One of the things that Shirahama learned from American art education was the systematic pre-service training program at the higher level exemplified by the Massachusetts Normal Art School. After coming back to Japan, Shirahama soon got the opportunity to transform the teacher-training program of the Japanese system. When the art teacher education program was set up at the Tokyo Fine Arts School in April 1907, Shirahama, as chairman, developed its curriculum. The three-year curriculum was as follows: pedagogy and the art of teaching; aesthetics and the history of fine arts; anatomy; designing; freehand drawing; mechanical drawing; handicrafts (clay, paper, wood, and metal work); and the practice of teaching (Monbusho [the Ministry of Education in Japan], 1910a, pp.18-19).
Another thing that Shirahama learned from America was how to develop a more modernized art curriculum for use by elementary schools; he based this curriculum principally on one of Prang's Text Books of Art Education. The turn of this century was a remarkable period for building the Japanese compulsory-education system. For example, in 1887 elementary-school attendance was only 45 percent. By 1897 it was 66 percent, and by 1907 had jumped to 97 percent (Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, 1958, p.70). In 1907 compulsory education was extended from four to six years and the number of compulsory elementary education students increased.
Corresponding to the the extension of elementary-school attendance, the Ministry of Education issued new drawing books for each elementary grade called Shintei Gacho (New Textbooks of Drawing) (Monbusho [the Ministry of Education in Japan], 1910b) in 1910 . This set of drawing textbooks was the first one in the history of modern art education in Japan. The content and organization of the curriculum in the textbooks were developed under Shirahama's direction.
Shirahama's editorial policy of curriculum development in the new textbooks was based partly on the standard set by Froehlich and Snow's Text Books of Art Education (Books I-VI) (published by Prang Educational Co.) (1904-1905). Although ?the Prang textbooks were widely used in Canada? (Chalmers, 1985, p.73), the impact of these textbooks was not limited to Canadian art education; it extended to Japan through Shirahama's translation of them into Japanese.
A comparison of the New Textbooks of Drawing in Japan and the Text Books of Art Education in the Untied States shows that both sets were almost identical in such aspects as publishing one volume for each grade, including illustrations and the teaching of art principles. However, there are some differences between the Japanese and the American textbooks. For example, Imitative or copy-drawing still remained in the Japanese textbooks.
Another difference between the two texts lay in their basic approach to art. The American text offered a kind of ?intellectual and instrumental approach to art? (Silverman, 1982, p.174), whereas the Japanese text offered an instructional approach and provided a strict teaching strategy. The distance between the American and Japanese texts might be due to a gap between what Shirahama learned from American art education and what he realized in modernizing Japanese art education, but it seems this limited translation of American ideas into Japanese art education was due largely to the necessity of compromising with traditionalists.