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The Meiji Restoration (1868) ended the Tokugawa Shogunate regime (1603-1867) and proclaimed the emperor as the supreme power of Japan. The Meiji emperor's reign began abruptly, requiring restoration leaders to construct an emperor-centred ideology of whole cloth. This ideology posited an eternal imperial Japan: a unique, tight-knit community of loyal subjects. To disseminate this ideology, the Meiji government introduced "shushin" (moral teaching) into the elementary school curriculum, aiming to transform all Japanese children into imperial subjects. Drawing upon Louis Althusser's theory of interpellation via Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), this study reads textbook stories as an interpellation practice and shows how the government portrayed characters in the stories as "Unique and Absolute Subjects" of the ideology to persuade children to willingly subjugate themselves to national ideals. This study conducts direct textual and contextual analyses of "kokutei shushin-sho" (government-produced moral training textbooks) produced between 1903 and 1942, with a special focus on the teaching unit of the kokka (state). Two themes -- loyalty and the imperial family -- dominate this unit. The analysis reveals that the stories created "targeted truth" by pruning away details of characters' real lives, putting a beautiful mask on them, and sometimes even re-inventing or mythologising them.

By examining the widespread enthusiasm for education during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), this article sets out to contribute to historiography on so-called 'education fever' (kyoyungyol), which so far has largely concentrated on researching the period after 1945. In the 1920s and 1930s the term was used to describe a multifaceted phenomenon that was driven by a striving for upward social mobility and the idea of national self-strengthening. Based on a wide range of sources including newspapers and journals, official documents as well as missionary reports, the article argues that 'education fever' was, on the one hand, closely linked to Korean nationalism, whose proponents made frequent recourse to the ubiquitous phenomenon in order to strengthen Korean political power through education. On the other hand, despite efforts to restrict school access, colonial authorities to a certain degree were forced to respond to these demands for education, highlighting Korean agency in the process.

Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former principal of Osmania University, traveled in 1922 from India to Japan as Director of Public Instruction for Hyderabad to assess Japan's educational system. In Japan and Its Educational System, a report published in 1923, Masood concluded that education had been key to Japan's rapid modernization and recommended that Hyderabad follow the country's model of modernization and educational reform: transmit Western knowledge through widespread vernacular education, and focus on the imperial tradition, freedom from foreign control, and patriotic nationalism. Masood sought to use mass vernacular education to create in Hyderabad a nationalist subject, loyal to the ruling Muslim dynasty, who absorbed modern scientific knowledge with its Western epistemic foundations but who remained untainted by Western norms. This study contextualizes and historicizes Masood's attempt to create in Hyderabad a new nationalist subject, focusing on his 1923 report about Japan.

Efforts have been made among scholars from Japan, South Korea, and China since the 1980s--on both private and state initiatives--to narrow the gaps in their historiographies and to cultivate mutual understanding. This article offers an extensive discussion of the author's history project, "A Student Project of Writing a Common History Textbook," which which was incorporated in a multinational class environment in the Spring 2019 semester. First the author explains the development of the conceptual framework and the organization and management of the class. Then, some of the history teaching materials that the students created is introduced. Finally, the author examines what the students actually learned from this exercise and working with their group members, based on their journals and answers to the project survey. The author would argue that this was a success in promoting mutual understanding among students by having them learn history together from various points of view, as the goal was not a complete reconciliation of their historical viewpoints. Young people from different countries, even those from the countries embroiled in politico-historical controversies, are able to learn from one another to create more complex historical narratives that look beyond competing nationalisms. The results of the course confirm the value of teaching history from a global standpoint and hold promise that if adopted widely, it might have a long-term and larger, positive effect on society and even on international relations by producing globally competent future generations.

The article explores the possibilities for cosmopolitan learning within a site such as the 23rd World Scout Jamboree. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining a theoretical conceptualisation of 'cosmopolitan learning' taken from Intercultural Education with a Cultural Studies focus on the representation of national and global cultures. This inspires an ethnographic exploration of the way that scout organisations and individual participants use artefacts, exhibitions and performances to communicate a sense of national/regional situatedness, world consciousness and interconnectivity. To decode cultural practices a three-layered framework has been employed, drawing on the three elements of national, global, and hybrid/fused culture.

Recent discussions around education for global citizenship continues to retrace notions of cosmopolitanism first laid out in Europe. Ostensibly seeking global inclusivity, much of this work ultimately returns to a rather narrow set of ontological and epistemic themes, primarily Stoicism and Pauline Christianity. The Kyoto School offers a constructive reconstruction of these core premises of European cosmopolitanism. In resisting the ontologizing of autonomous individualism and abstract universalism, Kyoto School thinkers offered an alternative tripartite structure that drew greater attention to the specific (nation-state): individual and universal are inevitably mediated by the 'logic' of specific histories, languages, institutions, and communities. Rather than naïve nationalism, this view emerged within a radically relational worldview: 'continuity-in-discontinuity' emplaced within absolute nothingness. Kimura Motomori, a leading Kyoto School educational thinker, explicitly extended these Nishidian ideas to challenge Rousseau's contracting individualism, Kantian abstract universalism, and Hegelian teleological temporality, thus offering a fresh vision of cosmopolitanism: self-aware citizens engaging concretely in the task of (re)opening their specific societies. In conclusion, in part to demonstrate the very forms of critique we envisage, we trace historically the impacts of Kyoto School cosmopolitanism ideas on postwar policy in Japan and lament the recent regressive closing.

Japan and Great Britain are both island nations with long histories. Nationalists in both nations like to emphasise the things that separate members of 'our' nation from others across the sea, and this includes language. In the British case the arrogant assumption that 'everyone else can learn English' has led to a serious decline in the number of students who study foreign languages. In Japan, a certain amount of English is understood to be necessary for practical purposes, but nationalists warn against too much immersion in the language of an alien culture. These attitudes have helped to undermine the provision of advanced foreign language education that is necessary in a globalized world.

This paper examines emerging far-right movements and xenophobia, and the challenges they pose for justice in education in Japan. It illustrates discourses on nationalism and cultural diversity in both education and wider society from the perspective of critical race theory. It explores the voice of educators, particularly about their concerns and uncertainties regarding xenophobia, and examines their perceptions and reactions. By focusing on the narratives of interviewees from different ethnic backgrounds, this paper investigates far-right extremism and its challenges to education from different viewpoints. Data from interviews reveals different perceptions among both majority and minority teachers regarding the culturalization and personalization of problems in the classroom. This data also suggests that due to the absence of collective strategies and visions to challenge racism, approaches to combating racism depend largely on individual teachers. Drawing from these findings, this paper argues that culturally focused discourses among teachers and politicians may conceal problems beyond culture, such as structural inequality and the legacy of colonialism.

This paper investigates the differentiated educational ideologies projected during the Japanese colonial era by comparing the Japanese language textbooks used by Korean and Japanese primary students at that time. By comparing the texts and images in "Kokugotokuhon" (Japanese language textbooks for Korean students) and "Shougakutokuhon" (Japanese language textbooks for Japanese students) with critical discourse analysis (CDA) in analysis of texts and visual image analysis (VIA) for images, this paper verifies the differentiated educational ideologies that Japanese colonial authorities presented to Korean students. There were three findings that were featured in the Japanese language textbooks for Korean students that were absent from the textbooks for Japanese students. Firstly, depictions of physical labour and helping parents after school and late at night were present only in the textbooks for Koreans. Secondly, Japanese nationalism with an Emperor-centred ideology was emphasised in the Japanese language textbooks used by Koreans. Thirdly, the textbooks encouraged Korean students to practise war-like games and drills. The results from this study suggest that differentiated education was provided to Korean students during the Japanese colonial era via the contents of the Japanese language textbooks, which projected the colonial ideologies of the Japanese government. Korean students were being educated to become Japanese colonial subjects.

Modern universities have largely been portrayed in the literature as an extension of nation building projects, focusing on the state as primary actor. This article challenges such presuppositions by separating 'nation' and 'state' and with a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity and institutions from a comparative historical perspective. The article has four themes: 'diaspora', 'ethnic internationalism', 'stateless nations' and 'internationalisation' in higher education (IHE). It illustrates these themes and their interrelationships by considering Koreans in the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) and Jews during the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948) and construing them as stateless nations. These two historical cases illustrate how higher education was linked to ethnonational diasporas and internationalisation in the absence of a supportive state apparatus. The paradox is that ethnic nationalism was not only compatible but often overlapped with ethnic internationalism in higher education. The conclusion of this comparative study suggests the implications for the twenty-first century and the important role of diaspora in processes of IHE then and now.

"Heimat" -oriented education (local-oriented education) flourished in Imperial Japan of the 1930s, inspired by "Heimatkunde" (local studies) in Germany's elementary schools. This paper explores the rhetoric which naturalised the shift from love of "Heimat" to love of nation in "Heimat"-oriented education in Imperial Japan of the 1930s, focusing on "Heimat"-oriented education in peripheral regions to which Japanese identity and non-Japanese identity were attributed. "Heimat"-oriented education in peripheral regions was conducted mostly in accordance with the official rhetoric "similar but not equal", yet also partially putting a spin on it. The spin had the effect of strengthening the naturalisation of the shift from love of "Heimat" to love of nation.

Language is one of the most critical factors in the formation and maintenance of national identities. Situated within the national context of Japan and drawing data from a population of 292 Japanese university students, this study departs with three objectives. First, the study assesses the contribution of Japanese national identity to criterion variables concerning foreign language communication and contact attitudes. Second, in order to better understand upon what grounds an individual might align themselves with different facets of national identity, the contribution made by the five-factor model of personality is examined. Finally, the contribution of the five-factor model of personality to the criterion variables concerning foreign language communication and contact attitudes is explored. The data reveals that national identity has a significant impact on foreign language communication and contact attitudes.

Drawing on a recent collaborative and interdisciplinary study of East Asian Images of Japan, this article discusses contemporary Chinese portrayals of Japan, their political context, and their significance for Sino-Japanese relations. It questions some widely-held assumptions concerning the extent of "thought control" in an authoritarian state, the nature of popular protest, and the relationship between official propaganda and popular lived experience. While the main focus is on portrayals of Japan in mainland China, for comparative purposes some reference is made to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The latter part of the article also features a brief discussion of images of China in Japan, especially relating to the Second World War. This reflects particularly on the role of museums as vehicles for "peace education," focusing on two key institutions in Kyushu. China's "bases for patriotic education" and Japan's "peace museums" ostensibly embody radically different institutional missions. However while Japan's memorials to the war evince greater diversity, in harping on national victimhood and obscuring the reasons for war key sites of "peace education" arguably deliver a message that is just as nationalistic as that conveyed by their Chinese counterparts. The article concludes by arguing that, notwithstanding its "totalitarian" facade, China's social and political fragility in fact limits the scope for the authorities there to moderate anti-Japanese public discourse. In democratic Japan, by contrast, a more honest and open engagement with the national past is--or should be--far more achievable. For both moral and political reasons, scholars and educationalists in Japan therefore urgently need to consider their role in improving Sino-Japanese relations, not least through more forceful engagement in public debate over the socialization of the young.

The term 'publicness' is a keyword to explain the creation of a people in the history of modern education in Korea in which the relationship between the ruled and the ruling power rapidly changed from the perspective of continuity and discontinuity. In Korea, the term has been commonly used in three different contexts, and its meanings have changed since the 1894 Gabo Reform, the first reform for the modernization of Korea. Even when the ruling power changed in 1910 with Japanese colonialism, the ruling class took the meaning of publicness as a governing institution (??? ???), which had a very weak sense of publicness as an ethical principle of fairness (Gong [?]) or as public benefit and opinion (Gong [?]). In contrast, the resisting power, which was fully established throughout the colonial era from 1910 to 1945, lacked the sense of publicness as a ruling institution, but embraced the two other concepts of publicness. This historical experience of the competing concepts of publicness materialized into the creation of a modern people through law and education even in the post-colonial period of modern Korea. Generally speaking though, the creation of a modern people in Korea has been strongly affected by the concept of publicness as a ruling institution through a nationalist education.

In light of popular nationalism on the rise in China and Japan, this inquiry develops and validates a survey instrument to document university students' motivation to learn Japanese in mainland China and explore how the learning of a foreign language may lead to better cross-cultural understanding. A total number of 398 Chinese learners of Japanese in Chinese universities participated in the survey and 12 of them participated further in post-survey interviews. The results confirm that participants' interest in Japan-related products, employment opportunities, and activities contribute to the motivation to learn the language for cross-cultural understanding and undertake cross-cultural exchanges with Japanese people. The results suggest that increased exposure to Japan-related affairs in the media coverage undermines their desire for intercultural communication and increases the approach for interacting with Japanese people. This means it is necessary for Japanese language educators to engage with Japanese language learners and to address macro contextual processes such as rising tensions between the two countries, negative coverage on China in Japan's media, and negative coverage on Japan in the Chinese media.

Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese textbooks tend to present the Second World War in chronological order with a passive voice and avoid discussing why the war occurred and how it ended. The examined Chinese textbooks develop narratives in chronological order as well, but thematic units are structured to highlight the coalition of Mao's Communist Party and Chang Kai-Shek's Nationalists as the decisive factor in the victory against Japanese imperialists contributing to the worldwide fight against fascism. The examined Korean textbooks tend toward a single, patriotic perspective of a people that overcame Japanese colonialism and developed as an independent nation, often ignoring issues that complicated the relationship between the two nations.

This article reviews the history of international mobility of students from China to other countries over the century and a half from 1870 to the present day. Different motivations, goals, courses, and knowledge are considered, together with how the purposes of individuals have matched national policy. Implications for the future development in a globalized context are briefly considered.

This study attempts to elucidate the idea that education reflects the contemporary social structure. This inference is focused on the educational struggle for Korean identity led by the Korean Federation in Japan (KFJ) during 1945-1948. The KFJ disseminated the educational movement for Koreans in Japan (Zainichi). The General Head Quarters (GHQ) suppressed Korean identity education (KIE) and tried to disrupt the activities of the KFJ. KIE was identified and destroyed during the HanShin educational struggle as part of the conflict with the GHQ. However, HanShin movement survived to form the basis for the new start of the Korean educational movement in Japan and has served as the cornerstone of KIE. This case elucidates the ways in which education is strongly associated with the social structure and the status quo. (Contains 5 tables and 2 notes.)

History and social studies textbooks have often been the object of heated political debate in various countries, since they relate directly to issues of national identity and citizenship. This article analyzes how "foreigners" are portrayed in two versions (the 2000 and 2006 versions, date of issue) of the best-selling elementary social studies textbook in Japan. How "foreigners" are portrayed, reflects how non-foreigners, in other words, "Japanese," are understood. The study categorized the sections containing key terms and themes that were relevant to foreign/foreigners. Based on a content analysis, the results were broken down into 8 themes (plus "Other"), and their patterns were analyzed. The major findings were that (1) despite the image of Japanese as having a monocultural image of themselves, the image of ethnic Japanese and Japanese society in the textbooks was actually very diverse in terms of region, climate, landscape, occupation, etc.; (2) images of coexistence were also present, but the objects of coexistence were dominantly of two kinds--first, the coexistence of Japanese with nature, and second, the coexistence of Japan with foreign countries through trade; and (3) in cases that the "foreigners" did appear in the textbooks, the image shifted according to the context in which it was discussed, and there was a missing link between the different meanings. In other words, when the context was contemporary Japan (3rd-5th grade), "foreigners" were portrayed as visitors who came and left, and the key concept was "internationalization." When "foreigners" were discussed historically (first half of 6th grade), or were discussed in relation to welfare, peace, human rights and discrimination, they were assumed to be the permanently residing foreigners in Japan (the Koreans and Chinese in Japan). The article analyzes the implications these findings have for a more multicultural and pluralistic Japanese self-image. (Contains 3 tables and 3 notes.)

During the US Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), a victorious America attempted to reform Japanese education by replacing Japan's tradition system of values with one that promoted American democratic values. The United States had considered the source of Japan's militarism to lie in the selfless loyalty and love of country that many older Japanese had valued. They wanted to replace these older values with new ones that would ensure a more pacifist outlook. Thus, in the name of democratization and pacification, Japan lost some important aspects of its cultural heritage. But why did the United States want to eliminate these natural sentiments from the Japanese psyche? And what was the cost of these changes? This paper focuses on the first four months of the Occupation when Japan's first postwar education minister, Maeda Tamon, attempted to change education in the direction of a new democratic Japan. Maeda, Japan's preeminent liberal at the time, took the position of minister of education on August 18, 1945, before the Allied Occupation officially began. In his first two months, he quickly initiated a number of educational reforms without interference from American officials. He wanted these reforms not only to meet American expectations but also to preserve what he believed to be the unique aspect of Japanese culture--the emperor system. However, Maeda's understanding of the word "democracy" differed dramatically from what America wanted, and this difference incited the US to intervene with a different set of educational reforms. This paper examines Maeda's efforts, and the US reaction to them. (Contains 94 endnotes.)

In spite of the fact that historical issues are challenges of political education, Japanese educational studies have not been able to properly deal with them. One of the reasons is that Japanese educational researchers have accepted without question the presence of nationalistic understanding of history as the most important cause of the difficulties in East Asia, while supporting textbook lawsuits over the last few decades. On this point, it is unreasonable to compare Japan with Germany which is more progressive in terms of overcoming its past, and to conclude that the undemocratic nature of the Japanese culture has bred such a social situation. Austria, which is deemed to be culturally closer to Germany than Japan, has likewise experienced history problems repeatedly since the 1980s. What this suggests is that the degree of progress made in efforts to critically examine history is dependent on the country's international environment rather than on its own culture. This understanding corresponds with a recognition that has gained increasing acceptance over recent years, which is that Japan is not necessarily the sole party at fault in these historical conflicts in East Asia. Needless to say, this does not release the Japanese and Japanese educational research from their special responsibility to deal with these issues. What is demanded of Japanese educational research today is to reveal what sort of axis of conflicts has been formed over the understanding of history in each of the post-war East Asian countries, and how they interact with each other across national borders. By seriously addressing this task, Japanese educational research will be able to construct a new research field that can respond to the expectations of peoples beyond East Asia who either already have faced or may face similar problems in the future. (Contains 9 notes.)

Recent studies in the social sciences have focused the attention on the role of children in cultural politics, in particular on children's experiences in nationalism, as well as on their participation in inter-ethnic relations. In line with this research, this study aims to investigate the relationship between childhood and political action and to conceptualize "childhood" as a contested political notion. More specifically, it discusses variations in the definition of "childhood" in "majority" and "minority" like contexts with a special focus on Japan. This article compares the Agency for Cultural Affairs and its programs for the promotion of "Japanese culture," with the Dowa Education's programs on the buraku issue, and discusses how the resulting definitions of "childhood" are based upon various representations of "group identities" and upon different conceptions of educational processes. In this sense, the notion of "childhood" reflects a variety of political projects based on various institutional agendas, upon which different understandings of children's role in society depend.

This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation as a key issue in history curriculum debates. Particularly, it examines language issues in the 1920s, an important theme in the histories of the formation of Taiwanese consciousness, ideology, and cultural nationalism during the Japanese colonial period. Rather than addressing issues of identity (national or cultural), identifying who Taiwanese really were, or looking for Chinese or Taiwanese consciousness, this study explores how meanings of "Taiwanese" in the 1920s under Japanese occupation were constructed in the discourse of language reform for civilisation. The analysis of the New Culture Movement discourse suggests that the classical Chinese language of "Hànwén" as a valuable cultural resource and flexible linguistic instrument played an essential role in constituting Taiwanese subjectivities that shaped Taiwanese practices of the self for distinctive civilisation.

This paper explores the ways in which policies for national identity formation and internationalization interact to complement and contradict each other in the context of global higher education. These themes are explored by comparing recent policies in two countries in East Asia, a part of the world currently on the rise in the global hierarchy of higher education (Altbach in "Tert Educ Manag" 10:3-25, 2004; Marginson in "High Educ" 4(1), 2011b). China and Japan are presented as case studies, with a focus on the ways the two countries have pursued both higher education internationalization and nationalist agendas through education more broadly. The paper then turns to a discussion of the factors that might explain these approaches as well as the dilemmas that arise from the interaction of these policy agendas in the context of global higher education. The paper argues that while increasing global competitiveness through HE internationalization may prove beneficial to individual nation-states in the short term, countries in East Asia should consider the potential pitfalls of becoming too singly focused on competitiveness at the expense of mutual understanding and peaceful international relations in the region. Furthermore, the continued push to create uncritical nationalistic citizens threatens to undermine the goals of internationalization and may be detrimental to efforts at HE regional cooperation and integration. The paper concludes with recommendations that the two countries consider the potential benefits of global citizenship education and the expansion of regionally focused study abroad programs to help develop graduates with the global competencies conducive to both national competitiveness and regional cooperation.

Neoliberal ideology compels people to develop language skills as human capital. As English is considered to be the most useful language for global communication, learning, and teaching, English has been promoted in many countries. However, the belief that English connects people from diverse linguistic backgrounds in a borderless society contradicts nationalistic trends observed globally. For example, growing xenophobic nationalism in Japan and Japanese hostility towards China and Korea indicate that neoliberal promotion of language learning does not automatically lead to improved international communication. Drawing on two separate qualitative studies involving Japanese workers, this article presents two paradoxes: a paradox as seen in the workers' interest in learning English as a medium of international communication and their simultaneous reluctance or ambivalence to interact with Asian Others due to their negative attitudes towards the Others or fear for potential communication breakdown, and another paradox of having to advocate for communicative abilities and dispositions that appear to be aligned with neoliberal ideology in order to critique the neoliberal obsession with linguistic skills. Language teaching in rising xenophobic nationalism in our neoliberal era should consider appropriation of skills and dispositions for critical and transformative purposes in language use.

In the last two decades, the issue of comfort women--the women and girls who were forced into sex slavery for the Japanese army before and during WWII--has risen to global attention. Tens of thousands of comfort women (the average estimate is anywhere between 80,000 and 200,000) were confined at comfort stations managed by the Japanese Imperial Army throughout the Asian Pacific. The vast majority (an estimated 80% to 90%) of these women were from Korea, the closest Japanese colony at the time, though they were also from China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and throughout Southeast Asia. Memorials and dedications have cropped up everywhere outside of Asia, including, in the United States alone, Glendale, California; Fairfax, Virginia; Southfield, Michigan; and Union City, New Jersey. In Winnipeg, the recorded testimony of comfort woman survivor Lola Fidencia David (''Lola Fidencia David Breaks the Silence'' 2013) when she visited in October 2013 will be part of the oral history collection at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). Starting with the accounts of this visit sponsored by the CMHR, this article recounts the recent history of how the issue of comfort women has risen to global prominence and come to be a persuasive emblem of human rights. The comfort women movement, originally rooted in a deep and specific anticolonial activism dedicated to demanding legal redress from Japan, has morphed into a global women's and human rights agenda based on testimony, sympathy, and remembrance. This article considers what has been lost and gained in this shift, as well as its consequences for an ever-expanding human rights industry. It is divided into three parts. First, the author recounts details of the CMHR event in October 2013 and provides an overview of comfort woman testimonies, including the narrative and political constraints within the presentation of this history. Second, she traces the 20-year-old grassroots activism movement within Korea regarding military sexual slavery, and how this became subsumed under a global women's and human rights discourse. Lastly, she concludes with a comparison of comfort women's art to a Park Gun-Oong (2013) cartoon to argue for how distance and anonymity may be more strategic and ethical ways of caring for difficult knowledge than commemoration and memorialization in what Erika Doss (2013) refers to as the current era of ''memorial mania.''

The English language is significant to the internationalisation of higher education worldwide. Countries in Asia are proactive in appropriating English for their national interests, while paying attention to associated national cultural identity issues. This article examines the ways in which the role of English is interpreted and justified in different countries in Asia, with a particular focus on Japan, as these nations attempt to internationalise their higher education within the broader processes of regionalisation and globalisation and their own nationalist discourse. Through critical analyses and discussions of Japan's two major government initiatives, the Action Plan 2003 to "Cultivate Japanese with English Abilities" and the "Global 30" Project 2008, the article investigates how cultural national identities are shaped, are altered and are put "at risk" in policies and practices for the internationalisation of higher education and the overemphasis on English. It argues for the importance of understanding the intersections of English language policy, the internationalisation of higher education and national cultural identity and also considers how the over-promotion of English in the case of Japan has been energetically driven by the nation building agenda that tends to undermine local languages and what this might mean for internationalisation.

This article provides a comparative evaluation of Chinese character reform in the People's Republic of China and Japan, with a particular focus on the latest changes announced in 2009 to the existing script policies in the two countries. The first Chinese script reform took place in 1956 and the first Japanese script reform in 1946, both for the purpose of simplifying the scripts to facilitate mass education. In the 1980s, prompted by nationalistic sentiments and economic security, both countries backtracked on their script reform policies and adopted a more conservative approach that put an end to any further simplification of the script. The conservative trend which continued into the new millennium is reflected in the two latest reforms. Both China and Japan have moved further away from phonetizing the script in their effort to address issues related to information and communication technology. (Contains 2 notes.)

The paper reviews Asia-Pacific higher education and university research, focusing principally on the "Confucian" education nations Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong China, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam. Except for Vietnam, these systems exhibit a special developmental dynamism--still playing out everywhere except Japan--and have created a distinctive model of higher education more effective in some respects than systems in North America, the English-speaking world and Europe where the modern university was incubated. The Confucian Model rests on four interdependent elements: (1) strong nation-state shaping of structures, funding and priorities; (2) a tendency to universal tertiary participation, partly financed by growing levels of household funding of tuition, sustained by a private duty, grounded in Confucian values, to invest in education; (3) "one chance" national examinations that mediate social competition and university hierarchy and focus family commitments to education; (4) accelerated public investment in research and "world-class" universities. The Model has downsides for social equity in participation, and in the potential for state interference in executive autonomy and academic creativity. But together with economic growth amid low tax regimes, the Confucian Model enables these systems to move forward rapidly and simultaneously in relation to each and all of mass tertiary participation, university quality, and research quantity and quality.

This self-reflexive essay teases out the predicaments that I have encountered through my past publishing experience, while situating them in a critical review of the existing English-language studies of Japanese education. Drawing on postcolonial theoretical insights and recent critical sociology of academic knowledge production, I use my personal experience as a starting point to identify the particular discursive structure of comparative education that constrains the articulation of "other" education in the field. My critical review of comparative studies of Japanese education demonstrates that many of them, including my own, unreflexively accept the subject positions offered by this discursive condition and thus further constrain space for those who write in English about "other" education and Japanese education in particular. In conclusion, I discuss recent studies of Japanese education that partially address the dilemmas raised in this paper and the wider implications of this study for the field of comparative education. (Contains 12 notes.)

This article reports on an ethnographic case study that explored how Chinese learners' national identities were displayed and reconstructed through their English language-learning journeys in Britain. Drawing on a variety of sources (ethnographic observations, informal conversations, diaries, and narrative interviews), the analysis focuses on the Chinese learners' raising self-awareness of being Chinese and their attitudes towards Japanese students, South Korean students, and students from Taiwan. This study found that during their English language learning journeys in Britain, the Chinese learners tended to affirm and often displayed their membership with respect to China and Chinese national imagination, which contributed to heightened senses of Chinese national identity and increased patriotism. At the same time, the experience of interacting with Japanese students, South Korean students, and students from Taiwan encouraged the Chinese learners to question and critically reexamine their own attitudes and values related to their national identities. Then, the elements that made up an individual's Chinese national identity were brought under scrutiny and negotiation. Implications for classroom practices are also discussed.

A major role of education is to socialise individuals into being responsible and productive citizens. It is aimed at preparing people for the workforce and for participating in the public life of the nation. Educational systems are complex bureaucracies based on particular educational and social theories and philosophies. This paper is concerned with one particular system, the Japanese education system, which emerged from many conflicting ideologies. Polar extremes of liberal and ultra-nationalism orientations were disseminated in its historical course and it remains in the early twenty-first century a system that retains many tensions. This paper seeks to elucidate these tensions while demonstrating that peace outcomes can still be achieved. It begins with three collected narratives of peace work and peace education work within a formally militaristic institution, Ritsumeikan University. Together with Kogakukan University in Mei and Kokushikan University in Tokyo Ritsumeikan was threatened with closure by General Douglas MacArthur for activities during the Second World War. Ritsumeikan has striven to develop a peace role post-war. By employing these experiential narratives together with a brief study of Ritsumeikan itself the paper demonstrates positive peace outcomes within an oft-perceived "rigid" education system: outcomes for promoting peaceful action found both at the institutional level and at the personal level. (Contains 41 notes.)

Framed within debates concerning national identification and English as a Foreign Language education within Japan, the current study explores the relationships between three specific attitudinal facets of Japanese national identification (internationalism, patriotism and nationalism), the perceived vitality of English-speaking nations, the intercultural appeal of English-speaking people, and attitudes toward learning English within a sample of 377 Japanese university students majoring in English at the undergraduate level. Based primarily on theoretical principles set forth by the author, a process of structural equation modelling was undertaken in order to test a proposed model of the various interactions and relationships. A number of important relationships were identified and are discussed from a socio-political and socio-educational perspective. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

The Global 30 Project, a new Japanese Government initiative that aims to upgrade a number of existing universities to form a select hub of elite universities for receiving and educating international students, has come in for considerable criticism. Using the dual concepts of "kokusaika" (internationalisation) and "gurobaruka" (globalisation), this paper highlights the contradictory goals in a policy that combines a nationalistic "closing in" with a cosmopolitan "opening up". The problems apparent in Japan's most recent attempt to reform higher education are argued to be the latest manifestation of a historical push and pull that can be traced back to the "sakoku" (closed-country) policy of isolation operated during the Edo period. (Contains 2 figures and 5 notes.)

Drawing on various sources of official discourse and public commentary pertaining to the recent implementation of two large-scale strategies aimed at internationalising student and academic staff populations within Japanese higher education institutions, this paper will present a number of broad multifaceted perspectives addressing those issues which may hinder the success of the two strategies. Announced in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the "300,000 international students plan" and the "Global 30" Project aim to enable 30 select universities to attract 300,000 international students to Japan by 2020. The 30 institutions, known as centres for internationalisation will each strive to recruit between 3000 and 8000 international students from across the globe. However, since the late 19th century Japanese attempts at the importation of ethnolinguistic diversity into the education system have been greeted with accusations of insincerity and the masking of a predominantly self-serving nationalistic agenda. The current paper will also seek to assess whether the self-serving nationalistic argument is still valid in relation to contemporary internationalisation efforts. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

One of the major challenges that faces nation-builders in postcolonial societies is the incorporation of subaltern groups, particularly aboriginal peoples, into a collective national project. One vehicle for addressing this challenge is sport with schools being amongst the most important venues. This article offers an empirical study of the role of aboriginal players in Taiwanese baseball. By examining the schooling and historic achievements of aboriginal players in the Nenggao and Hongye teams and the role of aboriginal players during the more recent post-martial law period, the study challenges some commonly held views concerning the relationship between baseball and Taiwanese national identity. In particular, the article analyzes the role of the state in its use of baseball to support the co-option of aboriginal players for the nation-building project. The study concludes that the state, regardless of which ruling elite is in power, has consistently manipulated Taiwan's indigenous peoples, not least through the education system, in order to achieve certain political objectives, specifically in relation to nation-building. Furthermore, although baseball remains an important avenue for the social and economic advancement of individual aborigines, recurrent scandals linked to exploitation have been consistent characteristics of state policy. (Contains 1 table and 10 notes.)

The Christian missionary movement is a kind of global movement that aims to evangelize the whole world; hence the concept of globalization can be useful for the study of Christianity as a worldwide movement. However, recent studies have suggested another equally important concept: the process of localization, which runs parallel to the process of globalization. Hence, the present paper attempts to take Christian higher education as a case study and tries to reveal a better picture of the interplay between the processes of globalization and localization. An attempt was made to compare the sociopolitical contexts in three Northeast Asian countries, namely China, Japan, and Korea, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to see how Christian higher education had responded to the issue of nationalism in these countries. It was found that Christian higher education in the three countries played very different roles when they were encountering different situations, and they had come to different fates in the three countries under study.

This paper discusses the Japanese history textbook controversy over "comfort women" to tease out insights that help globalize the existing theoretical discussion of politics of school knowledge. I begin by documenting how the domestic struggles over Japanese history textbooks are empowered and dis empowered by the regional and international power relations. Using the Japanese case, I first problematize the use of hegemony in critical scholarship wherein struggles over school knowledge have been defined within the framework of a nation-state. Second, I call for situating the discussion of counter-hegemonic strategies in the increasingly internationalized politics of education witnessed around the world. In sum, this study calls for broadening the application of the notions of hegemony and counter-hegemony in critical education scholarship to take full account of the complex political dynamics of globalizations. (Contains 7 notes.)

While religion in Japan is traditionally linked to nationhood and nation-building, the post-war period has seen Shinto consciously invoked to restore a sense of national identity through a focus on Japan's victimhood. In this context, there is a focus on the Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to the war dead and an icon of contemporary Japanese cultural nationalism symbolizing the use of indigenous religion in an interpretation of the war and post-war nationhood. This, together with the influence of the US, has contributed to a more pluralisitic view of national history in schools. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper examines educational policies toward indigenous minorities in Japan and Canada during the period of nation-building, from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Both Japan and Canada first segregated indigenous children into separate educational institutions and then tried to assimilate them into mainstream society. Beneath these broad policy similarities, however, lie different rationales, with substantially different implications for education and social policy in diverse societies. In Japan, national integration was promoted through a cultural or ethnic rationale, a socially coherent approach that nonetheless allows little room for minorities. Canada approached national integration using a notion of citizenship that both allows considerable space for minorities but is challenged by unity. These two strategies can be seen in two polar models of the state--a civic-assimilationist approach of the "French model" and an ethnocultural exclusionist model of the formation of the German state. The paper argues for a multicultural pluralist model including both civic and cultural/ethnic identities. (Contains 22 notes.)

Since 1989, large numbers of "ethnic returnees" have settled in Germany and Japan. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 2.8 million "Aussiedler," or ethnic German returnees, came to Germany from the former Soviet Union. In Japan, immigration reform driven by low-skill labor shortages induced nearly 300,000 "Nikkeijin," or people of Japanese descent, to come from South America in the 1990s. This article analyzes the development of language education at the local and national level for the "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" since 1989. In particular, the authors investigate how the policy makers and educators have problematized the returnees and in what ways discourses of national identity, citizenship, and belonging have (not) adapted to the slow integrations of the "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" into the larger German and Japanese communities. The return of large numbers of "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" to Germany and Japan, respectively, in the 1990s challenged the foundations of ethnic identity in both countries. The development of language education policies for the returnees over the past 15 years also illustrates how national and local officials have problematized return migration and how notions of multiculturalism and national identity have evolved. The authors' analysis of these policies suggests that the comprehensive national policy framework in Germany has not resulted in substantially better outcomes for the "Aussiedler" than the local and nongovernmental implementation framework they found in Japan. Further, the authors show that in the case of "Aussiedler" and the "Nikkeijin," whose heritage are tied to the notion of Germanness and Japaneseness, respectively, the returnees' inability to speak their ancestral language is consistently offered as the primary reason for their lack of integration. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Language learning is frequently justified as a vehicle for promoting intercultural communication and understanding, and language-in-education policies have increasingly come to reflect this preoccupation in their rhetoric. This paper will examine the ways in which concepts relating to interculturality are constructed in Japanese language policy documents. It will explore in particular the ways in which ideologies of nationalism and Japanese identity have an impact on understandings of the nature and purpose of interculturality and how these are developed discursively in Japanese language-in-education policy documents. Language policies construct a discourse of interculturality which focuses on the development of a nationalistic adherence to a particular conceptualisation of Japanese identity, which is unique, homogenous, and monolithic. These themes will be discussed in the contexts of Japanese policy documents relating to foreign language teaching and Japanese language spread.

In an article on English and national identity, Spring gives a historical survey of the role of English and its relation to Japanese national identity. Although English was discouraged during World War II, as it was considered the language of enemy, it was again "made an important academic language and in 1956 was included in entrance examinations to Japanese secondary schools." Although it is true that English is a "de facto" required subject at secondary schools, many scholars overlook the fact that it is not English, but a foreign language that "is required at most of the secondary schools." In this article, the author discusses the relation of English to Japanese national identity as they connect to the article by Spring. The author also traces how the concept of "English is essential for everyone in Japan" evolved in the nation's English language teaching.

Although inter-religious conflicts have not yet surfaced as major social problems in Japan, religious education for peace and tolerance is needed in the country as much as in other countries. This article aims to disclose that, in light of political contexts, supposedly neutral "teaching about religion" can be as problematic as history education is in Japan. The central problem lies in how to represent the nationalistic aspects of Shinto to the "non-religious" majority of Japanese. While each nation has its own variety of "civil religion", Shinto, being an ethnic religion, can be entangled with nationalism more than other kinds of religion. I will begin by explaining the prejudice of "non-religious" Japanese people against religion as a background to the discussion of religious education in Japan. I will then take an example from a recent children's book and critique the politics of teaching about religion, in particular, Shinto in contrast with other religions. By employing my own survey data, I will also show how small the presence of Shinto is in Japanese education, even in higher education, where religious education is conducted most freely. I will further explain historically why this is so and what kind of problems the issue has been causing. (Contains 3 figures and 15 notes.)

The Han sphere, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, adopted Han characters and classical Han writing as the official written language before the 20th century. However, great changes came with the advent of the 20th century. After World War II, Han characters in Vietnam and Korea were officially replaced by the romanised "Chu Quoc Ngu" and phonemic Hangul, respectively. In Japan, the number of Han characters in use decreased, and the syllabic "Kana" system was promoted to a national status. In Taiwan, although Taiwanese romanisation was developed centuries ago, Han characters remain the dominant orthography in current Taiwanese society. This paper examines Taiwan's orthographic transition from the perspective of the Han sphere. Both internal and external factors have contributed to the different outcomes of orthographic reform in these countries. Internal factors include the general public's demand for literacy and anti-feudal hierarchy. External factors include the political relationships between these countries and the origin of Han characters (i.e. China). (Contains 5 notes.)

Protestant Christianity was brought to Japan during the modernization of that country in the middle of the nineteenth century. Before the Second World War, except for a short time, Christianity in Japan as a Western religion had experienced a difficult course of history because of hostility due to nationalism of the populace and the leaders of the power structure. The church struggled to be recognized as a religion by the country and its people. After the war, under the occupation of the United States, a boom of Christianity occurred, and many people converted to Christianity. However, such trends did not last long. The tide toward Christianity began to ebb during the 1960s with the recovery of the economy. In this article, the author traces the history of Christian education in Japan and describes the efforts made by various religious societies to study the issues confronting Christian theology and education in Japan.

This article investigates the relationship between globalisation and national cultural identity through Japanese educational policies for music. Japan is often referred to as a society that provides a model of cultural hybridisation that is a phenomenon in globalisation. However, what actually happened in Japan was not hybridisation, but the replacement of traditional music with western music in the process of the re-construction of national musical culture. Even the recent state emphasis on Japanese elements in music teaching can be interpreted as no more than an attempt to further transform Japanese music culture so that it will resemble that of Europe. (Contains 7 notes.)

This study examined how textbooks from England, Japan, Sweden, and the United States portray America's role in World War II. Analysis of the central story lines revealed that historical information purveyed to students in different nations varies considerably. Accordingly, U.S. textbooks emphasize the significant and pre-eminent role that the United States played in crushing the Axis forces in Europe and the Pacific. In contrast, English textbooks view the Allied war effort as a joint venture involving the British Empire, the U.S.S.R., and the United States as equal partners. Authors of Japanese textbooks afford the war in Europe extraordinarily limited attention and focus primarily on events in the Pacific. Significantly, Japanese textbooks emphasize the context leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and how U.S.-Japanese antagonism before events in December 1941 made war almost inevitable. Swedish textbooks tend to focus on the war in Europe and particularly on the eastern front. Above all, therefore, the study illuminates stark differences in national portrayals of World War II and suggests that textbook representations appear to be influenced by nationalistic bias, differing cultural and geopolitical perspectives, and the sociopolitical agendas of contemporary societies.

This paper offers a historical and sociolinguistic interrogation of Taiwanese to demonstrate the significance of language continuum in relation to identity formation. To this end, Taiwanese is discussed as a particular variety of language. Literacy practices in the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945) are contrasted with the precolonial and post-Japanese colonial period. The paper maintains that policies of Japanese linguistic colonialism strengthened the sociosemiotic cohesion amongst speakers of Taiwanese, and discusses how this experience resonated with the new reality after Japanese colonial rule in 1945 when Taiwan was reunited with its Chinese historical and cultural heritage. It suggests that in the post-Japanese colonial period, spoken Taiwanese continued to be a convincing vehicle of struggle for an alternative national identity. A proper appreciation of this situation depends on how we define literacy practices and comprehend these in the context of Taiwan's sociolinguistic landscape, past and present. Special reference will be made to diglossia, the connotation between script and language, criteria of literacy (functional and cultural), Chinese language standardisation and Japanese linguistic colonialism. (Contains 6 notes.)