He started to practice calligraphy at terakoya (a private elementary school in the Edo period) at the age of six and then started to learn Chinese characters from Kyuko YAMAMURO, a Confucian scholar in the Bingo-Fukuyama Domain in Bingo Province, but skipped grades to enter the Seishikan, a Fukuyama domain school as a special case by recommendation of Yamamuro because he was doing very well at school.
6歳から寺子屋で手習いをはじめ、8歳から備後備後福山藩の儒学者山室汲古に漢字を習い始めるが学業優秀だったため山室の推薦により飛び級で福山藩校誠之館に特例入学。