Japanese Education and Society in Transition

Despite its successful image, Japan has long seen its own education system as problematic. This book analyzes the trials and errors in Japanese education reforms during the last three decades, and is a call for wider exploration of the goals of education reform in our contemporary, interconnected global age.

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Japanese education drew great attention and praise from overseas observers in the final decades of the 20th century: Japan was seen as destined to dominate the world economy or even as a threat to the West and its education system appeared to be one of the keys to its manifest economic success. During this time a large number of English language works on Japanese education were published.

Despite the successful image of education outside the country, Japanese educators, policy makers, and media had long seen its own education system as problematic, specifically lacking in flexibility and respect for individuality. Japan thus embarked on a three-decade long period of reform trial and error: attempting to change in the face of increasingly social and economic problems such as expanding inequality and declining opportunities for youth employment. Japan’s education reforms over these ‘lost decades’ can therefore provide an illuminating test case: reflecting what challenges Japanese education faced, how reforms attempted to solve its problems, and what results (including unintended ones) they produced.

Given that there is only a very limited number of books published in English to trace the recent changes in Japanese education and the global economic crisis of 2008 has threatened a ‘lost decade’ for youth globally, this book is timely and important. Its detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the continuous series of trials and errors in Japanese education reforms during the ‘lost decades’ is a call for a wider exploration of the goals of education reform in our contemporary, interconnected global age.