ABSTRACT
Education was a strategic theater in the political conflict for two reasons. First, some of the new liberalism involved ideas about the reform of the education system in terms of both values in the curriculum and access to opportunities beyond the primary level. Second, the campuses of higher schools and colleges became incubators for radical ideas and thus drew the ire of conservatives. By 1905 enrollments in Japanese primary schools had exceeded 90 percent for both boys and girls, and in 1907 compulsory education was increased from four to six years, thus realizing the early Meiji vision. The platforms of even the conservative parties were promising to "promote education," "to reform and renew the system," or even "equalize opportunities for education," although they were not concerned with gender equality. A less radical challenge to the educational orthodoxy was posed by the liberal New Education Movement of the 1910s and 1920s.
