Now the kind of so-called core curriculum that is called general education does not serve the same purpose because it is too general, it has no focus, it has no core. It does not involve trying to identify what are the central issues of human life as they have been addressed by one thinker or writer after another from earliest times down to the present. General education for the most part simply serves as an introduction to different disciplines and does not actually focus on what are the perennial concerns of human life and human civilization. Now when I came back here to study with Tsunoda sensei, I found that he was teaching Japanese history, Japanese literature, Japanese thought (intellectual history) and Japanese religion. Now you may know that at that time, in 1946, Tsunoda sensei was not a member of the faculty. You are aware of that? He was simply a member of the library staff, but he was a truly educated person. What you might call a Japanese kyoyo aru hito. Now what does yo mean? "Kyo" means teaching, but "yo" is closer to the meaning of education. Education is intended not simply to indoctrinate or to put information or ideas into the students' mind. Education truly means to bring something out of the student. And not just the student as an individual, but the student as a member of the human race, alright. So it refers to self cultivation. Now that is a central idea of Confucian teaching.
Now how did Tsunoda sensei happen to speak to that particular need? He was a generalist in the sense as I say that he was not specialized in any one area. He taught early, modern, whatever, but he was a Meiji man. His Meiji education included a considerable amount of Confucian education, and Confucian learning and that centered on developing the self and developing one's human nature to the fullest. So you are centered on the person, you are not talking about the vast reaches of learning and knowledge and research. You are talking about something that is true and important right here. That is what sensei had a strong notion of.
Now my teachers in the Chinese side knew very little about Confucianism. Confucianism was not in favor in China in those years. Mostly it was criticized, but as part of his late-Tokugawa/Meiji education, Tsunoda sensei had actually read the classic texts of Confucianism. He had read about Neo-Confucianism, which most Chinese, modern Chinese scholars did not know anything about. He was very well informed. Now one of your questions was about his teaching method.
