ABSTRACT
Japan is widely considered to be competitive, if not dominant, in several important social sectors. The economy is the most obvious sector, but other social areas, including education, command attention as well. Just as Japanese factories produce superior manufactured products, so too, it is argued, do Japanese schools, and the one is interrelated with the other. Indeed, Japan has been without comparison as a nation that has utilized formal, nonformal, and informal education on its road to modernization. From the Fundamental Code of Education (produced in 1872) to recent reforms in higher education, the Japanese approach to providing a first-rate educational system has not gone unnoticed among the nations of the world.
