The Roots of Education in Japan - Part 2

With the issuance of the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890, the tide had turned against a full Westernization of the educational system. The government had control of education and the Rescript also had the effect of leading to “the indoctrination of youth on lines conformable to the authoritarian principles of the government”(Sanson,1962,p.467). The sense of loyalty and discipline created in generations of youth would pave the way for the more militaristic overtones education would take on in the 1930’s.

The American Occupation forces after World War II had exactly this sentiment in mind when they came to the conclusion that Japan’s educational system had to be decentralized and control turned over to locally elected school boards. The authorities believed that the system had produced “indoctrinated followers rather than thinking citizens”(Reischauer,1977,p.172). Education in the 1930’s and early 1940’s had one goal: to produce a militaristic and nationalistic generation completely indoctrinated in the needs of the state.

With the end of the war and the defeat of the state, the education system, which had been closely tied to the state, also died. As Occupation authorities set as one of the highest priorities the reform of the system, “few saw the irony in the plan to use education forcibly to democratize a people that had just been educated to a pitch of ultra-nationalism”(Hall,1965,p.413).

The changed implemented by SCAP forces, based largely on the Stoddard Report issued by a United States Education Mission, provided a system of coeducation and an expanded four year college system. The report also suggested that the Japanese alphabet be Romanized, and though this was rejected by a Japanese commission, a somewhat simpler form of writing was instituted that is still used(Boyle,1993). Several other changes were made that were later modified by the Japanese authorities after the Occupation. Ethics courses were reinstated in 1958 and the Ministry of Education regained much power. In March 1947, the Japanese Diet enacted the Fundamental Law of Education, which, among other things, espouses the principles of individuality and peace. In 1948 the Imperial Rescript on Education was officially rejected by the second post-war Diet.

During both the Meiji Restoration and the American Occupation of Japan, the needs of rebuilding a nation called for remodeling the educational system and producing individuals capable of the task. In both eras, the Japanese attitude towards the importance of education was “a product of the everyday world in which the Japanese have had to

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