Publisher’s Note

Social Revolution & Education
By Kazumasa Kusaka
The current generation is seeing many unskilled or difficult
manual jobs being replaced by robotics. But the future generationis also predicted to see not only taxi or truck drivers’ jobs but
highly-skilled jobs such as software programming, financial
analysis and medical diagnostics being replaced by AI. So what isneeded for a community to be sustainable and well prepared forsuch changes? The key is education for the next generation, andshould the speed of change be faster than generational turnover,the key point then becomes re-education and re-training of thecurrent generation.
In the mid-19th century, Japan underwent a social revolution.
Seen from outside, the Meiji Restoration of imperial power in1868 occurred in the face of Western “gun-boat diplomacy” toopen up the country, ending over 200 years of national isolation,with the exception of trade with the Netherlands in Dejima Island
and with China in Nagasaki. To the surprise of many, thefollowing half-century saw Japan become the first industrial
power in Asia.
What enabled Japan to adapt to the abrupt change in external
environment? In the transformation process from the Tokugawa
Shogunate to a centralized government under the emperor,
supported by the Satsuma-Choshu han (a feudal domain)
coalition, a big social change had taken place. Samurai had been
deprived of their social position and hereditary stipends, and had
become unemployed. While many from Satsuma and Choshu
who were on the winning side found positions in the new Meiji
government, those on the losing side suffered failure in theircareer change in becoming a farmer or merchant, trades that wereunfamiliar to them. However, they had been samurai — warriors
during a time of peace lasting over 200 years, and by reason ofthat they had certain capabilities. They had been trained to begood scholars as well as warriors. In the Tokugawa Period, 300
han had han schools for samurai from the age of seven to 18 witha curriculum of liberal arts and martial arts. Kangien, a private
school for advanced studies in liberal arts, mathematics,
astronomy and medicine established by the Edo Period Confucian
scholar Tanso Hirose, was the first to adopt a monthly groupingof class members based on academic achievement and also
accepted the best and brightest students throughout Japan
regardless of their origins and position in society. Narutaki Jyuku,
Philip Franz von Siebold’s private Western studies school in
Nagasaki, was the center of Western medicine and natural scienceand educated many young elite students.
Interestingly, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, governance wasdone by each han, and therefore each han, likened to a de facto
autonomous country with its own military power, devoted its
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efforts to enhancing its security, intelligence and promotion ofnew industry. More importantly, to achieve these goals, they wereserious in educating young elites. With that deep pool of humanresources capable of running their own han, when the opening of
the country took place they naturally shared the sense that an
emerging Japan could survive among the great powers of theworld.
In the early Meiji Period, those who were on the losing side
were exposed to Western studies, read Descartes, Kant,
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and some of them becameChristians. They became leaders in the transformation ofbusiness, academia and governance.
In parallel with this elite education, the role played by Terakoya— some 16,000 private elementary schools that taught reading,writing and arithmetic to the children of commoners, such as
merchants and farmers — was very important, achieving aliteracy rate of 80% in paving the way for the modernization ofJapan. This combination of “elite” education and “practical”
education fostered Japan’s adaptability to the rapidly changing
environment it had to face.
We have been increasingly engaging with our Asian friends inbrainstorming over the future nature of work in an age oftechnological innovation with AI at its core. Asian dynamism has
perhaps blurred the negative aspects of AI, holding off politicalintervention to adjust the pace of deployment in replacing jobs.
The concern now is what happens to the next generation. Perhaps
we would be better to go back to the basics, which arephilosophy, history and mathematics, like the origin ofuniversities, and train students to learn from the lessons of thepast to prepare them to lead into the future. The point is whethercurrent education is tailored too much to meeting the segmented
demands of the job market and whether these specialists are goodat coping with a sea change of a wider scope.
In parallel with education for leaders, practical training forordinary people, including mid-career re-education, will beessential for them to live resiliently. Knowledge can start
becoming obsolete from day one. But the ability to think and theskill to analyze and interpret would empower and protect students
during their lifelong voyage even when they happen to venture
into uncharted waters.

Kazumasa Kusaka is chairman and CEO of the Japan Economic Foundation(JEF), as well as being a professor of public policy at the University of Tokyo. He
previously served as special advisor to the prime minister on global warming
after having been vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry ofEconomy, Trade and Industry.
Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 20181