ABSTRACT
This chapter asks how real the problems of violence and over-conformity are in today’s Japanese schools, and investigates efforts by teachers, policymakers and other stakeholders to improve the educational experience of Japan’s children, and to better prepare them for the changing needs of Japan’s society and economy in the twenty-first century. It examines the ways in which children learn how to conform to the group in Japan, and then moves on to an analysis of bullying and corporal punishment, and the ways in which both of these problems have been addressed by those on the Left and the Right of the political spectrum from the 1980s up to the present day.
