Christopher Columbus, who opened the way to the Spanish New World conquests, believed that his voyages had taken him to the vicinity of Cipangú or Japan. But what relation does this allusion have with the admirable work under review? None, really. Yet there is a curious interest in the fact that a gifted Japanese scholar chose to make a meticulous study of the cultural aspect of a Spanish military conquest. To him the Spanish achievement in America was more than a feat of arms because “the transfer of western culture to present day Hispanic America was a fact of transcendental importance in the history of humanity” (p. 145). He begins his investigation of this process with a detailed description of the pre-Hispanic educational system of the mexicas, suggesting a certain compatibility with the institutions imposed on the vanquished people by the Spanish crown, mainly through the Franciscans.
Featuring both societies was a two-class order of the governing and the governed, with distinct educational systems. The calmécac of the mexicas existed for the sons of the ruling nobility who were subjected to a severely ascetic discipline designed to prepare them for administration, a military career, or for the priesthood. The telpochcalli served more plebian elements who, in a less rigorous regime, learned the arts of warfare. Other institutions gave instruction in the dance, in music, and in handicrafts, while girls received training for domestic life or for religious ceremonies.
Turning to the conquerors, the author describes their time as one of an “academic euphoria” in the Peninsula, a period of intellectual ferment mingling Medieval and Renaissance thought. New universities came into being and such figures as Cisneros, Nebrija, Juan Luis Vives, and many others were promoting pedagogy and literary culture, and this enthusiasm spread across the sea to New Spain. There, ecclesiastics such as Bishop Zumárraga, Pedro de Gante, Quiroga, and many Franciscans especially, acting on royal decrees, established schools and training centers for the new subjects. They did not seek primarily to impose Spanish concepts of community but wished, rather, to substitute the Christian religion for that of the mexicas without violent disurbance to the native social hierarchy.
Over half of the book deals with these missionary endeavors and particularly with the College of Tlatelolco established by the Franciscans in 1536 in a native quarter of Mexico City. This institution, it is clear, played a large role in the “death and transfiguration” of mexica culture and education through the alphabetization of the Náhuatl language and the training of natives in Castilian and Latin. Such trilingual agents greatly advanced the incorporation of the mexicas into European culture.
The study is solidly documented by the writings of the earliest and later chroniclers, together with the best recent monographs. Begun in 1970 by the Japanese author, who is now a professor at the University of Sofía in Tokyo, with but a few years experience in the Spanish language, it is an impressive contribution and an extraordinary achievement. A detailed work of this nature sorely needs an index which regrettably it lacks.
