In the increasingly global economy, commentators often cite education as a key source of competitive advantage for nations locked in economic contention on the world stage. Byron Marshall examines the evolution of Japanese schools over the past 120 years. Emphasizing the political discourse and conflict that have surrounded Japanese education, the

In the increasingly global economy, commentators often cite education as a key source of competitive advantage for nations locked in economic contention on the world stage. Byron Marshall examines the evolution of Japanese schools over the past 120 years. Emphasizing the political discourse and conflict that have surrounded Japanese education, the author focuses on the three main issues of central versus local control, elitism versus equality, and nationalism versus universalism. The prewar education system in Japan was formulated in the 1870s and modeled after the Western system of public education. After World War II, the American Occupation authorities attempted to reform this system further, but how much discontinuity with the past was produced by the postwar reforms is still an open question.Of course, the dilemmas facing Japanese schools are endemic to all modern school systems, and Marshall's broad historical survey provides a valuable case study of Japanese attempts to strike a balance between equality and excellence, individual creativity and team cooperation, standardization and innovation, and internationalism and cultural identity. The book thus provides a valuable historical perspective on contemporary American issues of "political correctness" such as gender and ethnicity.As we head toward the "Pacific Century," this book gives readers the background and insight necessary to make informed judgments about the relative strength of Japanese education and the merits of various school reforms.

In the Japanese labor movement of the early twentieth century, no one captured the public imagination as vividly as Osugi Sakae (1885-1923): rebel, anarchist, and martyr. Flamboyant in life, dramatic in death, Osugi came to be seen as a romantic hero fighting the oppressiveness of family and society. Osugi helped to create this public persona when he published his autobiography (Jijoden) in 1921-22. Now available in English for the first time, this work offers a rare glimpse into a Japanese boy's life at the time of the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese (1904-5) wars. It reveals the innocent - and not-so-innocent - escapades of children in a provincial garrison town and the brutalizing effects of discipline in military preparatory schools. Subsequent chapters follow Osugi to Tokyo, where he discovers the excitement of radical thought and politics. Byron Marshall rounds out this picture of the early Osugi with a translation of his "Prison Memoirs" (Gokuchuki), originally published in 1919. This essay, one of the world's great pieces of prison writing, describes in precise detail the daily lives of Japanese prisoners, especially those incarcerated for political crimes.

Byron K. Marshall offers here a dramatic study of the changing nature and limits of academic freedom in prewar Japan, from the Meiji Restoration to the eve of World War II.
Meiji leaders founded Tokyo Imperial University in the late nineteenth century to provide their new government with necessary technical and theoretical knowledge. An academic elite, armed with Western learning, gradually emerged and wielded significant influence throughout the state. When some faculty members criticized the conduct of the Russo-Japanese War the government threatened dismissals. The faculty and administration banded together, forcing the government to back down. By 1939, however, this solidarity had eroded. The conventional explanation for this erosion has been the lack of a tradition of autonomy among prewar Japanese universities. Marshall argues instead that these later purges resulted from the university's 40-year fixation on institutional autonomy at the expense of academic freedom.
Marshall's finely nuanced analysis is complemented by extensive use of quantitative, biographical, and archival sources.