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Why are female-dominated paths (which I will call ‘feminine paths’) in education and occupations still chosen by a number of women, especially in a society like Japan? I argue that it is partly because a choice for ‘feminine paths’ is believed to produce advantageous quality (which I call ‘feminine capital’) in the marriage market for women. In this paper, with qualitative analysis on interview comments, I will investigate people’s perception of ‘feminine paths’ in contrast with ‘egalitarian (or male-dominated) paths’, regarding their advantage in the marriage market. The analyses in this paper suggest that ‘feminine paths’ in education and occupations are oftentimes perceived as more advantageous for women’s marital status attainment than ‘egalitarian paths’ because of cultural capital and social capital they entail. However, such ‘advantageous qualities for a marriage’ consists of various and often contradictory elements. Especially, the qualities useful ‘before’ marriage (for a ‘search’ of husband) is different from qualities useful ‘after’ marriage (for a ‘compatibility’ with household responsibilities), and such contradiction suggests why the pursuit of the two courses of status attainment (one through marriage, and the other through occupational attainment) becomes difficult, resulting in a discontinuity in an occupational career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern education emerged in the long modern century stretching from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Many accounts of modern education assert that its goals, structure, content and functions were essentially identical across all modern societies. This paper argues, to the contrary, that at least six distinctive patterns of modern education emerged, each reflecting their unique temporal and spatial context and the nature to the ideological, economic, and political changes that accompanied their birth and systematization. These patterns are the Prussian, French, English, American, Japanese, and Russian approaches to modern education. The paper first seeks to describe the process of emergence of these respective systems, and then it reflects on some of the implications for institutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shinzo Abe became Japan's prime minister in September 2006, capping a political rise termed by one scholar as "extraordinary." Public opinion polls at that time showed widespread support for Abe who proposed, among other things, to revise the country's constitution and education system and to make it once more a "beautiful nation." One year later, however, he resigned in defeat and disgrace, a leader described, in another scholar's words, as "an unmitigated disaster."Adopting a Gramscian analytical framework, this paper examines the post-war hegemony that dominated Japanese politics until the Liberal Democratic Party's defeat in 1993 and subsequent attempts to reestablish hegemonic dominance. The paper gives particular attention to the Abe government's policy agenda based on militant right-wing nationalism and his government's sudden collapse. Ultimately, the paper argues 1) that Japan is in the midst of a continuing "organic crisis" that, beginning in the early 1990s, destabilized previous political alliances; and 2) that the recent collapse of the Abe government's reflects a failed attempt to forge a new hegemony around right-wing nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of totalitarian regimes, which are categorically positioned at the opposite end from democratic regimes in the political spectrum, the notions of the self has not played an integral part in the analytical framework. An implicit assumption exists that the autonomous self is unborn, premature, suppressed or commingling with a primordial community, and therefore lacks relevance as an object of analysis. Is such a view tenable? This paper draws on the pedagogy of writing movement (tsuzurikata) in Japan in the 1930s and 40s. By analyzing pedagogical books, it argues that the rise of the Japanese authoritarian military regime was a concomitant process with the discursive practices to produce the autonomous, self-disciplining self. This process involved the displacement of the cultural sphere of ?self? into the political sphere, which consequently aided the state control and mobilization of the volunteering individual. I argue that tsuzurikata pedagogy emerged at the very intersection between the yearning of the autonomous self and the emergence of the new type of state power which was parasitic on the autonomy of the self. I show that pedagogy of writing sought to find an alternative form of political subjectivity intimately contexualized in the immediacy of everyday life, but was consequently appropriated and submerged in the state mobilization in the total war system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do Japanese parents continue to underinvest in their daughters? education? According to the 1994 Ministry of Education Basic School Survey, while 39 percent of 18 year-old men entered 4-year universities, only 21 percent of women of the same age entered universities. This research examines the motives underlying parental educational investments. Interviews conducted by the author with 104 respondents in Tokyo and Okinawa in 2002-03 shed light on the educational investment decision-making process in two generations of Japanese respondents living in two very different regions of Japan. This paper examines differences in parental educational investments in siblings in the same family and compares investments in regions with relatively low and high levels of fertility. Generational and regional variance in the gender-bias of educational investments is explored, exchange-based theories of investment are challenged, and the gender ideology and differing valuation of education underlying such investments, revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1980s and 90s in Japan, discussions of internationalization were frequent in relation to many different institutions of society, including education. A prominent example was the targeting of 100,000 foreign students in higher education, a goal finally reached in 2003. Globalization has changed the way that Japanese higher education institutions view internationalization by bringing forward considerations of their role as knowledge institutions. Renewed emphasis on research, scientific knowledge production, and human capital formation for international competition have led Japanese universities to seek more network linkages with international partner institutions. A challenge to the accepted practices of allowing those actors (faculty and students) who are most inclined to pursue international connections and opportunities autonomously is apparent in a move toward a more integrated internationalization. This involves struggles over the codification of international practices within the university. This paper reviews the uses of internationalization and globalization in Japanese universities, illustrating their strong ideological bases. Concurrently, the advent of a new law governing public universities, set to take effect in April of 2004, entails that they become IAIs (Independent Administrative Institutions) and ostensibly more transparent and accountable in funding and outcomes. While the public universities are only a minority of the higher education institutions in Japan, they have a disproportionate influence due to their elite status. I conclude that that the problem of change deriving from internationalization and globalization in Japanese universities is not that it is ideological but that it is bureaucratically driven and not openly ideological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the interplay between family and other social institutions shape the ideal of good enough motherhood in contemporary Japan. Special focus is placed on the structure of intersections among the family, work, and education (formal and informal) and how the social policies that overarch these institutions define the roles of mothers in society. It will first illustrate the development of recent policies related to work and family, stirred by the concerns for fertility decline. The following sections will describe the attitudinal changes of young mothers toward their roles, and how the demand for ?quality child? is imposing conflicting standards and sending contradicting messages ?with loving and nurturing stay-at-home-mom as the prototype? to individual woman. The social policies to reconcile work-and-family conflict, though they seem comprehensive and supportive, are not likely to have large effect, as they have not accompanied changes in the structure of labor market and in the gender roles within family. Also, government initiatives to support parenting in general and to restructure the school education have been yielding paradoxical outcomes because they are imposing additional agenda for the parents (mothers) to carry out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between social background and educational attainment in postwar Japan. The overall picture regarding the effect of social background on educational attainment is of stability. However, gender inequality in access to higher education was reduced substantially in the postwar period, although gender inequality in access to university rather than junior college persisted. There was neither a clear correspondence between the pattern of the effects of social background and the stages of expansion, nor a linear pattern of diminishing or increasing effects of social background. The stability is remarkable given that the Japanese higher education went through the series of changes, closely following the educational policies of the Ministry of Education. Although the educational policies of the Ministry of Education did not explicitly attempted to reduce the impact of social background, the expansion of the higher educational system did not necessarily bring about equality of access to higher education in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the changes in intergenerational class mobility in the U.S. and Japan. Using repeated cross-sectional surveys conducted between the 1970s and the 2000s, I analyze trends in social fluidity mainly from a cohort perspective. For the U.S. men, the immobility association decreased up until the cohort born during 1957-66, and has increased since then, while the mobility association decreased over time, but flattened in the cohort born in 1967-76. For Japanese men, the immobility association began to increase starting with the cohort born in 1947-56, while the mobility association increased up until the 1947-56 cohort, but has decreased since then. These cohort-specific trends can explain the period-cohort trends sufficiently. To elucidate these trends in social fluidity, I investigate the change in educational inequality, class returns to education, and origin-destination association net of the effect of education. I also explore whether there are compositional effects. These analyses suggest that the change in educational inequality and the direct origin-destination association and compositional effects contribute to the change in social fluidity both for the U.S. and Japan. These effects on trends in social fluidity were also examined by a counterfactual analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian schools have received much attention from educational researchers and reform advocates for the comparatively high student achievement and narrow achievement gaps. Western scholars at times advance broad claims about the rote character of instruction or the complexity of classroom practice, at times generalizing to an entire nation. Yet little is known about the variation in and impact of classroom instructional practices within East Asian countries. This study first compares the prevalence and within-country variation of classroom instructional practices in Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Singapore with the other 45 countries that participated in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2007. Second, the study examines the effect of varying instructional practices on student achievement within each country using data from Japan and Singapore. I find that while East Asian classrooms tend to be higher in teacher-centered instruction and lower in complex instruction on average, classrooms within each country vary considerably in the degree to which they adopt certain practices. Within each country, classrooms with more complex and student-centered instruction tend to show higher achievement; an opposite association found when these phenomena are compared between countries. But when schools, classrooms, and student characteristics such as social class are taken into account, these positive effects of classroom instruction diminish or disappear. These findings are discussed in light of the literature on inequality and growing diversity of schools in East Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of the timing of the first marriage, the sibling relations and education in Japan. I used children's data of the participants of NFRJ98. Japanese people are delaying marriage or not marrying at all in recent years. Although Japan is a patriarchal society, where the eldest sons are expected to maintain a family lineage, to care for their eldest parents and to inherit their parents' wealth, there is little research focused on the sibling relations and the timing of marriage. By using the logistic regression, I found that the eldest sons are less likely to marry than the non-eldest sons whereas the eldest daughters are more likely to marry. Education has differential influence on the timing of marriage for the eldest sons and daughters. Overall, education shows more influence on the timing of marriage of the eldest daughters, but not of the eldest sons. Among the eldest sons, the senior high school graduates are less likely to marry whereas the eldest daughters with senior high school education are more likely to marry. For the further analysis, I plan to elaborate analysis of sibling relations and to incorporate parental characteristics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of cultural capital for educational attainment has been shown to vary across comparative settings, raising the question of how the influence of cultural capital may depend upon the nature of a country's educational system and the other available avenues for parental investment in children's education. We use the case of Japan as an example of a strongly exam-based "meritocratic" system in East Asia. Our analyses examine the impact of cultural capital and "shadow education" (cram schools and tutoring) on students' educational outcomes at three crucial stages in the Japanese educational process: performance in ninth grade, academic quality of the high school attended, and final educational attainment. We argue that in the Japanese setting cultural capital is related to human capital development (as measured by academic performance) rather than to its significance as a set of status symbols. The effect of cultural capital and shadow education generally complement each other in influencing final educational attainment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese system of school-work has been widely admired for the strong communication and recruitment relationships that exist between high schools and employers. Building on theoretical literature on employment systems and educational institutions, we develop a framework for understanding the macro-level conditions that fostered the effectiveness of Japan's high school-work system up until the early 1990s. These conditions included a stratified educational system, a large supply of high-quality high school graduates, and firm-internal labor markets for blue-collar workers in large firms. We use original data from a sample of urban high schools to analyze how employers' recruitment patterns changed in the 1990s and beyond. The results of that analysis and a counterfactual analysis suggest that recent changes in Japanese employment institutions have had a significant impact on weakening school-employer relationships. We suggest implications of the Japanese case for school-work processes in other postindustrial societies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies show that men's advantage over women in education during educational expansion has declined in most industrialized countries and in some cases it has been reversed. This article examines how gender and rural origin affect educational opportunity in China and Japan, based on analyzing national data from 2005 China General Social Survey and 2003, 2005 Japan General Social Survey. The findings show that gender inequality persists in both countries but the patterns are different. Women with rural origin are significantly disadvantaged in attending senior high school and higher education in China, while in Japan women with rural origin do not have significant disadvantage comparing to their urban counterparts. While the chances of attending higher secondary and higher education for Japanese women have increased significantly over cohorts, for Chinese women there's no significant change. The findings suggest that during the expansion of the educational system, the changes in the allocation of educational opportunity vary in different countries, and inequality of educational opportunity is affected not only by the changes in educational system but also by various political institutions. Household Registration System combined with strong traditional son preference and resources constraints in rural areas in China have rendered women with rural origin most disadvantaged in getting educational opportunity. New light is shed on how educational gender inequality is affected by political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]