The Language Teacher
October 2001
Annotated Bibliography of Books on Education in Japan
This bibliography is intended as a complementary resource to the articles on meritocracy and book reviews on education in this special issue. Few publications in English education deal specifically with meritocracy, but many discuss the topic to some extent, others peripherally. Finding these books can also be difficult, but most can be located at The Japan Foundation library <www.jpf.go.jp> in Roppongi, Tokyo.
Students of Japanese education soon note that in the US three scholars are luminaries in the field: Tom Rohlen, William Cummings, and Edward Beauchamp. Between them they have contributed considerably to making Japanese studies one of the most studied academic fields in the US. Unfortunately at this point in their careers these scholars may not be publishing as much; therefore, a new generation of analysts, some of whom contributed to this special issue, are the focus of this bibliography. Also, as more Japanese researchers are writing in English, students of Japanese education now have more authentic material from which to draw their conclusions.
As one analyses the discourse in these books with a critical eye, it is possible to conclude that all the authors come from some political or interested standpoint. By interested what is meant is the Pennycook (1989) sense of all knowledge being in some way interested. According to Pennycook (1989), all knowledge is produced within a particular configuration of social, cultural, economic, political, and historical circumstances and hence always both reflects and helps to (re)produce those conditions. Since every claim to knowledge represents the interests of certain individuals or groups, it must always be seen as interested. Applying this approach in a basic way, then, to the books in the bibliography, four groups of interest present themselves: (a) Japanese writers criticizing their own Japanese system and recommending western reforms; (b) Japanese writers supporting the Japanese educational system and pointing out weaknesses in the education systems of other societies to support their argument; (c) non-Japanese writers supporting the Japanese system, criticizing their own, and recommending the adoption of the Japanese education model; and (d) non-Japanese writers supporting their own education system by criticising the faults of Japan's education system. The level of interest may share a correlation with where the author chooses to live (i.e., their home country or abroad). All viewpoints are valid with much agreement between them.
Needless to say, the following thirteen books are by no means an exhaustive list of publications on the topic, but we hope that we have succeeded in choosing a good cross section of the books available. We certainly hope readers will use this bibliography as a springboard to further explore the literature on their own. They would also make good selections when deciding how to spend a library book budget!1
Cutts, R. L. (1997). An Empire of Schools: Japan's Universities and the Molding of a National Power Elite. London: M.E. Sharpe.
Cutts is a journalist rather than an academic. Chapter titles like "If There Is a God, He Went to Todai" and "The Ivory Basement" give a clear, if somewhat sardonic, indication that all might not be well in the world of Monbukagakusho. Nonetheless, this volume is also sympathetic to the enormous financial and emotional burden placed on Japanese families who try to ascend the meritocratic escalator by having one of their children join the elite. It may be short on description of those who do not intend to become elite, but there is in-depth investigation of the largest group overlooked by meritocracy, namely, women.
Goodman, R. (1990). Japan's International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Many language teachers have encountered returnee students both in and out of the classroom. This book is based on the author's ethnographic fieldwork at a private junior and senior high school for kikokushijo, students returning to Japan after living abroad. His conclusions are thought provoking and challenge the generally accepted view of the stigmatised, maladjusted student struggling to be accepted back into Japanese society. Goodman suggests that a number of factors are converging to make these returnee children a special elite group in a Japan infatuated with internationalisation.
Lewis, C. (1995). Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Educating Hearts and Minds offers a view of the social side of the educational successes of preschool and elementary education in Japan. Lewis builds on 14 years of classroom observations and through detailed vignettes offers intriguing insight into the psychology of Japanese early childhood and primary education. The book is highly readable and engaging for those of us seeking a reflective, comparative approach to explaining such terms as hansei, ganbaru, and genki, as well as education in general.
Marshall, B. K. (1994). Learning To Be Modern: Japanese Political Discourse on Education. Boulder: Westview Press.
This historical survey covers the gamut of educational ideology in Japan from the late Edo to post-Showa eras. Along with Passin's classic Society and Education in Japan, Marshall's work offers the best overview of the political processes that shaped not only education in the Japanese nation-state, but also other contemporary issues that include ethnicity and gender. What is most apparent after reading this book is the plurality of thinking and diversity of subcultures that comprise Japan and the Japanese. This is a study of Japanese educational history that is second to none.
McConnell, D. (2000). Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Any former MEF or AET will be intrigued with this anthropological account of the JET program. A program that commands an annual budget of $500 million will undoubtedly be wrought with both failures and successes. McConnell spent ten years researching the program and through firsthand knowledge is able to explain the viewpoints of all parties involved in the program (i.e., bureaucrats, students, Japanese language teachers, and foreign JET participants). The author reveals that the rocky history of the JET program indicates that concepts such as internationalisation and multiculturalism are often not used critically enough.
McVeigh, B. (1997). Life in a Japanese Women's College. London: Routledge.
While informative accounts of primary and secondary schooling abound, there is a lack of interpretive material in English that describes Japanese higher education. McVeigh helps to fill this gap with this highly readable and intellectually stimulating ethnography of a women's college. This book is required reading for all those involved in, or interested in, the world of Japanese higher education and is also highly recommended for those interested in gender studies in Japan.
Okano, K., & Tsuchiya, M. (1999). Education in Contemporary Japan: Inequality and Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book investigates how economic success has created unfavourable developments in the education system. It focuses on the students outside centralisation and standardisation who have been relatively ignored: slow learners, minority groups, girls, and those with non-academic aspirations, in other words, those not riding the meritocratic escalator. The odds are stacked against these students. What they may learn most is how to fail. In order to balance the scales somewhat, the authors highlight a couple of flaws of meritocracy: 1) those that achieve the top academic results come from families with resources (resources which are utilised by the family in order to reach such positions), and 2) the assumed neutral nature of merit in the selection process is actually arbitrarily defined by the system of education. These are valid points and one cannot help wishing they had been tackled more aggressively in Okano and Tsuchiya's work.
Roesgaard, M. H. (1998). Moving Mountains: Japanese Education Reform. Denmark: Aarhus University Press.
Roesgaard's volume surveys the development of the Japanese educational system. The report of the Nakasone-era National Council on Education Reform (Rinkyooshin) is discussed in great detail, effectively identifying both the political rhetoric as well as the political motivations behind it. In her book, Roesgaard focuses on what she feels are the four main issues of the NCER's proposals: individuality (kosei), lifelong learning (shoogaigakushuu), internationalisation (kokusaika), and adaptation to the information society (joohooka). Her investigation into the societal attitudes surrounding these four issues is the strength of the book.
Rohlen, T. P., & LeTendre, G. K. (Eds.) (1998). Teaching and Learning in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This edited edition explores themes in Japan's culture of learning. The span of topics includes not only education in the traditional school classroom but learning in a variety of circumstances, including at Zen monasteries, Noh theatre, and during violin lessons. Through such a multi-faceted approach to the investigation of teaching and learning in Japan, the authors succeed in demonstrating the importance of placing socialization models above cramming for tests and rote learning.
Windolf, P. (1997). Expansion and Structured Change: Higher Education in Germany, the United States, and Japan 1870 1990. USA: Westview Press.
Based on archival data from the United States, Germany, Japan, France, and Italy, this study combines both comparative and historical perspectives to argue that in the late 1800s each country's education system went from imperial patronage (i.e., the spoils system) to meritocracy. This book emphasises that there is a close affinity between the educational and socialisation processes of the university and those of bureaucracy. In the United Kingdom, students who aspired to higher positions in the public administration attended Oxford or Cambridge, where they studied humanities. This study was not considered to impart technical knowledge that the bureaucrats would later need in performing their public office but served instead a principally selective function. The parallel with Todai (University of Tokyo) is not difficult to see. This symbolic power was then carried over to the bureaucracy. Interestingly, in many countries one of the central goals of the patronage reform movement was the removal of the bureaucracy from influence by the political parties. This helps to explain how the entrance to the Japanese prime minister's office is practically a revolving door, while state administrative functions continue to operate without a hitch.
Wray, H. (1999). Japanese and American Education: Attitudes and Practices. USA: Bergin and Garvey
This book, from a former professor at Nanzan University, is a comparative study of the Japanese and American education systems. Whereas in the past many publications have dealt specifically with the Japanese education system in an attempt to explain Japan's unheard of economic growth, this is no longer the case. Analyses are becoming more comparative and global. Interestingly, Japanese weaknesses are described qualitatively in this book, while American shortcomings are described quantitatively, that is, American students are not getting the grades. Wray does not explicitly state it, but after reading his book a possible solution to the problems with both systems seems to be for greater adoption of the Japanese education system to the secondary level and then the Western for tertiary institutions.
Yoneyama, S. (1999). The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance. London: Routledge.
The Journal of Japanese Studies (Akiba & LeTendre, 2000) reviews this book rather critically. The reviewers call it "a vitriolic condemnation of the entire Japanese education system." The Japanese High School contains graphic and accurate depictions of ijime behaviour. Although Akiba and LeTendre doubt the validity of these depictions, if you are a teacher in Japan try asking adult students if they understand any of the ijime language that Yoneyama explains. You may be surprised how much they understand. Yoneyama can be criticised for having a bias towards the Australian education system, but she should also be commended for showing the courage to expose in her book what usually remains behind closed doors.
Zeng, K. (1999). Dragon Gate: Competitive Examinations and Their Consequences. London: Cassell.
The strength of this somewhat dense book is that it compares the Japanese entrance examination system with those of Taiwan and Korea. Zeng observes that in ancient China a supernatural lore grew around the state civil service examinations (the precursor to university exams), which included beliefs in a host of gods and spirits, guardians of both the learned and the system itself. Indeed, even in contemporary Japan, before they write their entrance exams, many students visit shrines to pray for their success. Zeng provides a historical account of how Confucian meritocracy was inducted into the realm of Japanese education through the Imperial Rescripts of 1879 and 1890. He then details how the Japanese meritocratic entrance exam system spread to Taiwan and Korea along with Japanese expansion in World War II. An extensive comparative analysis of all three systems follows.
References
Akiba, M., & LeTendre, G. (2000). The Japanese high school: Silence and resistance. Journal of Japanese Studies 26 (2), 474-478
Pennycook, A. (1989). The concept of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 23 (4), p. 589-618.
1 As of June 2001, all of the books in the bibliography, except the out-of-print Windolf volume, were available from a major online bookseller, such as Amazon, Blackwells, or WHSmith.
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