Terakoya

Once the basics of writing were mastered, the pupils advanced to textbooks known as ōrai-mono (往来物), which dated back to the Heian period and were mainly used for samurai education.

They contained useful information about the daily lives of people, as household precepts, conversation skills and moral values, as well as historical and geographical contents, which showed a wider scope of social life to the students.

Although only a handful of terakoya offered commercial courses for the children of the merchant class, calculating with the abacus became more and more popular at the end of the Edo period.

Today, there have been instances of organisations and events bearing the name of terakoya in modern Japan, such as the Nichiren-affiliated Hosei-ji temple in Tokyo which held a two-day terakoya gathering in which elementary schoolers engaged in religious practices such as the copying of Buddhist images (写仏 shabutsu) and disciplined study of sutras while seated in the seiza style, in addition to many recreational activities.

These terakoya involve cooperation between university student volunteers, local business leaders, religious figures, and humanities professionals with a heavy emphasis on community and regional engagement in addition to personal and interpersonal development.