ABSTRACT
The Japanese owe much of their early educational tradition to China. It is generally agreed, among those who teach survey histories of Japan, that there is no entirely satisfactory single-volume text that provides balanced treatment of both ancient and modern times and comprehensive, yet succinct, coverage of major issues in political, social, economic, cultural, and intellectual history. Included are works that cover the entire sweep of Japan's history, as well as those that survey Japan's modern development from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Clearly one of the priorities for Western scholarship ought to be an exploration, using modern historical methods, of the pre-Tokugawa tradition of Japanese education. Charts show changes in the modern system and a brief chronology shows important events in educational history. A leading scholar of comparative education at Kyoto University discusses Japanese educational history in comparative context.
