has nothing to do with your festive preparations. The
meaning of pilgrimage is that it is best to follow one’s spirit. As a person of
refinement, you would also be able to understand my position, right?” Since
he had come to know me quite well lately, with an “If you insist,” he allowed
me to go on my way.
About four or five chō [approx. 440−550 m] outside of the hamlet of
Kumagaya, a road goes off to the left on the way to Chichibu. I took it and
continued going west. A village called Hara is about two ri [approx. 8 km]
further along and there lives a particular eminent elder who is the abbot of
a certain Zen temple, so I made my way there. If I were to go there I would
reach it before the sun set.2
In the depths of Chichibu there is a rugged peak called Yō kami-san [liter-
ally, “Eight-day-seeing mountain”]. People in the past gave the mountain
this name because a traveller going to the Province of Kai looked back on
where he would come from for eight days.3 I am told that at the peak there
is a pool, a thousand fathoms in depth, to which black clouds constantly
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Adequate study demands not simply that an abundance of data
which bear on the problem be secured, but that the validity of the
data be brought into question. Children ought not to accept blindly
the statements of books or even of the teacher. The one thing which
characterizes the student is his search for truth, his attitude of inquiry
as opposed to an appeal to authority. It is well for children at times to
question the statements found in their books when experience
suggests the doubt. It is equally important, of course, that they be
willing to acknowledge their mistake, should proof be forthcoming in
support of the book. If a child really studies, he must, even as an
adult, find statements of fact, the records of observations or
experiments, which are at variance with the evidence which he
already possesses. It is just in this particular that the student differs
from ordinary men who allow others to do their thinking for them. The
student may not be able to settle the question, and so forms a
judgment which is frankly tentative. Children ought to have the
experience of finding that there are some questions to which a
definite answer cannot, in the present state of knowledge, be given.
They should be shown, wherever possible, how the conclusions of
men on some of the most important problems that have been studied
have changed from time to time. They can at times be made to
realize the folly of overhasty generalization.
No one has learned how to study who has not been trained to
reflect upon his experience, whether the experience has been
recently acquired with the express purpose of solving his problem, or
is some more remote element in experience which may shed light on
the question in hand. A skillful teacher can guide in this process of
reflection, and will later tell them what is meant, and demonstrate for
them something of the value of the practice. It is quite worth while for
a student to know when he has concentrated his attention upon a
problem, and just what is meant by reflection. Many older people
deceive themselves into thinking that they are exercising themselves
in these directions when a slight acquaintance with the elements
involved in fixing attention or in reflection might awaken them to the
futility of their practices. There need be nothing occult or hard to
understand about the practice of study. It is not a matter of
terminology nor of a systematic course in psychology, but rather
consists in guiding the individual in his practice of the art, and then
making known to him the elements in his experience which have
meant success or failure. It may be enlightening to compare the
emphasis upon careful examination of data, the formation of
tentative rather than fixed judgments, the guarding against hasty
generalizations, and the emphasis upon reflection with the steps of
presentation, of comparison and abstraction, and of generalization in
the inductive lesson, and with the corresponding steps of the
deductive lesson. The conviction will probably be deepened that
when the teacher instructs the student in the art of study she is
making available for him the method which she employs in
instruction. This must be the relationship; for the teacher can do
nothing more than take account of the way the child learns, and
adapt her method to his possibilities.
The habit of verification is one of the most important from the point
of view of learning how to study. The questions which the student
must constantly ask himself are: “Can the conclusions be applied?”
“Do they always hold?” “Does it work?” Fine-spun theories are of
little avail, however much satisfaction the originator of them may
have found in deriving them. At every step in the progress of his
thought the conclusions must be tested by an appeal to known facts.
The teacher cannot too frequently insist upon this step as the
criterion of the worth of the thinking which has been done. And the
insistence will be necessary, for it seems natural for human beings to
become so enamored of their theories that they hesitate to expose
them to the test which may prove them false.
Teaching children to memorize: Throughout the school life of the
child, memorizing is a regular part of his work. If practice alone were
necessary, every child should soon learn how to do this kind of work
in the most economical manner. The great difficulty is that often
neither teacher nor pupil has given any thought to the method
employed, their attention having been wholly engrossed with
success or failure in achieving the result. It is a well established
principle of psychology that the possibility of recall is conditioned by
the system of ideas with which that which we wish to recall has been
identified. The more associations made, or the more perfect our
control of any system of ideas which involves that which we wish to
remember, the greater the probability of bringing to mind the fact
when we need it. As Professor James puts it: “Of two men with the
same outward experience, the one who thinks over his experiences
most, and weaves them into the most systematic relations with each
other, will be the one with the best memory.” And along with this fact
is another equally important for the teacher: that we may not hope to
increase the native power of retentiveness. The child whom we
teach may be endowed by nature with little or much power of this
sort, and we cannot change it; but we can improve his method of
memorizing.
The first step in memorizing is to understand. If we try to commit to
memory the words of a book when we do not fully comprehend the
meaning, we are depending very largely on our desultory memory,
i.e. upon our ability to remember the things because they have been
once present in mind; and our efficiency will depend wholly upon our
quality of native retentiveness. But, unfortunately, for want of
knowledge of a better method, children are frequently satisfied that
they are doing adequate work when they are repeating over and
over again the words which they have made little attempt to
comprehend.
Even when the sense of the words to be memorized is fairly clear,
it is uneconomical to employ this method of accretion. The child who
studies the poem by saying first the first line, then the second, then
the first and second, then the third, then the first, the second, and the
third, depends upon mere repetition, not upon thinking, for the
persistence of the impression. It has been demonstrated that on the
basis of the amount of time required this method is uneconomical.
Add to this the fact that after the first complete repetition, later
successful recall depends upon the efficiency of the system of
associated ideas which have been established; and there can be no
doubt of the folly of such a method of procedure. It is no wonder that
children who commit to memory in this way forget so readily. They
may have understood what they said when they first repeated the
poem; but the method they employed almost precludes the building
up of a system of associated ideas on the basis of careful thinking.
 If the child has read aloud and understands the selection to be
memorized, the next thing to be done is to analyze it into its principal
thought units; and then each of these large units of thought may be
again carefully scrutinized until a full appreciation of the thought has
been accomplished. The thought of the whole may then be stated,
using as far as possible the words of the author, and then each of
the subdivisions or thought units may be examined in more detail in
order to get the shade of meaning that is brought out by this or that
word, by relationship of coördination or subordination of clause, or
the modification indicated by this word or phrase. It will be
necessary, as the work progresses on the large thought units into
which the selection has been divided, to return constantly to the
whole thought in order to keep clear the relationship of the part to the
whole, and to establish the part in the system of ideas which we
seek to build up. “All the evidence we have goes to show that the
method of memorizing by wholes is most economical.”[12] If children
were taught to work in this way, there would be little drudgery about
memorizing. The careful, thoughtful study once completed,
memorization has been accomplished. The energy and attention of
the child have not been centered upon a merely technical process,
but he has been concerned mainly in trying to appreciate fully the
thought that he is to make his own. Memory work of this kind is
highly educative, not merely because of the product, but also
because of the process employed. Suppose, for example, you wish
children to memorize Stevenson’s Bed in Summer:—

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
 To have to go to bed by day?

You would begin by reading the whole poem, calling to mind the
experiences of the children in going to bed before dark on the long
summer evenings and of the cold, dark winter mornings when they
may have dressed before it was light. The number and the kind of
explanations which will need to be made will, of course, depend
upon the previous experience of the children and the time of the
year. Then the poem might be read again a time or two. After this
preliminary work has been done, you might ask some one to tell you
the story. Let us suppose that the reply was about as follows: “A little
boy had to get up before it was light in the winter, and go to bed
before it was dark in the summer. In summer when he went to bed
he heard the birds hopping on the trees and the people walking past
him in the street. He thought it was hard to have to go to bed when it
was still daylight, when he wanted so much to play.” If the main facts
were less well told, or if there were notable omissions, it would be
necessary to get at least an outline of the main thought before
proceeding. Now we are ready to call the attention of the children to
three main thoughts, each told in a stanza. First, the difference
between getting up in winter and going to bed in summer. Second,
what did the boy in the story see and hear when he went to bed
before dark? Third, how do you feel when you have to go to bed in
summer while the sky is still so clear and blue, and you would like so
much to play?
It will be very easy to get the thought of the first stanza impressed
in the words of the author. It will help to read the whole poem again,
the teacher meanwhile asking the children to pay particular attention
to the way the author says it. Possibly there will be some difficulty
with “quite the other way,” but skillful questioning will get the correct
form. And so for the second and third stanzas; if the thought is clear,
the words will follow very easily. After each thought has been thus
carefully developed, with the whole story always in mind, and the
words of the author have been made the vehicle of expressing the
thought by the children, it will be advantageous to have the poem
repeated several times by individual members of the class. In this
repetition the dramatic element should enter as far as possible. To
suit the action to the word, to really feel what one recites, helps
greatly to strengthen the impression, and thus aids recall.
It may be thought that the illustration used was particularly well
adapted to illustrate the theory advanced. Or some teacher may say
that children would memorize Bed in Summer without teaching. It
may, therefore, not be out of place to suggest that the best way to
discover for one’s self the value of the method is to try it. It will work
equally well if the subject is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a
selection from the Declaration of Independence, the Twenty-third
Psalm, or any other masterpiece of English.
The principles to be applied are essentially the same even when
verbatim memorization is not required. To get lasting control of the
facts of geography or of history, one must have reduced them to a
system. There must be a relating of less important facts to more
important, a clustering of important points of reference to any other
facts which are logically related. This, indeed, is just what scientific
organization means, and the main purpose of such organization is to
render facts more available, to save labor. The memory is relieved of
much of its burden when once we have established the relationship
of cause and effect, of equivalence, of similarity, or of analogy
among facts. It is this association of ideas on a logical basis which
counts most in the possibility of recall.
It is quite possible for children, very early in their school life, to
begin to apply these principles and to become conscious of the fact
that the way they do their work has an important bearing upon the
ease with which it is accomplished and the permanency of the
results gained. The work of the teacher is not done by merely
dictating the method, even though that may help greatly to establish
right habits of study; our best assurance that the method will be
employed when the teacher is not present to direct the work is found
in our knowledge that the children not only habitually, but also when
a question arises or there is a suggestion of another way,
consciously employ the right method.
Teaching children how to form habits: Our next problem is to
inquire how children may be led consciously to employ the principles
of habit formation when their school work involves work of this type.
They can be taught the function of drill or repetition, and can be led
to see under what conditions such work will prove most successful. It
is not difficult to prove to a boy that his listless, half-hearted work in
repeating the spelling of the words he has missed is making little
improvement in his ability to spell them. A boy can be led to see by
an illustration in which he himself is the chief actor that concentrated
attention will make much difference. Let him see how much he can
accomplish in ten minutes, and thus get him in the habit of using this
means when he finds that he is not working up to his normal
capacity. Show him that a new impetus will be given and that
attention will be easier if he reverses the order, writes instead of
spelling orally, or closes his eyes and attempts to visualize the
words. No matter what motive the boy has for the attempt he is
making, he will welcome the suggestions which make the task
easier.
Later you can teach this same boy the need of verification before
drilling himself whenever a question of fact is raised. In the
beginning, of course, the doubt or question will be raised by the
teacher, and it will be the chief work of the child to find an authority
and assure himself that he has the right idea or form before
proceeding. A big step in the education of a child has been taken
when he is able to say, “I know I am right, because I have consulted
the commonly accepted authority.” Occasions will arise constantly in
the study of any subject where, instead of asking the teacher or
being satisfied with information which is of questionable validity, the
child should, as a matter of habit, turn to the authority for verification.
It is not at all unusual for children to have misgivings, but they too
frequently end by going ahead and ignoring their doubt. To respect
one’s doubts, to be somewhat critical, is significant for education
only when one is led thereby to endeavor to discover the truth.
Children will work to advantage when they realize that these steps of
doubt, verification, repetition, with undivided attention, are essential
to good work.
Children can be taught the necessity of accuracy in practice. Any
day’s work in a schoolroom will furnish illustrations of the danger of
lapses and the necessity of guarding against them. The fallacy of the
notion that “this one doesn’t count” can be made just as clear to
children as to adults. So, too, the mistaken notion that cramming
may be substituted for systematic work day in and day out can be
brought to the attention of pupils.
It would be a good plan for every teacher to ask herself questions
like the following: “What would the children do if I did not carefully
direct their work?” “How much better able are they now to work
independently than they were at the beginning of the year?” “Can
they take a book and find in it the part which bears upon the topic
assigned for study, and do they do it with the least possible waste of
time and energy?” “Do they know how to memorize; what it means to
concentrate their attention; how to reflect?” “Are they more open-
minded or more dogmatic on account of the year spent with me?”
“Have they established the habit of verification?” “Do they appreciate
the method to be employed in habit formation?” To answer these
questions honestly will give the teacher some idea of her success as
a teacher, for the teacher’s goal is realized in proportion as her
pupils have advanced in power to work independently of her
guidance or control.
In teaching children how to study, it will be well to devote whole
periods to this type of exercise. The teacher will gain much in the
progress which her class will make by taking a period frequently
during which she studies with the children. By example rather than
by precept, by guiding children in correct methods of study and then
making them conscious that they have done their work to the best
possible advantage, rather than by telling them what to do, she will
secure the maximum of results in her endeavor to teach children
how to study.

For Collateral Reading

F. M. McMurry, How to Study.
Lida B. Earhart, Teaching Children to Study, Chapter VIII.

Exercises.
 1. What is the relation between a knowledge of the principles of teaching and
the attempt to teach children how to study?
2. How would you teach a boy to study his spelling lesson?
3. What exercises would you give your pupils to make them able to use books to
the best advantage?
4. State five problems which you have assigned to your pupils which seem to
you to have furnished a sufficient motive for study.
5. Which would be better as an assignment for a class in history: “Study the
topic of slavery for to-morrow”; or, “Try to find out why slaves were not kept in the
Northern states”; or, “Did all of the people in the Northern states believe that
slavery should be abolished?”
6. What is the advantage in individual or group assignments? Give a list of such
assignments which you have recently given to your class.
7. Why is it necessary in studying to restate the problem under consideration at
frequent intervals?
8. When children study, should they try to remember all that they read in their
books?
9. Is it wise to have children critical of each other’s contributions during a
recitation?
10. How could you hope to train children to discriminate between the material of
greater and of less importance when they read books to find the answers to their
problems?
11. What do you think of the success of a study period where ten problems are
given, each independent of the others?
12. How would you expect children to verify the conclusions which they reach in
solving their problems in geography, nature study, or arithmetic?
13. Take any poem of from four to ten stanzas, and have your pupils commit it to
memory as a whole by reading it over and discussing the thought as often as may
be necessary. Take another poem of equal length and of equal difficulty, according
to your judgment, and have them commit it to memory line by line and stanza by
stanza. (A good plan would be to take four stanzas for each test from the same
long poem.) Three weeks after each selection is learned, without suggesting to the
pupils that the selection is to be called for again, find out what part of each
selection can be recalled.
14. How could you teach your pupils that the repetitions which count when
studying a spelling lesson are the ones which are made with attention
concentrated upon the work in hand?
 15. Is a study period in the schoolroom properly regarded as a rest period for
teachers and pupils?
16. Are the children you teach better able to get along without a teacher than
they were when they came to you? What evidence can you give to show that they
can work independently?
 CHAPTER IX

R E V I E W O R E X A M I N AT I O N L E S S O N

The review or the examination, in so far as methods of teaching

are concerned, present the same problem. We seek by means of
exercises of this type to bring about a better organization of
knowledge, to test the efficiency of our work by finding out whether
or not pupils can, when put to the test, utilize the knowledge or
habits which we have labored to make available for them, whether
they are actuated by the ideals and purposes which we have sought
to inculcate, whether they do actually employ the most economical
methods of work when they meet a situation which challenges their
strength. It will be recognized at once that work of this sort is a part
of every recitation. But for our own satisfaction, and, possibly, in
order to meet the requirements which may be imposed by those
higher in authority, we may at times feel the need for a stated
exercise of this sort.
A review should mean a new view, a placing of facts in their true
relationship. It should mean a clearer view of the topic or the subject
which the children have been studying. It avails little to go over the
ground that has already been covered more rapidly. The purpose to
be accomplished is not to fix in mind a series of unrelated facts. In
our discussion of memory we had occasion to call attention to the
fact that recall of past experiences was conditioned by the number
and the quality of the associations which had been established. And
it is not simply a matter of recall. The use that we can make of a fact
depends upon our ability to relate it logically to other facts. It is quite
possible that a man of great native retentiveness might be able to
recall thousands of facts, and yet be stupid, utterly unable to do the
thinking required for effective action. To bring about such an
organization of ideas demands that from day to day the new facts or
principles that are learned be consciously related to the old. It will not
be economical to put off all reviewing until the end of the month, or
quarter, or term. The step taken in advance to-day can be properly
appreciated only when it is seen in relation to that which has gone
before; and the work of the past week or month will, in turn, by this
additional effort be seen in truer perspective.
There are, however, convenient units into which subjects naturally
divide themselves; and when one of these units has been
completed, it may be well to take a period or two for the express
purpose of review. We may then clear up any misconceptions, give a
chance for additional verification and application of the knowledge
thus far gained. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the review
which really counts is one in which the teacher works with the
children, guides them and instructs them, rather than sits in
judgment over them. There is nothing more disastrous to the best
type of work than the idea on the part of children that the review
lesson is the teacher’s opportunity to ask catch questions, or to
overemphasize unimportant details. Children respond very quickly in
such a situation by their endeavor to cram, with little or no effort at
organization, all of the facts that they have been taught.
A convenient stimulus to the proper sort of review is found in the
requirement that pupils prepare an abstract or topical outline of the
ground which has been covered, and submit it, preferably from
memory, for class criticism and discussion. If the teacher asks
questions, she should be very careful to see that they are questions
of large scope which demand organization, or still better the
application of organized knowledge. This brings us to the problem of
testing.
The only adequate test of school education, as of all other
education, is action. The nearer we can in our tests reproduce the
conditions which will confront the child in actual life, the better. Not
that we can always have him actually present in the situation; but
when that is impossible, we can present for his consideration ideal
situations which correspond to those which he will later find. The
possibilities of presenting precisely the test which he will meet and is
meeting in life are, I believe, much greater than most examiners
suspect. We have discovered after many years that the best test of a
child’s ability to spell in the only situation in which he will ever need
to spell is to test him in that situation; i.e. by judging his ability in
writing words in connected discourse. The way to discover whether
one can speak or write grammatically is to listen to him speaking or
reading what he has written, and not to ask him to recite rules of
grammar. The only real test of a child’s ability to give adequate oral
expression to the story or poem is to see whether or not he can
make clear the thought and furnish enjoyment to others, preferably
to those who have not before heard the selection which he reads.
We can assure ourselves that we have awakened an interest in
literature and history, when we know that children read good books
other than those which we compel them to read. The success of
manual work, the time spent in art or music, ought certainly to be
measured by ability to make and to decorate, the singing of songs,
and the desire to hear music, or to see pictures. The more occasions
that can be found for the application of the arithmetic we teach in
actual measurements and computations which have real significance
to children, the better will children understand their work, and the
more certain we can be of their future efficiency.[13] It is coming to be
a recognized principle of nature study that the common things, the
animals and plants which are significant for our living, are the ones
which should engage our attention; and we expect that children will,
on account of the teaching, enjoy more, take better care of, and
utilize to better advantage the plant and animal life with which they
come in contact. Even in such subjects as history and geography,
one can hope to find just such applications while the child is studying
as are apt to occur in his later life. The presentation of the results of
the study of a country to a school assembly with the aid of pictures
and a lantern, or the interpretation of current events in the light of
their geographic setting will afford no mean test of the children’s
knowledge of geography. The comparison of to-day’s happenings in
the light of the events of a decade or a century ago; the explanation
of the historical reference in the period devoted to literature; the
writing and presentation of a historical drama, will afford as great
application of one’s knowledge as most of us ever make.
Work of the sort indicated above will not only serve to test the
value of the work that children have done, but will also add greatly to
the interest and enthusiasm with which children do their work. We
can scarcely hope that all examinations will satisfy this ideal; but of
this we can be sure, the more work of this kind we do with our pupils,
the firmer will be their grasp upon their work and the greater is apt to
be their power to satisfy even less adequate tests.
Examinations have another function which we as teachers should
not overlook. Any adequate test of children’s abilities is also a test of
our teaching. It will probably not be best for us to try to defend
ourselves by pleading the inadequacy of the test, nor the
backwardness of the pupils when they come to us, nor their
parentage, nor any other less common reason. If children do not
write as well as they should, if they misspell words they commonly
use in their written work, if they cannot tell the story, recite the poem,
solve the problem, describe the geographical area, or relate the
events of the historic period, we had better inquire whether we have
helped them to work to best advantage, whether we have clearly
differentiated the several aspects of our work and have then applied
the methods suitable to accomplish the desired result. There may be
mistakes made, but, all things else being equal, the teacher who
gets results is the best teacher.
We shall do better work, children, teachers, and supervisors, when
we have provided for our use more definite standards or scales by
which to measure our results. There is no reason why we should not
have a scale which would enable us to tell with a fair degree of
accuracy just what the standing of this group of children is in writing,
in ability to perform the fundamental operations in arithmetic, in
spelling, in writing compositions, in discussing the geography of
North America, in decorating a cover for a notebook, or in any other
subject or aspect of their school work. Beginnings have been made
in this direction, and we may hope for more as time passes.[14] As
these units of measure are perfected and applied in examining the
results of school work, we will, of course, hear the cry of those who
will tell us that the best things that a teacher does cannot be
measured. The obvious reply will be that efficiency in accomplishing
results which can be measured need not in any way prevent a
teacher from exercising that influence or doing that sort of work
which is not recorded on examination sheets. Rather it will be found,
I venture, that the efficient teachers, as measured by the results
which we can test, are, on the whole, the teachers that are doing the
noblest work. Strength of personality, appreciation of child nature, a
life which by its example makes for truth and beauty in other lives,
are qualities not uncommon in the teacher who is glad to be judged
by the results which pupils can demonstrate.

For Collateral Reading

W. C. Bagley, The Educative Process, Chapter XXII.
W. W. Charters, Methods of Teaching, Chapter XI.

Exercises.
1. What is the purpose of an examination?
2. Would you be willing, in a review of a large topic in history, to demand fewer
details than in the original study of the topic?
3. What is the value of an outline prepared by pupils as a part of their review
work?
4. Which is the better test of a boy’s ability in English, a high mark in an
examination in grammar, or a well written story of a fishing trip written for a school
paper?
5. Prepare a series of questions which you think might be used to advantage in
the examination of a class that has been studying the geography of Europe.
6. Give as many illustrations as you can of the application of the knowledge
gained in school to situations in which the pupils use their information or skill to
satisfy needs comparable to those which one meets in everyday life.
7. What is meant by saying that a review should mean a new view?
8. Do children commonly fail in examinations when they have been well taught?
9. Should children be promoted solely upon the marks made in examinations?
10. A boy’s average in an examination was 67 per cent. An examination of the
marks he received showed the following results: geography 80 per cent, history
100 per cent, composition 80 per cent, spelling 70 per cent, arithmetic 40 per cent,
grammar 40 per cent, and drawing 60 per cent. The passing mark was 70 per
cent; would you have promoted the boy?
11. How often should reviews be conducted?
12. Should children be notified in advance that examinations will be held on
certain days or weeks of the term?
 CHAPTER X

T H E R E C I TAT I O N L E S S O N

The recitation lesson as commonly conducted consists in having

children tell what they have read in their textbooks. Sometimes the
teacher accepts or even demands that the pupils recite by repeating
the words of the book. Better teaching requires rather that they
render the thought of the author in their own language. In this
chapter we shall discuss some of the worthy ends which may be
accomplished by such an exercise, some of the common
deficiencies in work of this type, and the modifications which are
advisable in the light of the principles already enunciated.
The recitation lesson commonly tests the pupil’s memory for facts.
The questions asked and answered serve to reveal to the teacher
the knowledge or lack of it on the part of the pupil. In a way this
testing also gives the teacher some idea of the amount of work done
by the pupil. The great weakness of work of this kind is found in the
tendency to demand and to accept words, the rehearsing of facts
unrelated and unorganized. Of course this need not be true, since it
is entirely within the power of the teacher to frame her questions in
such a way that the pupil’s grasp on the whole topic rather than his
memory for isolated facts is tested.
The recitation which tests the pupil’s ability to present in orderly
fashion the substance of the thought found in the sections assigned
in the book for study is of genuine value. The topical recitation
affords an opportunity to develop on the part of children the ability to
stand on their feet and speak to a question for some minutes. And it
may be suggested in this connection that we should develop more
power of this sort than is commonly found in our schools. The ability
to express one’s self adequately on the topic under consideration will
always make for effectiveness in social life. It would be well to test
the progress of our pupils from grade to grade by their ability to
speak more effectively and for a longer period as they advance
through the school, on some topic connected with their school work.
When pupils are required not simply to recite on some topic which
is presented for their consideration, but are required to furnish their
own outline and to recite on the basis of their own organization of the
selections which they have read, the recitation may become a
valuable exercise in thinking. The success of work of this kind will
depend upon the definiteness with which the problem or aim of the
work has been provided. It will not require much thought simply to
follow the paragraph headings or marginal notes of the author and to
present the organization as a basis for recitation. If, however, a
problem has been suggested the solution of which may be found in
the pages assigned for study, then the recitation may test the pupil’s
power to analyze and organize the material which the book provides.
And this is the only test of a thorough mastery of the book. We do
not read to find out everything that an author says. Our needs may
demand a very different ordering of facts, we may use facts in
entirely new relations, and may ignore much that was essential from
a different point of view. Children have read their textbooks
thoroughly when they have derived from these texts the facts or
ideas which are essential in the solution of their problem, the
satisfaction of the aim which they hope to realize.
This ability to use to best advantage a book is a very valuable
accomplishment. When the recitation lesson accomplishes this
result, it justifies its use. Too frequently we find adults who seem to
feel that they must try to gather all of the knowledge and must try to
follow none other than the author’s point of view in their reading.
These persons read one book, and, as a result, believe one theory. It
seems not to disturb them greatly that the next book they read takes
the opposite point of view and that they range themselves on that
side of the question. Books are, or at least ought to be, our servants,
not our masters, and in the handling of books in his regular school
work the child ought to come to realize their true function. There is
no greater proof of a lack of thought than the ready acceptance of
whatever one finds in print.
There is great danger in the use of textbooks that children and
teachers will become satisfied with words, that they will come to
think that the repetition of the formula of the textbook is proof of
knowledge. Textbooks are all too often merely books of texts. They
have been made frequently enough by those who possess a very
wide knowledge of the field in which they write; and by some strange
process of thought they have apparently reached the conclusion that
the way to make a subject simple is to condense it. Many of our most
used textbooks are merely summaries or outlines of the subject
treated. They lack richness of detail, and state conclusions instead of
furnishing a large number of experiences, from which one may,
through processes of logical thought, derive the generalizations of
the subject. Take, for example, most of the textbooks in history for
elementary schools, and read carefully upon any topic selected at
random, and then ask yourself just what these words mean to
twelve-year-old children; or, better still, ask these children who
repeat so glibly the words or reproduce the statements of the book
just what they mean by the words they use. Try to discover whether
they have any adequate knowledge of facts, or any command of
images, which would make possible the generalizations which they
give as a result of the process of thought. Remember that a textbook
is not logical for children because it has been logically arranged by
the scholar. The test is rather to be found in the pupil’s ability to
reproduce in his own thinking the steps which have made possible
the conclusions of the author.
Any wide-awake teacher can make her work more interesting and
more significant for children, if she will carefully provide for the
enrichment of the text. The sources from which data can be
gathered, regardless of the subject under consideration, are almost
without number. Especially to be recommended are the standard
works in the subjects. It will be interesting to discover that children
would rather read Parkman than to study the text in which some less
competent person has endeavored to tell his story in a few
paragraphs which mean absolutely nothing to the child. The
magazines which publish articles of wide social interest will furnish
much helpful material. There is no school that may not greatly enrich
its work by an appeal to the actual experiences of the children and
by carefully directed observations and experiments. We need our
textbooks as a summary, as a convenient condensed outline, or as
books of reference; but we must provide as best we can other books
of reference which will furnish the details which are impossible in the
limited number of pages allowed to the text. In every room of every
school a library of books, pamphlets, magazine articles, and
illustrative material should be found, and every teacher should
expect to increase this collection and to improve its quality as the
years go by.
It will give new meaning to notebooks and note-taking, if both
teacher and children realize that the books thus prepared are a real
addition to the texts used. A comparison of the work done by
different members of the class will add interest in the work. One of
the greatest deficiencies of the recitation lesson is the danger that
nothing new will be presented. It is not intellectually stimulating to
listen to others who repeat simply the thought with which you are
already familiar. Where good notebook work is done and reported
upon, the chance for new ideas, the stimulus to thought, through the
presentation of new material, will greatly strengthen the work.
A tendency in work of this type to accept vague and indefinite
answers is another argument against the recitation lesson which
consists merely in rehearsing the words of the book. Statements are
apt to be vague when ideas are vague, and we may not expect ideas
to be very clear when the child lacks experience. The child’s power
of expression, aside from the difference in original talent in this
direction, is conditioned first of all by his acquaintance with things
and processes. The recitation lesson, as it is ordinarily conducted,
gives little opportunity for this sort of firsthand knowledge. To work at
the sand table, to construct with wood, clay, paper, or yarn, to
experiment, and to observe carefully the working of nature may
mean more for the command of language than much more time
devoted to so-called language lessons. But the effective use of such