Winter winds whistle as I exit Jiyugaoka Station in Tokyo¡¯s Meguro Ward, surrounded by a flock of boisterous high school students in black uniforms. Their joyous chatter as we walk into brilliant sunshine at the station¡¯s main exit reminds me that the station and area was named in 1930 for a nearby high school, Jiyugaoka Gakuen.
Jiyugaoka Gakuen was an early example of the Taisho Jiyu Kyoiku Undo (Taisho Free Education Movement), a new form of education in Japan that changed from authoritarian classrooms to student-centered learning, initiated in the Taisho Era (1912-26). The Japanese characters for Jiyugaoka, which literally mean ¡°freedom hill,¡± were chosen to fit the school¡¯s philosophy. However much they may apply to the area today, Jiyugaoka was not the station¡¯s original name.
In 1927, when the brand-new Toyoko Line tracks were first laid through the agricultural fields in southern Meguro, the station was dubbed Kuhonbutsu-mae, to honor nearby Kuhonbutsu Joshinji temple. The only problem, I learn through a brief telephone chat with Meguro Ward Office historian Naomi Saito, was that the Oimachi Line, built soon after, included a stop directly in front of the temple.
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