ABSTRACT
The Japanese education system today faces three transnationally created challenges. The first is multiculturalism. Given an increasing number of students whose parents are either migrants or naturalised citizens, the government needs to rethink the nature of public schools, which have traditionally catered to ethnic majority students, and explore how to make them culturally more inclusive. The second is cosmopolitanism. Although cosmopolitanism is regarded as a desirable disposition and competency in a globalising world, the government has difficulty incorporating it into the education system that continues to function as a central vehicle of nation-building. The third is global isomorphism. While world university rankings have facilitated the internationalisation of Japanese universities, they have also suppressed important debates on the public mission of higher education institutions at the local and national levels. How the Japanese education system will respond to these challenges is both path-dependent on its historical trajectory since the Meiji period and coterminous with how the government and citizens will redefine national identity vis-à-vis the complex reality of globalisation.
