Education, values and Japan's national identity : a study of the aims and content of courses in Japanese history, 1872-1963
Creators: name: Caiger, J. G.
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1966
Subjects: subject: Education HistoryJapan
subject: National characteristics, Japanese
subject: Nationalism and education Japan

description: The purpose of this study is to describe the values underlying the vision of the national identity as revealed in the course in Japanese history that was compulsory for all schoolchildren. It seeks to establish the wider social significance of the course throughout the modern period in the history of Japanese education, from 1872 to 1963. This study focuses its attention on official statements about the aims of teaching Japanese history and on textbooks, either compiled by the Ministry of Education or authorised by it, together with appropriate teachers manuals. This material permits us to say what the government intended all Japanese schoolchildren to regard as the national identity. It enables us to go further, in describing the values that underlay the official vision of the national identity. The six chapters comprising this study fall into two groups. This division reflects the two outstanding characteristics of the values described, namely the sudden break with the prewar approach to the writing of history that came about in 19^6, and the continuity of values observed within each of the prewar and postwar periods. Three chapters are devoted to the period from 1872 to 19^5 and three to the years from 19^5 to 19^3• The opening chapter shows how the principle of one education for all children irrespective of their social background, enunciated in I872, was applied in the case of Japanese history over the next forty years. It attempts to establish the importance of the first syllabus drawn up in 1881, which brought the teaching of history into line with the character of the new nation state in which the Emperor was theoretically supreme, establishing the values of an emperor-centred history. The increasing degree of seriousness with which the Ministry of Education regarded the moral function of history teaching after 1881 is noted in syllabuses and textbooks published down to 1911 ; the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890, the introduction of the National Textbook scheme in 1903 and the Northern and Southern Courts crisis in I 9 H marking the most important stages in this process. The second chapter identifies the values in the official textbook and teachers manual and a semi-official handbook for teachers used between I 9 H and 1920, the first set of books written for the course and used for any length of time after the subject became compulsory in 1907 It concludes that the Ministry of Education wished to impress on children a sense of national identity embodying above all else an unblemished relationship between the Imperial line and the people, linked by benevolence on the one hand and loyalty on the other. The strong sense of continuity and of unity underlying this version of the national identity was fostered by linking the history of the country from the time of its foundation with the existence of the Imperial line. The course encouraged children to adopt a closed-world rather than an open-world view by stressing the uniqueness of both the nation1s 'divine1 origins and the supposedly historical relationship between the Imperial line and the people. The following chapter notes that after the First World War the Ministry regarded the moral function of history teaching more seriously than ever before. It is suggested that the course was now used as a 'countervailing measure1 to bolster the image of the Imperial House, the embodiment of the national identity, as the nation faced increasing social fragmentation and was in danger of losing its sense of national purpose. The emperor-centred image of the nation continued during the 1920s and 1930s to serve the government's purpose when it faced either radical discontent at home or military action abroad. The three textbooks covering the period from T9^0 to 19^3 show surprisingly little change in value-orientation considering the common characterisation of the twenties as 1liberal-international1 and the thirties as 'militaristic' The wartime textbook of 19^3» while strikingly different in presentation, is, in terms of the values informing it, essentially the same as official textbooks dating back forty years. All official statements relating to the aims of teaching Japanese history and the National Textbooks themselves reflected an attitude that regarded the common man as existing for the sake of the nation, an emperorcentred entity. Collapse after August 19^5 of the official ideology and the Ministry's weakness in the face of the Occupation that followed is represented as an opportunity for nonofficial intellectuals, previously denied the chance, to write a new type of history for children. This study claims for intellectuals outside the Ministry the major role in formulating the values underlying the new national identity in the first postwar history textbook, namely: rationality; an open-world view, emphasising the necessity for fruitful contact with the rest of the world; a greater interest in and acceptance of change in history, and an interest in the life of ordinary people, with a consequently greater interest in social, economic and cultural aspects of Japanese national life. The role of the Occupation is considered in detail and the conclusion reached that it was more concerned with preventing the dissemination of ideas of which it disapproved than of promoting any acceptably 'democratic' alternative. The second postwar chapter shows how the course in Japanese history was eclipsed in importance by a new course called social studies, of American origin, after 1947. When official interest in the teaching of national history revived, the Ministry proved to be committed to the values that it had endorsed in its weakness in 19^6« Since the history syllabuses of 1955 and 1958 were products of the post-Occupation period, it is argued that the Ministry's commitment to the values formulated by intellectuals in 19^6 was no longer suspect as appeasement to Americans. The relationship of the history course to social studies is dealt with at length in accounting for the livelier interest taken in encouraging children to play an active role in remaking society. The conflict between the Ministry of Education on the one hand and left-wing historians and the Japan Teachers Union on the other, although a prominent feature of the period from 19^7 to 1958, does not appear to have been a conflict over the postwar values endorsed by the Ministry as described in this study. The final chapter compares the first postwar history textbook published in 1946 with a typical authorised textbook of 1963s section by section, so as to show at a more detailed level the shifts within the values officially endorsed that had occurred since the end of the war. That the Ministry should prove to have upheld the values of 1946 is remarkable in view of the different circumstances in which the later book was written. Various reasons are suggested as to why these values should have continued to be upheld. They seem appropriate to a society that appears committed to modernity, constitutional democracy, economic progress, social welfare and the free international flow of both ideas and material goods. These values underlie a vision of the national identity, officially endorsed, that takes account of the common man and his activities both at the present day and throughout history.