Ok, so pretty much I've spent some time searching the internet for this info and no luck. What I want to ask is what old japanese do they learn in high school, according to my girlfriend they learn how to read buddhist chants and things. Do they learn how to read the Shoki and stuff? Well, you get the general idea of the question. I would love to dwelve and see how deep they go in high school with the old japanese styles, and would love to begin learning them a little.


(I have like 20+ different mini products going in japanese now, haha,but this is one of tremendous interest so, hopefully we can find some resources, I will keep looking tomorrow but I gotta crash now, I would think some more intermediate/ advanced learners would definitely have some interests here.)


Anyways, Just break down, what they learn, and what particular works they old works they study in high school, school in general actually.

I found out that I guess they teach 漢文　in some schools, do they teach 　万葉仮名　too?

Classical Japanese is really only touched on in school; you learn to decipher specific short passages but you don't really learn to read it. Kanbun is covered a bit. I doubt that Man'yogana is covered at all beyond maybe just telling the students what it is; hardly anybody needs to be able to actually read Man'yogana, even specialist researchers.

The Nihon Shoki probably is not covered; it's written in Chinese, and it's generally not considered to be worth reading from a literary standpoint.

If you want to see exactly what they do you would have to get some middle school or high school textbooks, or college entrance exam prep books.

But the actual working knowledge of old Japanese that students get out of this is very small; even after just taking a few college-level classical Japanese courses I could read classical Japanese better than the other native Japanese college students who weren't focusing on classical.

Do you have any resource where I can find out more?

If you want to know what they learn in high school I'm guessing that you could probably do worse than start with the NHK 高校講座 radio programmes on 古典.

I don't have any online resource, no.

I remember that the first passage in the middle school 国語 textbook I used was the famous opening of Taketori Monogatari:
今は昔、竹取の翁といふものありけり。野山にまじりて、竹を取りつゝ、萬づの事に使ひけり。名をば讃岐造麿となむいひける。その竹の中に、本光る竹一筋ありけり。怪しがりて寄りて見るに、筒の中光りたり。それを見れば、三寸ばかりなる人、いと美しうて居たり。翁いふやう、「われ朝夕毎に見る竹の中に、おはするにて知りぬ。子になり給ふべき人なめり」とて、手に打入れて家に持ちて來ぬ。妻の嫗に預けて養はす。美しきこと限りなし。いと幼ければ籠に入れて養ふ。

This is also what we started with when I took classical Japanese 1 my first year of grad school.