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Before the Meiji Restoration very few Japanese children attnded schools. The Meiji Restortion by a historical accident occurred at the same time that the Europeans were building pubkic school systems. This had begun in the German states and America and by the mid-19th century Britain and France were following suit. As part of the modernizing impulse, Japaan began building a public school system, the only one in Asia at the time. It was ahenomenal step for a still virtually feudal society. The Japanese followed the European convention of creating separat schools for boys and girls rather than the American coeducational approach. In practice, however, there was a goof bit of coeducation from the beginning. While separate schools predominated in the cities. In the countyside, village schools were coeducational, largely because it was expensive to create separate schools in lightly populated areas. these of course were primary schools. Gradually coeducational primary schools became accepted. And this laid the foundation for educating girls. And when educated together there tended to be less curriculum differentials. Parents were more accepting of local schools and the Japanese people were perhaps more than any other people willing to comply with government instructions. Secondary education was primarily for boys, but over time this true expanded for girls. Most school children wore their traditional clothes. Over time, Government mandated uniforms began to take hold, at first in the cities and the secondar bschools. The unifiornms were gender specific and here the Japanese selected military uniforms from the two countries they most respected: Prussian cadet uniforms for the boys and British Royal Navy uniforms for the girls. After the Pacific War when many primary schools adopted more modern European styles, they often decided to coordinate oufirs, often short pants for the boys and similar (often the color and fabric) skirts for the girls.
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