ABSTRACT
Despite their different trajectories and institutional set-up, East Asian education systems increasingly locate the nation within broader global contexts. This orientation creates its own paradoxes. At the same time that citizenship becomes more and more a transnational enterprise, replacing earlier forms that favored national collectivity as the moral source for rights and conduct, at the same time, “distinct” national cultures and values gain commanding positions as legitimate and effective entry points to world politics. This chapter tracks changes in the way that nation and citizenship are conceptualized and presented in school curricular material, focusing on China and Japan from 1945 until now as the case studies. We give particular attention to the periodization of change, engagement with broader (regional and global) dynamics, and converging and diverging patterns across case countries. We show that over time both countries assume a globalized society, and the place of active individuals and nations in making this society. The region, East Asia, is a sub-plot to this globalization narrative. We also note that in the case of China this image of citizenship incorporates a more energized, forthcoming national framework depicting a shift from “communist” to a “normalized” portrait of the nation and citizen, whereas Japan straddles a national and international outlook earlier on. In both cases, the accent on the uniqueness of the nation and its distinct values is accompanied by increasingly abstract notions of active and autonomous citizenry. We suggest that these changes are brought on by a variety of (not necessarily coordinated and often in conflict) factors, including the changing position and competitiveness of the country in the region and the world, shifts in educational and pedagogical doctrines, and the dominant transnational frameworks and models of how societies should work.
