ABSTRACT
The administrative system established through a series of education laws in 1886 by minister of education, Mori Arinori, and the ideological underpinning of the new system provided in the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 remained in place until 1945. The hierarchical organization of Japanese schools intensified the competition. Among the 45 prewar universities, the imperial universities ranked highest; and, among these, Tokyo Imperial stood first. Next came the remaining government schools and a small number of prestigious private schools, such as Keio and Waseda. The rate of attrition in the prewar system was extremely high. A useful collection of prewar and wartime documents and writings on education are translated in Herbert Passin, Society and Education in Japan. The New Education Movement promoted a child-centered pedagogy, teachers unions were organized, and student movements opposed to the nationalist education of the Ministry of Education arose.
