適塾の青春──新しい地平を切り拓いた

「草の葉メソッドによる日本英語の私塾」のテキスト。
以下の英文を、最初はカタツムリの速度で、次第にペースを上げて歩行の速度で、さらにスビートを上げて走行の速度で音読しなさい。そこに書かれていることがわからなくても、音読を繰り返すうちに霧がはれていくようにその風景があらわれてきます。翻訳禁止です。英語を英語のままつかみとっていくトレーニングです。

第一回　15分32秒で読了。意味、まったく不明なり。
第二回　14分21秒で読了。江戸時代のストーリーなんだ。シジミ汁とかトロモ汁とか飲んでたんだ。
第三回　12分56秒で読了。下級武士たちのすごい塾の話なんだ、この塾に入るために刀を売って入ったんだって。
第四回　12分17秒で読了。 あの福沢諭吉が通っていた塾なのか。慶応大学の原点ということか。
第五回　10分32秒で読了。日本は江戸から明治になっていく。大動乱の時代だ。次第にこの難しい英文が見えてきた。
第六回　9分46秒で読了。速読ついに十分を切った。霧がはれたようにこのストーリーの全貌が見えてくる。適塾ってすごい塾だったんだと感動。
第七回　9分32秒で読了。英文を日本語口で読んではダメ、英文を読むには英語口を作りなさい、英文を日本語脳で読むな、英文は英語脳で読みなさいってことなんだ。このトレーニングはなかなか厳しいが、記録更新が楽しいよ。

Teki Juku

by Kenneth Y. Sagawa Chisato T. Furuya

l recently went to Osaka and one of the most interesting and unexpected places l visited was an old house which was the home of ａ man named Ogata Koan. He lived from 1810 to 1863 and died at the age of 53.　He had studied Dutch in Nagasaki and became ａ doctor practicing medicine in Osaka.

What made his home very interesting for me was that, while he was practicing medicine, he had a school in his home called Teki Juku. His students lived on the second floor of the home and studied mainly Dutch. After they were able to read and understand the Dutch language, most of them studied about the West while only ａ few of them studied Western medicine.

The students had a reading test once every five days. After the test, the students were divided into eight groups ranked according to ability shown by the results of their tests. If a student were the top in his group for three straight months in ａ row, then he could move up to the next higher group.
Once ａ month the students also changed their living space. Each student had only one tatami-mat space in which he had to keep his bedding, his small low  wood desk and all his belongings. If his grades were good, he could get ａ good space which was near the window where there was sunlight and fresh air during the summer or near the inner wall during the winter where it was warm at night.
However, the students with bad grades had to sleep near the top of the stairs where other students were always passing, or had to sleep away from the windows where it was dark, damp and uncomfortable.
At first l was very surprised at this idea of tying one's grades to one's living space and ｌ also laughed.　But l later realized that perhaps it was ａ good idea because it made the students want to study harder. This desire to work harder is called motivation. Connecting one's living conditions with studying most likely helped to motivate the students to study.

 Because this was ａ boarding school for the children of only samu-rai, I thought, “Ahhh, this must have been the elite school for elite children. This school must have been like Kaisei High School, Nada High School or La Salle High School today. The students at these schools today come from upper middle-class families and are highly motivated to study, because if they do, then they can enter good universities and get elite jobs in society.”　　　However, I was amazed to learn that the students came from mainly the lower samurai class and most of them came from very poor samurai families. The most important possession of ａ samurai was his sword.　Of all students in the boarding school, only three students had swords. Whenever one of them had to attend an important event like a wedding or a funeral, they borrowed one of the three swords. Then, what had happened to their own sword？　They had sold their sword in order to pay the fees to enter the boarding school.　l was very impressed.

The students were so poor that they didn't have enough kimono to wear.　During the hot summers in Osaka they spent most of the day wearing as little as possible, and in the winters they found it hard to keep warm. The school also did not have much money and so the food that it served the students was very simple.　The menu was very limited. On the 1st and 10th of every month the main dish was onions and satoimo (taro root). On the 5th and the 15th it was tororo-jiru (yａｍ soup). On the 3rd and the 18th it was shijim jiru (clam soup). The students memorized the menu and were always hungry.
Sometimes when the students got extra money from home, they　went to the Osaka wholesale fish market, bought left-over fish, brought it back to the school, ate the best parts as sash加(raw fish) and boiled the rest as fish soup. For the students, this was ａ feast.

The room of the school that moved me most deeply was the small 4 and 1/２ mat room called the Zuffe Room. In this one small room there was only one thing : ａ Dutch-Japanese dictionary. It was an extremely thick, heavy dictionary, compiled by Zuffe.　All the students needed to use it. There was always ａ line of students waiting their turn to look up Dutch words, and the most amazing thing is that there were students waiting in line not only all day but also all night until the morning hours.　The students wanted to study all night. It is said that the light in that room was never put out because there were always students who wanted to use this dictionary.

At first l thought　perhaps the students wanted to study hard because they had much ambition. They wanted to become successful in the future. Then ｌ suddenly remembered that at this time in the Edo period, the samurai could not change their positions in society.　Why did the students study so hard even though they didn't have to？
The only answer ｌ could think of is that they enjoyed learning and gaining new knowledge. They were learning about the West, about unknown civilizations and about things that other Japanese did not know about. This is the same joy and ｅxcitement of studying about space today, about supercomputers and about things that other people don't know. Studying about something new can be exciting and enjoyable.

The students were not able to get jobs or use their new knowledge immediately after graduating. But much later, these students did use what they had acquired at the Teki Juku. Fukuzawa Yukichi helped to form many ideas in Meiji Japan, other graduates became politicians, helped to found the Japanese Red Cross, the medical school of the University of Osaka and contributed to Japanese society in many ways.
l was moved because l was able to catch a glimpse of Japanese students of more than 100 years ago and see that the joy and excitement of learning had burned brightly in the light of the oil lamp in that small 4 and 1/２ mat room with the dictionary.　l was also moved to learn that they did not want to learn the Dutch language but about unknown civilizations through the Dutch language. l hoped that today there are students studying English in small rooms all over Japan not in order to learn English but to later use English to study about American space exploration, American　medicine　and　to some　day contribute to Japanese society.