In 1903, the Japanese Ministry of Military Affairs revised the manual of military gymnastics, the so-called taiso kyohan . In 1913, the Ministry of Education formulated the syllabus of gymnastics to be taught in schools, gakko taiso kyojyu yomoku . It has generally been considered that this syllabus was based mainly on the Swedish system of gymnastics. In the present study, I set out to clarify whether many of the gymnastic exercises performed on apparatus (except for hand-tools) as specified in the manual were designed for secondary school boys in the syllabus. The period studied was that from the time when the report taiso yugi torishirabe hokoku , meaning “an investigation of gymnastics, play and games in schools” was published in 1905 by the research committee authorized by the Ministry of Education, until the publication of the 1913 syllabus. The Ministry of Education had planned the syllabus in response to a demand from the Ministry of Military Affairs to formulate a school gymnastics program based on military lines, because the report had proposed the abolition of military gymnastics in schools. My research involved not only the use of general documents but also analysis and comparison of tables describing each phase of the exercises published in the manual, the report itself, and the syllabus, in order to verify relationships among them. Based on the available materials, I concluded it was far from certain that there had been an insistence to include military gymnastics in school gymnastics, in spite of the fact that some military gymnastic exercises were listed in the report. Accordingly, the Ministry of Military Affairs had requested the Ministry of Education to devise a school gymnastics program based on military lines. “Heaving movements”, a component of the original Swedish gymnastics, which had been translated as jyoshi no undo , meaning “arm-movements”, was divided into two parts in the syllabus. One was jyoshi no undo , meaning “arm-movements”, except for exercises performed on apparatus, and the other was the new term, kensui undo , meaning “chin-up movements”, which literally covered a broad range of exercises including chin-ups and pull-ups on gym apparatus, because the two terms kensui undo and cyoyaku undo , meaning “jumping and vaulting movements”, were necessary in order for the syllabus to comply with the demand for military gymnastics. Military gymnastics was one of two main gymnastic systems in the syllabus, because the two partitions were composed of military gymnastics, as was the case for Swedish gymnastics.