Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education

Schooling Selves

Schooling Selves

Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education

PETER CAVE

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO AND LONDON

PETER CAVE is a lecturer in Japanese studies at the University of Manchester and the author of Primary School in Japan.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2016 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2016.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-36772-9 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-36786-6 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-36805-4 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226368054.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cave, Peter, 1965– author.

Title: Schooling selves : autonomy, interdependence, and reform in Japanese junior high education / Peter Cave.

Description: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2016. | ©2016 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039882 | isbn 9780226367729 (cloth : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9780226367866 (paperback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9780226368054 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Junior high schools—Social aspects—Japan. | Japanese—Education (Elementary) | Educational change—Japan.

Classification: LCC LB1556.7.J3 C38 2016 | DDC 373.52—DC23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039882

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Conventions

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. Individuals, Autonomy, and Society in Japanese Education

CHAPTER 2. Reshaping Reform: Discipline, Autonomy, and Group Relations

CHAPTER 3. Classes, Clubs, and Control

CHAPTER 4. Mass Games and Dreams of Youth

CHAPTER 5. Changing the Classroom? Autonomy and Expression in Japanese Language and Literature

CHAPTER 6. The Challenges and Trials of Curricular Change

CHAPTER 7. To Graduation and Beyond: High School Entrance and Juku

Conclusion

Fieldwork Appendix

Notes

Glossary

References

Index

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks go to the principals, teachers, students, and parents of the schools where I was very kindly allowed to conduct research. School teachers in Japan work very hard and do a very difficult and important job. To expose your teaching to the observation of an outsider is not easy. Teachers were very generous in giving me their time, despite the stress and busyness of their lives. I am very grateful for—and very admiring of—their efforts. It was a pleasure to spend time with them, and also a great pleasure to talk and interact with so many students, full of liveliness, intelligence, determination, and a sense of fun. Particular thanks are due to students and parents who kindly agreed to share their thoughts with me in interviews, and to the track and field club (1996) at Tachibana for putting up with my participation in their club activities.

I would like to thank the many friends in Sakura and throughout Kansai who have been so helpful and supportive in so many ways over the years of this research. Special thanks go to Katayama Chijo and his family; the ever-hospitable Ikoma, Nakata, Matsui, and Nakano families; Iwasaki Akiko; Yamasaki Kotoko; and Inagaki Kyoko. Thanks also to Kenji and Donna Go and their family for their help in Tokyo. This research could never have been completed without these friends’ kindness and encouragement.

Earlier research for this book was conducted under the supervision of Professor Roger Goodman at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, and I am very grateful to Roger, not only for his excellent supervision but for his help and support over many years.

Financial support for this research was provided at different times by Postgraduate Training Awards from the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (1994–1997), a Research Scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Japan (1995–1997), and a Japan Foundation Fellowship (2007), as well as by internal research funds of the University of Hong Kong (1998–2007) and the University of Manchester (2007–2015). I am very grateful to the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures (as it was then) at the University of Manchester for allowing me to conduct fieldwork in Japan from August to December 2007. I would also like to thank my colleagues in East Asian Studies for their support in this, and in many other ways during my years at Manchester.

I would like to thank Gordon Mathews, Lynne Nakano, and Ian Reader for their helpful advice on my original book proposal and the two anonymous reviewers for the University of Chicago Press for their constructive criticism, which helped me improve the book significantly. I also very much appreciate the encouragement and efficiency of Elizabeth Branch Dyson, who has been a pleasure to work with as editor. While writing the book, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to read the manuscript of Mette Halskov Hansen’s wonderful recent book, Educating the Chinese Individual, which was an extremely helpful stimulus to my thinking on schooling and selfhood.

Parts of chapters 5 and 6 draw on and develop material previously published in my 2011 article, Explaining the Impact of Japan’s Educational Reform: Or, Why Are Junior High Schools So Different from Elementary Schools? Social Science Japan Journal, 14 (2): 145–63 (published by Oxford University Press).

Note on Conventions

Japanese words have been romanized using the modified Hepburn system used in Kenkyūsha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (4th ed., 1974), with macrons used to show long vowels. Long vowels are not shown in the case of familiar place names such as Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka, or Japanese regnal names, such as Showa and Taisho. Japanese names are normally written in the Japanese style, with the family name first and the given name second. However, in the case of Japanese authors of works in English, family name follows given name. For the sake of anonymity, I have used pseudonyms for places, institutions, and people in the fieldwork site, and some details that might inadvertently allow identification have been changed.

Teachers are given the honorific suffix -sensei (meaning teacher or master) after their name, as in the original Japanese. Girls and boys at the schools studied were usually referred to and addressed by teachers (and one another) with the suffixes -san (for girls) and -kun (for boys) after their names, and I have also used these suffixes.

All translations of Japanese texts are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

Introduction

It is no exaggeration to say that whether or not this country can construct a vibrant economy and society in the twenty-first century depends on raising creative people. — Keizai Dōyūkai, business executives’ association

Relaxed education will ruin our children. — Wada Hideki, educational commentator

What is important is to guarantee a certain level of academic attainment to all children. In that sense, I venture to say that one-size-fits-all education is fine during compulsory education. — Saitō Takao, journalist

For two decades, from the late 1980s to about 2010, the world of Japanese compulsory education was shaken by reform. Reform was demanded in response to perceptions of present crisis and future challenges for Japan’s economy and society. It was fiercely debated once concrete proposals were advanced; it was implemented in schools amid conflicting responses from teachers; and it was partially reversed, after setbacks in schools invited fierce media criticism. This book uses fieldwork in two Japanese schools conducted over a period of a dozen years to examine how reform discourses and policy measures played out within lower secondary education during this contentious period, and why the reforms were so radically reshaped as they were implemented in schools. Further, it explores the significance of these processes for our understanding of contemporary Japan. What do junior high schools’ responses to reform tell us about self and society in today’s Japan? How have the changes and challenges of Japan’s last twenty years been reflected, transmuted, or resisted in schools? What kinds of people are Japanese junior high schools seeking to produce, and what practices have they used to this end?

Calls for change in Japanese education were the result of a variety of concerns. Business leaders and some politicians wanted an education system that developed creativity and promoted diversity and choice to meet the challenges of an envisaged future where Japan could no longer rely on importing ideas and knowledge, but had to come up with its own. Self-styled progressive educationalists deplored what they saw as excessive competition and exam pressure. More generally, there was a widespread view that children were losing touch with their social and natural environments, making them less able to relate well to others socially and emotionally. The government response was curricular reform that attempted to restore children’s relationships while promoting individuality and the ability to think for oneself. Initially, the reforms seemed to embody a broad consensus and were widely welcomed. Subsequently, however, intense criticism from scholars, pundits, and media was followed by responses in schools themselves that were divided at best. This book explores how teachers reinterpreted, reshaped, and resisted reforms and examines why proposals that seemed so promising ran into such difficulties in classrooms and staff rooms.

The context for the reform process was a period that has puzzled and divided observers of Japan. Sometimes the country has been seen as mired in stagnation, unable to make the changes it needed, whether in the fields of business, politics, or social policy (Lincoln 2001; Scheiner 2006; Schoppa 2006). On the other hand, sometimes it has been seen as undergoing dramatic change, with long-standing social, economic, and political structures weakening, metamorphosing, or breaking up entirely (Schaede 2008; Lukács 2010; Kariya 2013; Allison 2013). In recent years, anthropologists and sociologists have increasingly focused on what many see as forces of individualization and neoliberalism that are supposedly reshaping dominant ways of thinking and behaving in Japan. Twenty years or more ago, Japan was often seen as a group-oriented society; now, much writing dwells on how Japanese individuals either seek out the independence they desire or are forced willy-nilly into taking responsibility for their own lives amid the shrinking of social support nets that constrained, but also provided security. But has Japan really changed so dramatically? Or are forces of change operating unevenly in different areas of society, as this study will argue—and if so, why?

In this book, I want to go beyond antinomies of individual and society, or individualism and group orientation. I want to look more deeply at the diversity of discourses of self in Japan and how they interact in dynamic ways. Does increased individualization mean a weakening of group orientation or social control? Or, as social theorists in the Foucauldian tradition have argued, do certain types of individualization represent new means of governing society? Conversely, does group orientation have to mean the subordination of the individual, or could some forms of groupism help individual selves become more autonomous? And how have the issues involved been worked out in practical terms in schools, those key sites of socialization?

In the process, I bring together strands of scholarship that have not always been fully engaged with one another in the study of contemporary Japan, particularly in studies of education. The first of these is the rich tradition of ethnographic research on Japanese education itself. The second is research on contemporary Japanese society and culture more generally, often but not always by anthropologists and sociologists. And the third comprises powerful studies of modern Japanese social and intellectual history. By taking advantage of all three, we can better understand the relationships between school practices, patterns of social behavior, and long-running debates within Japan about individuals, society, and the state.

The Japanese Education System

The Japanese education system is nationally centralized (in contrast to federal systems, such as those in Germany, India, or the United States), and the vast majority of children experience similar educational structures, though there is some scope for local experimentation and initiative. Before entering elementary school, almost all children spend at least three years at preschool, either yōchien (kindergarten) or hoikuen (day-care center or nursery school) (Cave 2011b, 247–48). There are nine years of compulsory education: six years at elementary school, for children ages six to twelve, and three years at junior high school for twelve- to fifteen-year-olds.

The end of junior high school is crucial in determining children’s life trajectories. To enter high school (three years, from age fifteen to eighteen),children must pass an entrance exam. This operates as the most important sorting mechanism in the Japanese education system, determining whether children will enter more or less educationally demanding high schools. In turn, the high school they enter will strongly influence their tertiary education and employment options. This highlights the key role played by junior high schools in the educational system, and the consequent pressure on both teachers and students.

About 96 percent of students go on to high school, a figure that has been stable since the end of the 1970s (Monbukagakushō 2014). The proportion who continue on to tertiary education has been rising rapidly in recent years, as the number of children has fallen faster than the number of college places.¹

Almost all children (98 percent in 2013) attend public elementary school, and the vast majority also attend public junior high school, though the proportion has been falling slowly over the last two decades, from 96 percent in 1990 to 92 percent in 2013.² The proportion of privately educated high school students is much higher—31 percent in 2013 (Monbukagakushō 2014).

The Schools and Their Settings

Tachibana and Yoneda, the two junior high schools that are the focus of this study, are located in a city of about a hundred thousand people that I call Sakura.³ Sakura is situated in the Kinki district of west-central Japan, comprising the six prefectures of Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara, Shiga, and Wakayama—an area centered on the large cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe and which boasts historical cultures dating back to ancient times, along with an advanced industrial economy. Sakura is a long-established city that has been a significant urban center for centuries, developing considerably during the Edo period (1600–1868). Over the years, I have often been told by Sakura residents (especially incomers) that the city is a conservative place where people are cautious about speaking their minds. It is difficult to judge how fair such views are, but I have also met some very open-minded people in Sakura.

Like many cities (shi) in Japan, Sakura today comprises an urban core surrounded by a semirural hinterland. Despite the extensive rice fields in its more rural areas, all but 5 percent of the working population were employed in manufacturing, construction, trading, or services (including public services) throughout the period of this study. Several large manufacturers had factories in the city. The prefecture as a whole enjoyed income and education levels close to or slightly higher than the national average.⁴ During the years of this study, the population was growing, with new development taking place in the city suburbs; large new shopping malls and a new cultural center containing three concert halls opened between 1994 and 2007.⁵

The Tachibana Junior High School district included the city center and was the location of landmarks such as the city hall and the main railway station, as well as a major supermarket and long-established shopping and entertainment areas. It comprised the districts of three elementary schools: Nakamachi, Ishida, and Morikawa. The Nakamachi district was the most central and included the traditional shopping streets as well as older residences. Over the decade of this study, however, these areas declined in prosperity as new, more modern shops and malls opened outside the city center. The population of this area was aging, and Nakamachi Elementary School’s student numbers decreased sharply. The Ishida district included both traditional artisanal industry and new estates, the latter often populated by newcomers to the city. Likewise, the Morikawa district was a mixture of old and new. In the 1960s, it had been largely agricultural, and the remnants of this heritage were still to be seen in the fields and older houses that remained. However, in recent years, as in the Ishida district, more and more agricultural land was being converted for residential development—mainly small detached houses (ikkodate), but also some condominiums (manshon). Teachers in Sakura tended to see long-standing residents of the city as more respectful of schools and newcomers as the source of more problems, both because the latter were perceived as likelier to complain about school policies or practices and because their children were thought likelier to be involved in problems such as indiscipline, bullying, or school refusal. Teachers felt that this was because newer residents’ families were weakly tied into networks of kinship and neighborhood that might provide both social support and social control.

FIGURE 1. Sakura street scene

Tachibana was one of the largest schools in the prefecture, with student numbers fluctuating between about eight hundred and a thousand students during the years of this study. There were always at least seven classes in each year group (gakunen). The school experienced repeated discipline problems, and though these were not in evidence during my main periods of fieldwork (1996–1997 and 2007), they did break out in the intervening years. Perhaps partly because of this, as well as because of the size of the school, it had a reputation for being an unusually busy and demanding workplace. The school building itself dated from the early 1970s and was somewhat gloomy and down at heel; the corridors were lit with short strip lights, and in 2007, one of the teachers told me that some of the sliding doors were unchanged since she herself had been a student there thirty years before. There was also a large gymnasium, outdoor swimming pool, and sandy sports ground, all standard features of junior high schools in Japan. Since my 2007 fieldwork, this school building has been demolished and replaced by a new building on the same site.

Yoneda school district was a sharp contrast. It was located in one of the most rural parts of the city, which had been incorporated into Sakura only in the 1950s. My twenty-minute walk to the school from Yoneda railway station took me through a few streets of small, neat detached houses and then through the rice fields that occupied much of the school district, interspersed with older, larger detached houses and the occasional factory, temple, or convenience store. It was an attractive scene of apparent rural tranquility. However, the school district did contain some housing for the working poor (koyō sokushin jūtaku). Recent residential developments were clustered near Yoneda station, including a large multistory condominium complex that probably housed two or three hundred families. The principal of Yoneda in 2007 attributed most of the school’s few discipline problems to children from this area. The Yoneda school district boasted no major shopping or entertainment centers.

FIGURE 2. Houses and rice fields in Sakura

Yoneda Junior High School was a medium-sized school of about four hundred students, with four classes in each year group. Its building dated from the late 1980s and was considerably more attractive than Tachibana’s. On each of the three floors, there was a light, spacious hall outside the classrooms, unlike Tachibana’s narrow, gloomy corridors. Like the larger school, it possessed a gymnasium, an outdoor swimming pool, and a sports ground.

Research Methods

The primary research method adopted in this study was ethnography, supplemented by survey research and analysis of documents issued by the Japanese government, major Japanese media, and commentators on Japanese education. Ethnography was used because of its power to reveal not only the detailed behavior of local actors (teachers, students, and parents), but also the assumptions, understandings, and beliefs in which such behavior is grounded. School observations (including classroom observations), semistructured interviews, and analysis of school documents were the main methods adopted within this framework. Survey research was primarily employed in order to gain a clearer picture of the representativeness of some of the data gathered through observations and interviews. Study of national policy and discourse was enabled by analysis of policy documents and public (including media) discourse. This could then be compared with the worlds of behavior and discourse observed at the local level.

The location of the study was chosen based on two major factors: comparative representativeness and quality of access. I wanted to conduct the study at schools and in a location that shared important features with many other schools and regions in Japan. In a country with a population of around 127 million and a public junior high school population of 4,527,400 in 11,269 schools in 1996 (3,614,552 students in 10,955 schools in 2007) (Monbukagakushō 2014), it can never be said that any single location or school is representative of the entire nation. There are especially significant differences between very rural and metropolitan areas, between affluent and economically deprived areas, and between areas with high and low minority populations, all of which are worth study in their own right. At the same time, the Japanese educational system is generally regarded as relatively highly standardized (Cummings 1980, 6–15; Okano and Tsuchiya 1999, 60). All public schools follow the same national curriculum; the Ministry of Education ensures a degree of standardization in areas such as textbooks, school buildings and facilities, and teacher qualifications (Kariya 2010, 59); and shared pedagogical discourse and practice is fostered by action research journals for teachers (Sato and Asanuma 2000, 116). Standardization of school practices is also encouraged by institutions like school sports and music associations that organize regular tournaments and contests in a pyramid structure, from the local to the national level. All this is undergirded by a shared national language, and national media organizations, such as Japan’s public broadcaster NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) and some of the world’s largest-circulation national newspapers. Case studies at both elementary and junior high levels have consistently indicated common features in schools that are widely separated geographically.⁶ In addition, disparities in academic attainment are limited across most of Japan.⁷ As noted above, the city of Sakura is located in a prefecture with levels of income and education close to the national average, and observation of students, views of teachers, and impressions from cycling around the city fit with this statistical picture. In 1998, about 5 percent of Tachibana students received school expense subsidies (shūgaku enjo), slightly below the national figure of about 7 percent, while in 2007, the figures at both Tachibana and Yoneda were about 13 percent, similar to the national figure (Satō and Katsuno 2013, 17). There were no large minority populations in the Tachibana or Yoneda school districts.

Quality of access is vital for an ethnographic study. I was fortunate to be introduced to the principals of the schools by the then principal of Morikawa Elementary School and the former vice-principal of Tachibana. It was also helpful that I had three years’ experience working in Japanese public schools as a teaching assistant and was fluent in spoken and written Japanese, both of which probably helped to win the confidence of school managers and teachers. As has often been observed (Bestor, Steinhoff, and Bestor 2003), introductions are important in securing research cooperation in Japan, especially when the research involves long-term access to sensitive settings.

The ethnographic approach used in this study is longitudinal and multi-sited, by which I mean one that studies different schools, purposively chosen to enable better theoretical understanding of the key issues. Several previous ethnographic studies of Japanese education (Rohlen 1983; Fukuzawa 1994; LeTendre 2000; Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa 2009) have used such an approach in order to explore the effects of variation within Japan’s complex society, as have recent educational ethnographies in the United States (Kusserow 2004), India (Benei 2008), and China (Kipnis 2011). This type of multi-sited ethnography is not the same as that, for example, discussed by Marcus (1995, 102), for whom multi-sited ethnography is focused on objects of study that are mobile and multiply situated. Multi-sited ethnography in either sense poses the challenge of investigating more than one site, without thereby attenuating the power of fieldwork to enable deep, intimate knowledge of each (Marcus 1995, 100). This study actually focuses on fewer schools than some of the studies mentioned above. This intensive focus was intentional, to enable me to study processes within each school in more detail and also to allow deeper investigation of classroom teaching practices than is achieved by many educational ethnographies.

An initial pilot study at Tachibana Junior High School and Morikawa Elementary School took place between October and December 1994. This was followed by fieldwork at Tachibana from April 1996 until March 1997, covering one entire school year, with a month-long follow-up visit in June–July 1998. In 1998, a new junior high curriculum was published; major revisions included the introduction of integrated studies (discussed especially in chapters 1, 2, and 6). I decided that the effects of this curricular reform (implemented from 2002) needed to be included in my research. To achieve this, I first made short visits to elementary and junior high schools in Sakura over the following years, revisiting Tachibana in 2000 and 2002 and also visiting several other junior high schools. I then revisited Sakura for four months between late August and late December 2007. Fieldwork was concentrated in two junior high schools, Tachibana and Yoneda. This time, two schools were studied in order to examine whether the different characteristics of the schools affected their responses to the reform. More details about the fieldwork are provided in the appendix to the book.

Longitudinal ethnographic studies of education introduce an important historical dimension into ethnography. Good examples are the studies of preschools in Japan, China, and the United States by Joseph Tobin and his teams, first in the mid-1980s (Tobin, Wu, and Davidson 1989) and then in the 2000s (Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa 2009). Part of the significance of the later studies lay in their revelation of both dramatic change over time (in the case of the main Chinese preschool studied) and remarkable continuity (in the main Japanese preschool). On the other hand, Anderson-Levitt’s (2002) study of teaching first grade in France and the United States, though a longitudinal study based on data gathered over twenty years, does not seek to study change, instead using the period of time over which the research was conducted to support a picture of continuity. Diachronic studies can thus show how and why educational beliefs and practices undergo significant change or maintain striking continuity over time.

Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa (2009, 4) write that ethnography, at its core, is the study of culture, and some may be surprised that culture as a term rarely features in this book. Why not? In recent decades, there has been a continuing debate within social and cultural anthropology about the value or otherwise of the concept of culture.⁸ As Kipnis (2011, 4) writes, Many anthropologists, at least since the late 1970s, have abandoned the concept for being static, ahistorical, holistic, or apolitical. Scholars of Japan in various disciplines (including anthropology and sociology) have made sustained attacks on studies that show the problems for which the concept of culture has often been criticized—neglect of variation, conflict, and agency, and unwarranted holism—and which, in the Japanese context, are often labeled Nihonjinron (theories of the Japanese) or Nihon bunkaron (theories of Japanese culture).⁹ Ryang (2004), a noted anthropologist of Japan, has specifically attacked the acceptance of the notion of Japanese culture as Japan’s national culture in such a way that culture and nation are more or less isomorphic. Though not necessarily leveled at the concept of culture itself, these critiques seem to have resulted in its diminishing use in the anthropology of Japan.

The usefulness of the conceptual language of culture needs to be judged on a case by case basis, depending on what it adds analytically, as Fredrik Barth has argued (Borofsky et al. 2001). The danger when using the terms culture or even the adjective cultural is that they invite reification of culture as a whole that is a property of a certain nation or social group. In Japan as elsewhere, there are certainly shared ways of thinking, ideas, and practices that exercise considerable power within populations, as I discuss in this study. However, I found the conceptual language of common and contested discourses and institutionalized beliefs and practices more useful than the term culture. This was partly because one of the arguments of this book is that ideas and practices that have become firmly established within institutions (such as junior high school) can be more important there than ideas and practices that may be associated with a national or local population. In such a case, explanation on the level of the institution is better than explanation using notions of national culture (Cave 2011a). (The concept of institution is discussed further in chapter 6.)

Organization of the Book

The first chapter of the book outlines the motivations for reform of school education in Japan, and how reform measures were developed and debated. It then explains the significance of the reforms of the 1990s and 2000s in the context of relationships between self, society, and the state. Finally, it examines debates about autonomy and education, in Japan and more widely.

Chapter 2 describes and analyzes changes in teachers’ approaches to students’ socialization and human development between 1996 and 2007 through a comparison of first year (seventh grade) field trips at Tachibana. Teachers moved away from a focus on group discipline in 1996 toward the promotion of autonomous thinking in 2007, influenced by the educational reform agenda. However, this chapter also shows how reforms were adapted by the school to serve teachers’ priorities.

Chapter 3 examines how schools sought to shape students’ selfhood through activities in two key groups within schools—class groups (gakkyū) and extracurricular clubs (bukatsudō). Teachers saw classes as heterogeneous groups in which students had to learn to accept and work together with others, creating unity without losing diversity. Students generally accepted these ideals in theory but in practice sometimes preferred to pursue their individual agendas. In contrast, clubs were seen as groups with a shared enthusiasm, allowing students autonomous choice. However, clubs were actually at least as much about disciplined commitment as about individual autonomy. The imperative to keep control was crucial in impelling teachers toward regimes of group discipline within schools, and was influenced by the dominance of norms of conventional masculine authority. Nonetheless, it did not go unquestioned, and there were signs of some loosening of masculine dominance and disciplinary emphasis by 2007.

Chapter 4 explores discourses and practices of selfhood in three major school events: sports day, choral contest, and cultural festival. Schools had considerable freedom to decide the content of these events. The sports day and choral contest were dominated by discourses of collectivity and teamwork, while the cultural festival gave more scope to students’ autonomy and individual creativity. Ironically, Tachibana stopped holding its cultural festival just as educational reform reached its climax, instead prioritizing a mass callisthenic display that suggested teachers’ attraction to practices of group discipline. These major events were also key sites for the negotiation of cultural and gender identity.

Chapter 5 looks at how educational reform affected teaching at Tachibana and Yoneda, focusing on the subject of Japanese (kokugo). Despite the reformist attempt to promote individuality and autonomy, texts continued to focus more on relationships with others than proactive agency. Though there was a significant expansion in the number of hours and textbook pages devoted to student expression (speaking and writing units) between 1996 and 2007, teachers often skipped these units in practice. Even teachers who sought to promote more student-centered, autonomous learning found this hard, and many were more comfortable developing students’ basic skills and understanding.

Chapter 6 outlines how Tachibana and Yoneda tackled the two central curricular changes implemented from 2002: integrated studies and the expansion of electives. It also explores how the schools used small-group teaching and teaching differentiated by proficiency. Most teachers were at best ambivalent about the major curricular changes of 2002. As a result, implementation was unenthusiastic and often amounted to relabeling or expansion of existing practices. Teachers were also ambivalent about teaching differentiated by proficiency but welcomed small-group teaching, even though this did not seem to affect the way they taught. This chapter argues that the problems encountered with the 2002 reforms resembled those met by educational reforms elsewhere in the world, and suggests that conflict with institutionalized beliefs and practices was a fundamental reason for their difficulties. It suggests that future reform can only be enabled by changes to key school structures and the development of professional learning communities in schools.

Chapter 7 considers issues surrounding learning assessment and entrance examinations