From the Rightist "Coup" to the New Beginning of Progressive Politics in Japanese Education

Abstract

Japan is currently undergoing a radical transformation of its education system. Much in the same way that the New Right challenged the postwar social-democratic, state welfarist settlement on public education in Anglo-American nations (Brown & Lauder, 2001; Whitty, Power, & Halpin, 1998), Japanese conservatives attempt to restructure public education by attacking the postwar democratic and egalitarian settlement of their education system. As seen elsewhere, the current Japanese education restructuring is part of the larger transformation of the postwar hegemonic configuration and its shift towards the post-postwar socio-political and economic arrangement. This perspective is absent in the current English language discussion of Japanese education reform (see Takayama, 2008a, 2009b) which tends to isolate education reform from what Stephen Ball (1997) calls "the generic quality of reform" (p. 27)--the general projects and ideologies of contemporary social policy and the changing relationship between the state and civil society. One of the pillars of the postwar settlement in Japanese education is the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE).