ABSTRACT
This chapter leads the overall account of progressive education very much into the present. Founded in 1992 by Shinichiro Hori, Kinokuni is one of the pioneer schools that are successors of progressive ideas, situated high on a mountain nearby the Koyasan Temple in Wakayama prefecture. The cultural encounter through which the educational thought of Neill and his school was transmitted to Japan dates back in its beginnings to the New Education movement and the work of Seishi Shimoda, who joined the Society of the Century of Education and visited Neill's Summerhill School in the 1920s. Hori proposed to the Ministry of Education in 1990 and 1991 to set up a new school, Kinokuni Children's Village School. He asked whether state-sector schools effectively serve the century of the child as advocated by Ellen Key, and asked whether Japan would help children grow up to be free intellectually, emotionally and socially.
