ABSTRACT
Kuniyoshi Obara was one of the leading pedagogues of the New Education movement in Japan. This chapter first provides a brief overview of Obara's life and his work, the interaction of biography, personality and career. Next, it explores the characteristics of his thoughts and practices, examining how they were implemented at Tamagawa. The chapter sets out to re-examine the historical significance of Obara's philosophy of Zenjin and focuses on how Zenjin education is valued in the international context of today. Obara believed international exchange to be important for world peace, an ideal motivating progressivist around the globe. Obara studied value systems theory, which provided the foundation of Zenjin content, focusing especially on German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg, neo-Kantian philosophers Heinrich Rickert and Georg Mehlis, and furthermore the socio-psychological perspectives of Shotaro Yoneda, sociologist at Kyoto Imperial University.
