The purpose of this study is to investigate the articles related to play and education through play in the Journal of "Jido Kenkyu" (Child Studies), which was first issued in 1898 and discontinued in 1943, and to analyze the theories on play and education through play promoted mainly in the thirties of the Meiji Period, and to clarify the influence of those theories on the development of education as well as on that of physical education. The results of this study are summarized as follows : (1) The articles written by Kojiro Matsumoto, Heizaburo Takashima, and Sozo Kurahashi are noted as influential ones. (2) The articles had the modern thought of children in common which was asserted by John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc. and that one should treat a child as a child and that play has the important value in the development of children. (3) Those theories also taught that play gives one pleasure, and this recognition. seemed to lead teachers to find another way for physical education classes, which was different from the disciplinary instruction present in gymnastics. (4) In connection with the revised Imperial edict on elementary school in 1990, elementary school teachers were highly interested in play education. They felt the need for a theoretical basis of education when the scholars originating child studies in Japan were about to provide those theories. (5) The journal also ran the teachers\u27 reports on the true state of play and the curricula of play education in the schools and communities and thus it encouraged the teachers\u27 studies of play education and contributed to its development. (6) It is recognized that \u27Taiso-Yugi Torishirabe Houkoku\u27 (a school physical education reform plan recommended by the Committee for the Investigation of Gymnastics and Play, which was organized by the Ministry of Education in 1905) highly evaluated play and games as teaching materials for physical education class and that H. Takashima played an important role in the report. Generally speaking, however, many scholars and teachers interested in play who reported and read aricles in the journal Seemed to have an influence on the report by the Committee as well
