ABSTRACT
A series of educational reforms launched and implemented in Japan during the years of occupation involved intricate politics and practices, ideologically or otherwise, both at national and local levels. Education as effected by a modern nation-state is crucial to the consciousness and identity of a nation, and the occupation forces pursued a series of educational reforms designed to remake Japanese cultural and political identities. The issues then at stake concerned war, nation building, and educational policy and practice, and they resonate today in the context of a resurgent Japanese nationalism manifested in recent textbook controversies, prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and conflicts between Japan and its neighbors such as China and Korea.
