ABSTRACT
Regardless of whether the threats and problems prompting debate and action in moral education and elsewhere in Japanese society are ‘real’ or not, their impact is still real, as Steiner-Khamsi has pointed out, and anxiety about, for example, preserving Japanese identity or about the quality of the moral fibre of the Japanese populace definitely is a factor which can prompt action and create a real impact, as described also by Leheny, Todorov and Takayama. One of the actions which was taken in the case of Japan is revision of moral education and strengthening of its status with plans for making it a proper subject with approved textbooks and student assessment in 2018. The Abe administration, as many political administrations before them in and out of Japan, is seeking to actively employ moral education in schools as one of the tools to rectify what is perceived as a crisis situation nationally; it is an act of gate-keeping where some flows from ‘the outside’ can be shut out while others are allowed in – we can see permeability as well as immunity in the approach. But moral education and its revisions and the way it is implemented are not just tools for political influence, they are also offered as tools to help the population handle global challenges, that is, handle the permeability of borders or the selective opening of borders by offering a framework of understanding, a common language in which people can discuss what is going on. The selective opening of borders between the domestic and the foreign is evident in the curriculum guidelines and text material for moral education, for example in the sections on the environment, which is often described in relation to the international community and as transnational. ‘Identity’, on the other hand, is mostly related to the international in terms of how it is different from identities found elsewhere and therefore not so open to outside influence, at least in the way it is represented in the discourse of the guidelines, the texts and the Kimigayo case with Yamada-sensei, which is the only one of my cases that really touched upon this issue. This does not preclude, however, the possibility of globally shared values and virtues such as Lincoln’s honesty or Marie Curie’s persistence. Similar selective opening is evident in the ‘developmental steps’-approach in the written material as well as the guidelines, where first knowledge of the local culture is introduced, then international understanding based on an awareness as a Japanese individual is added in later stages of the children’s development, where opening up for outside influence is deemed appropriate and safe.
