ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks further explanations as to why the introduction of development education was delayed by a decade in the Japanese formal education system. Leonard James Schoppa’s theory, which identifies conflicts among actors in the educational policy making system as a cause of the difficulty of major educational policy change in Japan, may offer a solution.1 Although his analysis does not focus on the curriculum change in particular, the theory provides an initial explanation about the circumstances in which educational policy changes slow down.
