13 So, Enryō like many others was reading this book, one of Fukuzawa’s best sellers. Through it he was learning about the new view of hu-manity that formed the basis of the era—that there is no difference between people and that they are all equal. According to the school’s journals, on April thirtieth of the following year, 1874, he went to the Western studies school in Nagaoka accom-panied by his father who made an application for admission. This school continues today as Nagaoka High School in Niigata prefec-ture. At that time it was named “Niigata First Branch School” be-cause a government initiative in 1871 saw the dismantling of the more than three hundred fiefdoms in Japan and the establishment of the prefecture system. Nagaoka became a part of Niigata prefecture and the prefectural government forced its schools of Western studies into a uniform structure (Fujino Zenzō, who had transferred in from Keiō Academy resigned in opposition to this development). Enryō and his friends did not comply with the name change and continued to call it “Nagaoka School for Western Studies.” Studying in Nagaoka required tuition and housing fees so let’s con-sider how Jikōji might have been positioned financially at that time. The head temple Higashi Honganji was one of the leading religious organizations in Japan and is said to have had “ten thousand temples and one million followers.” Its sub temples were classified according to size: large, medium, or small, and Jikōji was a medium temple of average size. It likely had the capacity to deal with all of its own ad-ministrative responsibilities, but was likely unable to do much more. Western Studies (2)
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