Ashikaga Gakko (足利学校, Ashikaga-Gakkou^?, meaning the Ashikaga School) is Japan's oldest academic institution. It is located in Ashikaga city, Tochigi Prefecture. There has been some controversy as to when it was built, but it is said that it was founded in the 9th century and was restored in 1432 by deputy shogun Uesugi Norizane who imported many classical Chinese books and many of these are now kept in this school.

Many students came from all over Japan to study Confucianism, I Ching and Chinese medicine. St.Francis Xavier noted in 1549 that the Ashikaga School was the largest and most famous university of eastern Japan.

After the Meiji Restoration it was abolished. Now it is under the direction of Ashikaga city Board of Education.

[edit] Sources

• Ashikaga School on the web site of the Tochigi Prefecture (English version). Retrieved 8 June 2008.
• Roy Andrew Miller, Review: Studies in the Ashikaga College by Kawase Kazuma, The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (May, 1955), pp. 422-424. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
• Ashikaga-Gakko in Encyclopædia Britannica online. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
• Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki (eds), Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, Stanford University Press, 2001, pp.227-228. ISBN 0804741050
• Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis (eds.), Encyclopedia of Library History, Taylor & Francis, 1994, pp. 320-321. ISBN 0824057872
• Xinzhong Yao Routledge Curzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism, Routledge, 2003, p. 121. ISBN 0700711996

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