ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical thumbnail sketch of Japanese education, showing how from its beginnings the political elite designed it with Liberation in mind. Until the late nineteenth century, many societies lacked centralized, state-controlled, and officially monitored education systems. Japan's modern education has been the conceptualization of schooling as elite-dominated and top-down with a core state organ administering and formulating strategic policy for the entire national state. The Education System Order gave the central bureaucrats ultimate powers of control, but burdened the local areas with financial support for the schools. As part of its overhaul of its political, economic, and social system, Japan underwent dramatic reforms in education under the tutelage of the American-controlled occupation. Co-ed education was introduced, higher education was greatly expanded, and the 1947 Fundamental Education Law was passed. Postwar reforms, then, did have an impact, but we must acknowledge both discontinuities as well as continuities with the pre-1945 period.
