ABSTRACT
Echoing the Cold War mission of the United States to promote democratic, egalitarian, and economically prosperous societies, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) leaders led research projects on education policies to buttress the expansion of higher education. The Japanese government joined this initiative and had a meeting with the OECD’s Education Committee in Paris to discuss the future direction of Japanese education in 1970. When the OECD’s education experts assessed Japanese education in the meeting, they advised Japanese policymakers on how to weaken school hierarchy, but Japanese education officials declined to do so. By looking at this process, this chapter traces how Japanese bureaucrats co-opted the OECD’s idea of education for economic take-off for their own goals but turned deaf ears to its request to destroy institutional hierarchy. By so doing, I argue that the government of a non-hegemonic country found this internationalist collaboration as an opportunity to justify its interests. Also, I highlight how the OECD examiners’ prejudice toward a late-developing Japan and Japanese education officials’ unwarranted optimism shaped the accomplishment and limit of this earliest international debate on the crisis of modern meritocracy in the world.
