Everyday Life in Edo - Everyday Life in Traditional Japan - page 164

little concern with the fact that they had often been caught and imprisoned especially for
this trade.
(88) Kite-seller, kneeling to lower his basket to the ground.
It has been estimated that, even at the end of the period, only just over two-fifths of the
boys in Japan and a tenth of the girls were being educated outside their homes. Samurai
boys had their fief schools, and in the country districts many villages boasted a school of
some sort, sometimes run as a charity or as a co-operative effort by the inhabitants, some-
times as a piece of private enterprise. In towns, school-teaching was looked upon as a way
ofearningalivingbypersonsofvariouskinds,includingmasterless samurai, orevensome
impecunious ones who had a master, the physically disabled, widows, divorcées and spin-
sters, and some families who had teaching as their hereditary occupation.
Children learned the family crafts at home; a girl acquired knowledge of cooking, sew-
ing, and washing ( 89 ) from her mother, while a boy learnt from his father and his employ-
ees the skills necessary to become a full member of the trade, including the use of the aba-
cus for doing the accounts; or he might be sent off to learn a trade from another craftsman.
Schoolswerenotrequiredtodothissortofvocationaltraining,norwerethey,inthisrigidly