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Abstract

This article addresses topics related to Japanese sociology of education over the past three decades. The main academic interests of Japanese sociology of education have been educational choice and socialization in secondary education, topics also discussed in Durkheim’s masterwork, L’Évolution pédagogique en France. The interests of Japanese researchers in the sociology of education were aroused because of drastic changes in the youth labor market in the mid-1990s and national curriculum reforms influenced by international educational evaluation, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment, in the 2000s. Though the number of empirical studies has increased substantially over the past two decades, this field must make efforts to develop its theoretical sophistication in order to connect to worldwide research on sociology of education.

Keywords

Japan labor market national curriculum reforms Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)sociology of education

Introduction: Japanese sociology of education as an academic field

The aim of this review is not to introduce Japanese sociology of education but to clarify the traditional Japanese context of the sociology of education. To accomplish this aim, this essay will introduce the characteristics of Japanese sociology of education. In Japan, the sociology of education is a broad field within both sociology and educational studies. Though ISA has over 6,000 members and the American Sociological Association (ASA) has over 13,000 members, not only does the Japan Sociological Society (JSS) have over 3,000 members, but the Japan Society of Educational Sociology (JSES; established in 1948), an academic organization independent from other academic associations, has over 1,400 members as of 2020. The Journal of Educational Sociology (Kyōiku Shakaigaku Kenkyū), published in Japanese by the JSES, is the most prestigious and highly evaluated journal in the field sociology of education. Japanese researchers regard JSES as the representative national academic association in this field because this association represents academics engaged in the sociology of education across Japan, which the Japan Sociological Society and the Japanese Educational Research Association (JERA) do not. Japanese sociology of education was imported as educational sociology mainly from the US after the Second World War, and this field was broadly accepted within the general Japanese population in the ensuing 20 years. For instance, Educational Inequality, one of the best-selling books in Japanese in this field, sold 45,000 copies in its first year (Matsuoka, 2019).

The topic of Japanese education has been forgotten internationally. The collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and the long decades of economic depression have led to disinterest in Japan’s economy and society, including its school system. In addition, until the 2010s, Japanese academics in the field of the sociology of education were not required to publish in English to receive an academic appointment in many Japanese universities. Prior to that, Japan’s school system had been examined by non-Japanese social scientists, including Japanese studies researchers. Cummings, Dore, Duke, and Rohlen are good examples of such researchers (Cummings, 1980; Dore, 1976; Duke, 1986; Rohlen, 1983). ‘Examination hell’ was the predominant image of Japanese school education according to Dore (1976); on the other hand, Cummings (1980) described the social equality of Japanese primary schools – creating the image in the mind of foreign scholars that Japanese schools were ‘competitive but equal.’ Kariya’s early work played an important role in connecting Japanese social systems with international sociological debate, partially modifying this image (Kariya and Rosenbaum, 1987; Rosenbaum and Kariya, 1989, 1991). Kariya explained Japanese students’ ability to get a job without many complications after graduating as resulting from career guidance in high school and schools’ general evaluation of academic achievement.

However, in the 1990s and 2000s, economic struggle ironically produced substantial development of the sociology of education in Japan. Economic depression created problems for young people’s transition from school to work, which was an important and traditional topic of the sociology of education. This social change led to structural problems in the education system. Many researchers took a new interest in sociological issues during these decades, and the number of members increased from around 600 in 1980 to around 1,400 in 2010. That is, the era of international silence regarding Japanese sociology of education coincided with an era of national academic growth.

Review of previous English-language studies

After several decades of silence, some international studies have been published in concert with the rising tide of globalization. In particular, there have been some English-language academic reviews of Japanese sociology of education in recent years. Morikazu Ushiogi wrote the first international work introducing Japanese sociology of education in at least the past decade. Ushiogi (2013) explained not only the origin and historical development of this field in Japan but also introduced topics in The Journal of Educational Sociology. He pointed out that the most traditional and popular topics in Japanese sociology of education are schools, especially primary and secondary schools, and teachers (Ushiogi, 2013). He also mapped out the contemporary situation in the field, discussing contemporary higher education policies (Ushiogi, 2013). This essay is a useful reference for international scholars to survey recent policy trends in Japanese higher educational institutions in the context of the competitive situation of global university ranking, and it also describes the international influence on Japanese sociology of education (Ushiogi, 2013). Not only have standard international textbooks, such as Education, Economy, and Society (Halsey et al., 1961) and Education, Globalization, and Social Change (Lauder et al., 2006), been translated into Japanese, but major professional works like those of Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu have as well.

Yonezawa et al.’s (2018) Japanese Education in a Global Age serves as the JSES’s official introduction to Japanese sociology of education, but it also discusses cutting-edge topics in Japanese sociology of education. In particular, Nakamura’s (2018) chapter explains the unique characteristics of Japanese sociology of education and indicates partial similarities with the historical process of pedagogization in the UK. Nakamura concluded that there is a lack of transmission of research findings from Japan to other countries despite the impact of Western sociology and efforts to translate foreign-language texts into Japanese (Nakamura, 2018). In another chapter, Okitsu et al. (2018) explained this lack of transmission by showing the substantial decrease in the number of articles in international journals that address Japan alone or Japan in comparison to North America or Western Europe and the slight increase in the number of articles with approaches based on cases related to Japan.

If readers were to scan these studies, it might seem as if a sufficient number of English-language studies were available for one to become acquainted with this field. However, as some of the articles in this special issue of International Sociology Reviews have revealed, Japanese sociology has more relevance in the Japanese-speaking world, and its findings are rarely published outside of Japan. Therefore, this review focuses on recent studies in the field of sociology of education that have not been sufficiently introduced to the English-speaking world in this context, but which are frequently read and frequently inspire new research in Japan.

Social and political background of Japanese sociology of education

Historically, the major academic topics of Japanese sociology of education have been secondary education, examinations, and qualifications, which are concerns similar to those in Durkheim’s masterwork L’Évolution pédagogique en France. Durkheim described secondary education as an arena for educational choice, social selection, and socialization through learning and examination (Durkheim, 2006), which is consonant with Ronald Dore’s (1976: 2) description of secondary schools and universities, in the context of the dual economy of modernization, as being the ‘immigration service for the modern sector bridge-head.’ Comparative international explanations, including Dore’s, have emphasized the role of schools in Japanese modernization because many studies regard Japan as a successful case of modernization. Dore (1976) also stressed ‘the discontinuity in both the composition and the culture of the ruling class’ in modernization, comparing Japan to the UK.

However, we cannot ignore domestic competition in the creation of new social stratifications, a new dominant social class, and a new social class structure. Scholars referenced by Dore have investigated these circumstances. Ikuo Amano (2011) clarified the characteristics of the selection process in Japanese schools as being reliant on entrance examinations rather than graduate examinations, as in European countries. This historical formation process of entrance examination to secondary schools or higher education is a significant topic in the Japanese sociology of education, and may even be considered its core academic interest. Amano (1990, 2011) depicted the birth of entrance examinations and the birth of Japanese credentialism.

Yo Takeuchi is another important researcher who nurtured this academic interest in this field. In contrast to Amano’s focus on the social structure of class formation within the expansion of the educational sector, Takeuchi (1995) focused on the cultural aspects of the social selection process. After a comparative study of the traditional style of elite schooling in the UK (public schools) and Japan, he analyzed and theorized about the historical formation of Japanese meritocracy (Takeuchi, 1995). He revealed a change in the character of Japanese meritocracy from one of an open, frontier spirit during the Meiji Revolution (an era similar to that of frontier expansion in the US), to one of survival and competition in the early twentieth century, and finally to one of anomie during the era of abundance in the late twentieth century (Takeuchi, 1995).

Even in recent studies, the influence of these two scholars remains. The selection process is discussed in terms of the process of cultural reproduction, a concept of Pierre Bourdieu’s that is often cited and applied (Omae et al., 2015). The reception of Bourdieu within Japanese educational sociology has concentrated on aspects of culture and reproduction (Aizawa and Iso, 2016). Japanese academics in this field have traditionally also placed importance on the systems that track differences in academic performance between high schools, particularly in the context of high school entrance exams, which vary between prefectures in terms of structure and the post-exam selection process (Aramaki et al., 2019; Kagawa, 2019; Kagawa and Liu, 2016; Kagawa et al., 2014).

The great transformation of academic interest: Two social phenomena

Japanese interest in the sociology of education increased substantially with the onset of two social phenomena in the late 1990s: drastic changes in the youth labor market and national curriculum reforms that were influenced by international educational evaluation. These two phenomena changed mainstream Japanese sociology of education from educational sociology to the sociology of education and an emphasis on social inequality among young people. The difference between educational sociology and the sociology of education in Japan should be pointed out. There is no difference in the words used in Japanese. Both terms can describe the one word that is a compound of ‘education’ and ‘sociology’ in this particular order. Of course, we do recognize some of the differences in the standpoints of these two English terms, so some scholars often use one more than the other. According to the history of this field, educational sociology was first imported from American teaching colleges, and one association and one academic journal use educational sociology in many official English names. However, recent developments in both educational research and sociology have led to the more frequent use of sociology of education.

The mainstream concerns of Japanese sociology of education in the 1970s and 1980s were juvenile delinquency, bullying, and dropouts in secondary schools; these decades encompass the oil crisis, and the bubble economy. Shiramatsu et al. (2014) have implied that a great transformation in research interests occurred in Japanese sociology of education during this period. In the 1970s and 1980s, deviance was the central topic of the field in the context of Japanese credentialism. Howard Becker’s (1963) labeling theory was popular in sociology of education until the 1990s. There are two reasons why deviance was so popular. First, Japanese sociology of education was regarded as an academic field that explored Japanese credentialism, and credentialism was interpreted as the cause of students’ deviance at that time. Second, Japanese criminology did not become part of the academic institution during the twentieth century. Youth deviance and juvenile delinquency were interpreted as major school problems.

Drastic changes in the youth labor market

The youth labor market changed drastically and worsened beginning in the early 1990s. Although the mass media reported on this problem beginning in the early 1990s and the buzz word in 1994 was shūshoku hyōgaki (the employment Ice Age), the serious crisis occurred around 2000. At that time, the number of unemployed Japanese graduates was larger than it was after the world’s great economic depression of 2008. Japanese society took for granted the smooth transition from school to work with no gap. Kariya emphasized high schools’ meritocratic selection system and its significance for students easily obtaining employment (Kariya, 1988). After this drastic change in the youth labor market, some scholars explained the deterioration in the transition system from school to work, criticizing Kariya’s discussion of the smooth transition system from school to work with no gap term that Japanese society took for granted.

Kaoru Tsuburai’s (1997) study was the first to promote this topic academically, explaining the substantial increase in unemployment among high school graduates in 1997. She gathered historical data about social mobility and explained changes to the positive role of school in social mobility, especially in an era of high economic growth, even though the dual economy was still in effect. However, in the final chapter of her dissertation, Sato-Tsuburai (2004) implied that there was a possibility that the role schools had played in this process might be coming to an end.

Yuki Honda (2005), the contemporary opinion leader in this field, clearly illustrated that the situation for high school graduates in the early 2000s was considerably worse than it had been for graduates in the early 1990s. Her standpoint was that the traditionally successful relations between high school graduates and companies had already collapsed in urban areas; she based this claim on qualitative and quantitative surveys of high school graduates who had not successfully transitioned to work, including Freeters (temporary or part-time workers; this is a portmanteau word from ‘Free Arbeiter,’ which originated in a magazine advertising job offers). She also criticized the aggressive nature of the career guidance in high schools offered to high school graduates (Honda, 2005). In the early 2000s, Freeter, NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training; an acronym imported from the UK but with a popularly discriminative connotation in the Japanese context), and non-regular workers became well-known terms in Japanese society (Honda et al., 2006).

Yukie Hori has not only written an excellent introduction to this situation for international audiences but has also explored the youth employment situation through various surveys (Hori, 2016; Hori and Nakajima, 2018). Hori described social changes in the environment faced by high school graduates and struggling Japanese youth in the unsecure labor market of the 2000s from the perspective of the 1980s and 2010s. Hori (2016) insists that Kariya’s findings about smooth meritocratic transition might describe a unique aspect of Japan’s labor market to international audiences, but it does not account for most high school graduates’ experience even in the 1980s (despite people’s impressions at the time), and it was increasingly less likely in the 2010s with globalization. She emphasized the differences between urban and rural areas and between different urban areas. In particular, Tokyo’s labor market for high school graduates has shrunk substantially in the last 30 years (Hori, 2016: 170–171).

A drastic change in the youth labor market changed the style of explanation that Japanese sociologists of education engaged in from school-based explanations to explanations that involved the interaction between school and society. Of course, surveys of high school graduates as well as college graduates and others were administered. For instance, Kariya and Honda (2010) administered surveys to college students and graduates in a study that described a worsening labor market, which affected students at less prestigious universities.

Some important empirical studies were conducted during the boom in discussions concerned with difficulties in the life course of young people. For example, the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey began in 2007. It is an important quantitative data resource not only for the sociology of education but also for other sociological fields in Japan. In addition, a data archive has developed in the past two decades, the Social Science Japan Data Archive (https://csrda.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/), which is the most flourishing resource of its kind and provides data to international sociologists interested in Japan. The archive originally focused on labor sociology and labor economics. However, it holds many datasets from studies conducted in the 2000s, and it not only stimulates quantitative research of the sociology of education but also strengthens the relationship between the sociology of education and social stratification surveys. This collaborative area has become one of the most productive fields for international researchers studying sociology in a Japanese context.

National curriculum reforms and international evaluation

Another remarkable topic from the early 2000s is the enforcement of the new national curriculum, which was officially announced in 1998. After debate between educational policy makers and sociologists of education, 30% of the content was cut from the national curriculum. The new curriculum was called yutori (relaxed), the aim of which was to ease pressure concerning entrance examinations. Even though competition had been reduced by a decrease in the number of children, the curriculum became effective in 2002.

Takehiko Kariya and Hidenori Fujita led criticism of this new curriculum using empirical data (Fujita, 1997, 2005; Kariya, 2012). They were strongly opposed to the curriculum from the perspective of social inequality. Kariya revealed a link between equal educational practices and non-discriminative treatment based on social class in the 1960s. In other words, he presented Japanese teachers’ view of equality in that era, which espoused equal treatment of pupils in the classroom without considering students’ social class, as being more equal and less discriminative; therefore, the interest in inequality based on social class in classroom waned from 1970 to 2000 (Kariya, 1995, 2012). Japanese educational practices not only refused ability grouping but also put high value on collective group learning (Kariya, 1995; Kariya and Rappleye, 2020). Ability grouping and national educational achievement metrics were the target of criticism. Therefore, no nationwide educational achievement metric existed after the political protests of the late 1950s and early 1960s until 2007.

The research team of Kariya and Kokichi Shimizu (2004) at Osaka University conducted a sample survey that included a metric for educational achievement in the early 2000s (Kariya and Shimizu, 2004). Shimizu found that educational achievement inequality displayed a bimodal distribution that he described as like a ‘Bactrian camel’; this meant that they found a bimodal distribution in educational achievement with a mode around the better group and a mode around the worse group. The peak of the latter mode was especially pronounced in lower socioeconomic areas. After this survey, Shimizu et al. (2012a) explored the mechanism of enhancing academic achievement in deprived areas and emphasized teachers’ efforts and social capital in such areas, deriving his concepts mainly from Putnam (2000).

However, new international comparisons strongly urged reform of the yutori curriculum. The public soon began criticizing the curriculum as well because of the poor Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results it conducted in 2003; this comparatively lower assessment was called the ‘PISA shock.’ The decline in Japanese educational achievement was a major issue because Japanese people, including the mass media, were confident in their internationally higher educational achievements.

The PISA results in 2003 were so shocking because it was the first time Japan had fallen into the middle group of OECD countries at the reading literacy score in the history of Japanese participation in the international educational achievement survey. The high achievement of Japanese students in comparison to other countries had been discreetly revealed through the International Project for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1964. The fact was not publicly reported, however, in contrast to the contemporary situation in which all PISA results are reported in the mass media.

A drastic policy change was implemented after the report. The national curriculum was modified in 2008, and the national educational achievement survey was revived in 2007, the first in 40 years. Some sociologists of education approached the situation academically. For example, Shimizu et al. (2012a, 2012b) conducted an international comparative study of qualitative and quantitative national educational achievement surveys, and they repeatedly insisted on the importance of social capital in exploring the effectiveness of education (Shimizu et al., 2012a; Wakatsuki and Chinen, 2019).

These policy changes and academic movements strongly reinforced the importance of analyzing educational achievement as it relates to social inequality. In other words, research into educational achievement and social inequality returned, at least to academic discussions. Toshiaki Kawaguchi (2009) employed multilevel analysis (hierarchical linear modeling based on Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002) to approach the topic. Kawaguchi (2009) explained inequality in educational achievement as caused by individual differences rather than differences in educational practices between schools, criticizing prior research about school effectiveness research in Japan. He concluded that individual continual influence on educational achievement is more important to understand educational inequality than measurement of effectiveness between schools, although Japanese school effectiveness research often ignored longitudinal research design (Kawaguchi, 2009). After this article was published, quantitative multilevel analysis became a common statistical method in the quantitative sociological analysis of education in Japan.

Contemporary Japanese sociology of education

These two social phenomena drastically changed the form of Japanese sociology of education. An additional change occurred around 2015, a change from oversupply to overdemand when the number of Japanese youth workers could not compensate quantitatively for the number of elderly entering retirement. On the one hand, interest in sociological studies of the transition from school to work decreased; on the other hand, comparison between the 2000s and 2010s shows that interest in educational achievement persisted.

Academic and popular interest in the difficulty of getting a job changed some social attitudes about school education in Japan. The social interest in this difficulty over the past two decades consequently brought about a homogeneity in life courses. For example, the average age for entering college is 18 years old in Japan, the youngest in the world; the OECD average is 22 (OECD, 2019b). In Japan, 80% of students graduate from college and get jobs at 22. Masakazu Yano (2011) criticized the Japanese social atmosphere, coining the following Japanese terms: ‘18-year-oldism,’ ‘graduationism,’ and ‘parental-paymentism.’ According to Yano (2011), ‘18-year-oldism’ means that college freshers are 18, entering college just after high school; ‘graduationism’ means that all students can and must attend college, essentially, for four years; and ‘parental-paymentism’ means that parents pay for their children to attend college. In spite of these academic criticisms, it is popular to choose a more homogeneous younger life course, and the increase in public subsidies for tertiary education is not supported by Japanese people.

In terms of this transition from school to work, gender is also an important topic because the gender gap and gender inequality still exist in the fields of education and work in Japan under the dual structure of the economy (Oguma, 2019). The work of Yuko Nakanishi (1993, 1998) comprehensively explains the division along gender lines of educational and career tracks in Japan (Nakanishi, 1993, 1998); more recent studies support the continued existence of this division (Taga and Tendo, 2013). In addition, the poverty of single mothers has become a notable topic in this century because the poverty rate of single-mother households in Japan is the second highest of any OECD country (Abe, 2008).

As Dore and later researchers have insisted, however, this does not refute school education’s historically greater role in equalization in Japan (Amano, 2011; Dore, 1976; Kariya and Rappleye, 2020), even if international sociology of education scholars often criticize school for its reproduction of social class (e.g. Karabel and Halsey, 1977). This strong point is characterized by the long hours spent in school on a daily activity. The Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, a private Japanese research institute, reported that students from 5th grade to 11th grade spend on average seven and a half hours per day in school, though this length of time extended between 2008 and 2013 (BERD, 2013). The Teaching and Learning International Survey reported that Japanese teachers work over 50 hours per week, the most in the world (OECD, 2019a).

Recent sociological studies of education have questioned this exclusive aspect of Japanese schools because it emphasizes homogeneity and equality. The work of Ryo Uchida is a typical example to reveal these characteristics; academics and journalists alike cite his work. Uchida (2015) has analyzed physical accidents related to school activities in Japan which occur in various Japanese school activities, such as sports and cultural events. He also explained the risks involved in school activities, especially Japanese club activities, which, although similar to local European sports teams, are not local community-based activities but school-centered, and are often characterized by win-at-all costs attitudes (Uchida, 2013, 2017). On the other hand, the PISA reported that Japan has the lowest usage of information and communication technologies of any OECD country (NIER, 2019). As one might expect, however, Japan has been faced with the sudden crises of COVID-19. Unfortunately, we have few clues about how to cope with the crisis. Japanese educational practices consist mainly of face-to-face communication.

Conclusion

As this essay shows, the sociology of education is a more independent field than other fields of sociology in Japan. The educational selection process and the transition from school to work are important topics that have been inherited and derived from the traditional topics of the birth and transformation of Japanese credentialism as discussed by Dore. Economic struggle in the 1990s and 2000s produced nationally considerable development of the sociology of education. The number of empirical studies has increased substantially over the past two decades. Takayama (2020) has pointed out in his review of Japanese Education in a Global Age that Japanese sociologists of education should make efforts to develop theoretical points to connect to worldwide educational sociological research (Takayama, 2020). More international communication between Japanese scholars and overseas scholars is needed to understand the theoretical sophistication of the sociology of education.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by Sophia University Incentive Allowance for Dissemination of Individual Research Results and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP19H01646.

Author biography

Shinichi Aizawa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Sophia University, Tokyo. He is an ISA member and participated in RC04. He is the vice secretary of the Japan Society of Educational Sociology. His research focuses on secondary education, social equality, development, and poverty from a comparative and historical sociological perspective. One of his recent works (primary editor) is High School for All in East Asia: Comparing Experiences (Routledge, 2019).

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National vigor and international silence: The background and development of Japanese sociology of education

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction: Japanese sociology of education as an academic field

Review of previous English-language studies

Social and political background of Japanese sociology of education

The great transformation of academic interest: Two social phenomena

Drastic changes in the youth labor market

National curriculum reforms and international evaluation

Contemporary Japanese sociology of education

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

Author biography

References