Kyoto Jinbun Gakuen (Kyoto Humanism School) (京都人文学園)
Kyoto Jinbun Gakuen (Kyoto Humanism School) founded in 1964 immediately after the end of World War II in Kyoto through private educational movements.
Although education in Japan had been promoted as a measure to enrich and strengthen a country on the basis of Imperial Prescript on Education since the Meiji period, it was aimed at drastic democratization after World War II under the educational reform policies of the General Headquarters (GHQ). Kyoto Jinbun Gakuen (Kyoto Humanism School) is the result of private educational movements which occurred all over the country during a transitional period until the establishment of the country's new educational system.
The school was intended to reeducate young men and women who had been mobilized as soldiers, factory workers, and farmers during the war and deprived of educational opportunities
The school sponsored by Tomohiro HORIE called on teachers including Etsuji SUMIYA, Takeshi SHINMURA, Osamu KUNO, Hideo AOYAMA, Tokio SASAKI, who were all instructors for Kyoto University, aiming at bringing up global citizens having matching desires and actions, by providing human education mainly based on humanism.. The school opened at the Buddhist Center next to the Kyoto Imperial Palace as its provisional schoolhouse in 1946.
Kyoto Jinbun Gakuen was a three-year vocational school, whose education mainly consisted of general education and professional education (liberal arts). Its educational policy was revolutionary; it encouraged self-education, recognized thorough student autonomy, adopted coeducation system, and had no examinations (instead paper work), no school regulations, and no penalties.
Applicants started to decrease in the second year after its foundation, straining the school budget. The school once managed to avoid dissolution with donations by benefactors but were forced to disband in 1950. It started an evening school course for working students at its facility in 1949, which took over its educational policy. Eight years later, the school survived with the foundation of the Kyoto Kinrosha Gakuen (Labor Gakuen). Also a preparatory school Kamogawa Gakuen, which was founded in 1951 as a means to cover the deficit of Kyoto Kinrosha Gakuen, thrived as Kansai Bunri Gakuen.