Edited by Yoko Yamasaki and Hiroyuki Kuno, Educational Progressivism, Cultural Encounters and Reform in Japan

Abstract

In tandem with Routledge’s recent volume, The History of Education of Japan, 16002000 (Tsujimoto and Yamasaki eds., 2017), the current work is a useful primer for overseas academics wishing to familiarize themselves with the history of modern Japanese education practice. The volume adopts three general approaches that warrant further comment. First, by choosing to look at educational change through the lens of progressive education, this volume provides a “much-needed corrective” to stereotypical images of Japanese education as being overly “formal,” conservative and tradition-bound (p. 1). Yoko Yamasaki’s overview (Chapter 1) of early 20 reformist movements challenges this impression, and this point is emphasized throughout the book. Hiroyuki Kuno’s and Kie Fujiwara’s analyses (Chapters 2 and 3, respectively) of state-sponsored normal schools, for example, document the ways reformist institutions could –through their high number of kengaku (observer) visitors and active publishing of research (pp. 32, 47) -infl uence the nation’s broader education system. Masayuki Haga’s essay (Chapter 4) also traces the ways leading artists, such as Kanae Yamamoto and Hakutei Ishii, propagated a new, “expressive” arts education. By highlighting the ways these reformist trends infl uenced broader public discourse, the essay suggests a reason why Japan has –in stark contrast to the perennial budget cutting within the United States and other western countries—remained consistently supportive of “creative” education. Finally, Ayako Kawaji’s article (Chapter 7) on the Daily Life Writing Movement explores how reformist pedagogy could become a nation-wide, grass-roots phenomenon. Kawaji follows the development of Daily Life Writing from the “free subject” pedagogy of the late Meiji, through the socially engaged, critical approaches of the 1930s, to the collaborative “logic of living” discourses of the postwar period. These essays present vivid examples of diverse historical actors creating alternatives to state-imposed, education orthodoxy. Educational Progressivism, Cultural Encounters and Reform in Japan