Week 1 - Introduction to the Course: What’s important about education in contemporary Japan?
Wednesday, January 4
no reading due


Week 2 - Preschool and Early Elementary School
Monday, January 9
Catherine C. Lewis. 1995 Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pages: 1-100.

Wednesday, January 11
Catherine C. Lewis. 1995 Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pages: 101-214.
The book’s references are here, in a separate file.


Week 3 - Middle School
Monday, January 16
No class meeting in honor of Martin Luther King day.

Wednesday, January 18
Rebecca Fukuzawa.1994. "The Path to Adulthood According to Japanese Middle Schools," Journal of Japanese Studies 20(1):61-86.

Hill, Benjamin. 1996. “Breaking the Rules in Japanese Schools: Kōsoku Ihan, Academic Competition, and Moral Education.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 27(1): 90-110.

Bjork, Christopher and Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa. 2016. “School Guidance in Japanese Middle Schools: Balancing the Old and New Amidst Social Change.” In Japanese Education in an Era of Globalization: Culture, Politics, and Equity. Edited by Gary DeCoker and Christopher Bjork. Pages: 47-66.

Akiba, Motoko and Kazuhiko Shimizu. 2016. “Student-Teacher Relationship and Ijime in Japanese Middle Schools.” In Japanese Education in an Era of Globalization: Culture, Politics, and Equity. Edited by Gary DeCoker and Christopher Bjork. Pages: 67-81.

Friday, January 20
Please email me by today at 5pm telling me which writing option you have picked for the semester.


Week 4 - Junior High Reforms
Monday, January 23
Peter Cave. 2016. Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pages: 1-121. Please note that all references and footnotes are in the Part 2 pdf below.

Wednesday, January 25
Peter Cave. 2016. Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pages: 122-218.


Week 5 - Autonomy and Community
Monday, January 30
The Slow Way Home. 2016. Leonard Schoppa, director.
* This film is at Canvas / Media Gallery.

Wednesday, February 1
No class meeting. Unfortunately, because I am participating in a conference, I have to cancel this class meeting. Please use this time to work ahead on next week’s reading which is a bit longer than usual.


Week 6 - High School in the 1970s
Monday, February 6
Thomas Rohlen. 1983. Japan’s High Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pages: ix-144. Please note that the two readings are both in this pdf.

Wednesday, February 8
Thomas Rohlen. 1983. Japan’s High Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pages: 145-326. Click on the link above for this reading, too.


Week 7 - High School Problems in the 1990s
Monday, February 13
Shoko Yoneyama. 1999. The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance. New York: Routledge.
Pages: xi-154.

Wednesday, February 15
Shoko Yoneyama. 1999. The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance. New York: Routledge.
Pages: 155-250. Click on the link above for this reading, too.


Week 8 - Juku and Shadow Education
Monday, February 20
ハーフ Half: the Film. 2013. Directed by: Megumi Nishikura & Lara Perez Takagi. 84 minutes.
* Film will be streaming from our Canvas site at /Media Gallery. The trailer is here.

Wednesday, February 22
Marie Højlund Roesgaard. 2006. Japanese Education and the Cram School Business: Functions, Challenges and Perspectives of the Juku. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press.
Pages: 1-134.


Week 9 - Junior College
Monday, March 6
Brian McVeigh. 1997. Life in a Japanese Women's College: Learning to be Ladylike. London: Routledge.
Pages: vii-118.

Wednesday, March 8
Brian McVeigh. 1997. Life in a Japanese Women's College: Learning to be Ladylike. London: Routledge.
Pages: 119-220. Click on the link above for this reading, too.


Week 10 - Universities and Education Reforms
Monday, March 13 - A Bit More Gender Theory
Sherry Ortner. 1972. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” from her collection, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Sherry Ortner. 1996. “So, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” from her collection, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney. 1995. “Naturalizing Power.” In their Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. London: Routledge. Pages: 1-22.


Wednesday, March 15
Ikuo Amano and Gregory Poole. 2005. “The Japanese University in Crisis.” Higher Education 50(4): 685-711.

Roger Goodman. 2005. “W(h)ither the Japanese university? An introduction to the 2004 higher education reforms in Japan.” In The 'Big Bang' in Japanese Higher Education: The 2004 Reforms and the Dynamics of Change, edited by Jeremy Eades, Roger Goodman, and Yumiko Hada.

Roger Goodman. 2009. “The Japanese Professoriate.” In Higher Education in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the Professoriate, edited by Gregory Poole and Ya-chen Chen. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers, pp. 15-32.


Week 11 - Socioeconomic Class
Monday, March 20
Takhiko Kariya. 2012. Education Reform and Social Class in Japan: The Emerging Incentive Divide. London: Routledge.
Pages: 1-19, 56-97, 130-147.

Wednesday, March 22
Hyunjoon Park and Yeon-Jin Lee. 2013. “Growing Educational Inequality in Japan in the 2000s.” In Japanese Education in an Era of Globalization: Culture, Politics, and Equity. Edited by Gary DeCoker and Christopher Bjork. Pp: 131-146.

David Slater. 2010. “The ‘new working class’ of Urban Japan: Socialization and Contradiction from Middle School to the Labor Market.” In Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Sorting and Strategies, edited by Hiroshi Ishida and David Slater. Pages: 137-169.


Week 12 - Minority Education
Monday, March 27
Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori H. Okano, and Sarane Boocock, eds. Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan: An Interactive Perspective. London: Routledge.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4.

Kasai, Makiko. 2017. “Sexual and Gender Minorities and Bullying Japan.” In Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Schooling: The Nexus of Research, Practice, and Policy. Edited by Stephen T. Russell and Stacey S. Horn. Pages: 185-193.

Wednesday, March 29
No new reading


Week 13 - Minority Education
Monday, April 3
Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori H. Okano, and Sarane Boocock, eds. Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan: An Interactive Perspective. London: Routledge.
Chapters 5, 7, and 10.

Wednesday, April 5
Discussion about how to make a successful presentation.
No reading due.


Week 14 - National Educational Anxieties
Monday, April 10
Andrea Gevurtz Arai. 2016. The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Pages: xi-79. Please note that all references and footnotes are in the Part 2 pdf below.

Wednesday, April 12
Andrea Gevurtz Arai. 2016. The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Pages: 80-176.

Friday, April 14
Student Presentations
6:00 to 8:30pm
South Thayer Building 5000
Dinner will be served, details TBA.

Week 15 - Final Thoughts and Future Questions
Monday, April 17
No reading due.

Final paper(s) due Tuesday, April 25 at 5pm uploaded to Canvas.