ABSTRACT
I have argued that Japan's higher education is a grand spectacle of smoke and rnirrors, afforded a sense of reality by hundreds of actual institutions, lathered entrance exarnination preparation, impressive statistics of graduating students, entire curricula, and incessant talk of daigaku reform. Only a careful analysis of the rhetoric and reality of Japan's higher education reveals its true nature. Some have charged that my criticisms are unfair since Japanese higher education performs a "different function." But if it does have a different function, why doesn 't everyone admit this? Why not call it what it is? (i.e. employment centers sandwiched between pretertiary schools and jobs that keep individuals occupied and entertained until they join the labor force). Wh at Trow says about higher education in the United States seems to have become true in Japan: "Our colleges and universities are so enmeshed and entwined with other institutions 01' the society that they run the risk 01' becorning simply instruments in the service 01' those other institutions-of state and federal govemment, private business, special interest groups, and funding agencies" (1986: 179). From one perspective. we rnight say that the animal known as Japanese higher education is not diseased; it has merely mutated into a new organism. This rnight seem, perhaps. like not such a bad thing. But on the other hand, from the viewpoint of the village inhabitants who must live with and feed this new creature, its demands could become excessive, costly, and troublesome.
