Tsuwano Castle - Domain School

Tsuwano-hankō Yōrōkan (Tsuwano, Kanoashi, Shimane) 　津和野藩校養老館［島根県鹿足郡津和野町］ The Tsuwano domain school was a school for samurai youth in the castle-town of Tsuwano. The school's name was Yōrōkan, 'Hall of Nurturing to Growth' (although the modern term 'yōrō' can refer to a pension system for the elder

Tsuwano Castle - Domain School

津和野藩校養老館

Tsuwano-hankō Yōrōkan (Tsuwano, Kanoashi, Shimane) 　津和野藩校養老館［島根県鹿足郡津和野町］

The Tsuwano domain school was a school for samurai youth in the castle-town of Tsuwano. The school's name was Yōrōkan, 'Hall of Nurturing to Growth' (although the modern term 'yōrō' can refer to a pension system for the elderly perhaps this is a semantic shift). Yōrōkan was first established in 1786, early compared to other hankō, which really started to take-off in the Bakumatsu period, but the architecture we see today dates to 1853 when the school was rebuilt at its current location following a fire in town.

The school buildings are important cultural property, a complex of interconnecting structures arranged in a linear fashion around a gatehouse. These buildings contain classrooms and training halls, including a kenjutsu dōjō. However, it was known back then as the Kenjutsu-sho ('place to do kenjutsu'), as the concept of a dōjō at that time was limited to religious structures. The form of the training hall is also very different from modern dōjō. It had a plain earthen floor for the most part. The small booths to the side are viewing galleries. The galleries sit at different heights, with the highest in the center being reserved for the daimyō, who would occassionally observe the classes, no doubt pondering upon the reliability of his future samurai. In this small mountain domain the Daimyō could more closely observe his retainers and subjects - I imagine (the last daimyō of Tsuwano Domain is the bearded chap in the photograph shown). The other galleries were used by instructors. All galleries have snug tatami! Students would sit on the wooden flooring at the front of the room when they weren't training. In a modern dōjō there would likely be some religious accoutrements here, and so students would not sit facing away from it; although this seems like a traditional practice, it is in fact a Meiji period custom. These training halls were not spiritual places in the Edo period.

Although none remains at the Yōrōkan, hankō (samurai schools) did, however, have a religious component, but this was grounded in Confucianism, and had little to do with martial spirituality. Most hankō had shrines, statues or even entire halls of worship dedicated to Kōshi (Confucius). If samurai in later life decided to adopt some spiritual guidance like Zen or Shintō then that was their own imperative, but samurai were brought up in Confucian ethics. The state ideology was Confucian and the samurai, whilst veneration of martial deities like Hachiman was common amongst them, derived their morality and caste identity from (Neo-)Confucian values.

Gallery by ART.