ABSTRACT
Japanese Education Today extensively scrutinized the realities of Japan's education system and searched for clues useful to assist US education policy. This chapter focuses on the social consciousness of the narrative of 'playing catch-up with the West', an overarching ideology that was widely espoused in Japanese society and public opinion. Education policy discourse adopted the official views of the end of catch-up, giving rise to clearly identifiable changes in education policy and ensuing education reforms. The reforms to solve imbalances in Japanese education went into effect during the two lost decades. Playing catch-up with the West was one of Japan's responses to globalization. The end of catch-up statements contained in the Ohira Study Groups were subsequently adopted by the influential policy-making establishment in education in the 1980s under the Nakasone Cabinet: the Ad Hoc Council on Administrative Reforms (AHCER). In Japan, even cutting-edge knowledge is readily available through translations into the Japanese language.
