Challenges to Japanese Education: Economics, Reform, and Human Rights (review)

This valuable collection of essays illuminates several important aspects of education in contemporary Japan. The book will be of use to both experts and university students, and is particularly commendable in making work by Japanese scholars available to an English-reading audience.

The more substantial essays in the book fall into three sections. The first two essays deal with recent Japanese educational policies. These are followed by two qualitative case studies of educational stratification and selection at the high school level. The next four essays address education and minority groups in Japan. These eight works are accompanied by short introductory and concluding essays.

I found the case studies of educational selection processes and education for minorities particularly enlightening. Especially welcome are the two chapters on the burakumin minority community, which has received less attention in the recent English-language literature than some other Japanese minorities, especially prior to June Gordon's recent monograph.¹ For me, the standout essay in the book was Yoshiro Nabeshima's chapter, which provides a stimulating introduction to recent studies on the burakumin and education, within the context of enough historical information to help those unfamiliar with the topic. Nabeshima points out that for all the value of the dōwa (social integration) measures implemented from 1969 to improve the situation of the burakumin communities through investment, welfare benefits, and education, these measures do not in fact seem to have substantially improved the educational attainment of burakumin children, which (measured in terms of high school entrance rates) has remained five or six points lower than the national rate since the mid-1970s. Nabeshima briefly introduces the work of a number of Japanese scholars who have sought to explain this discrepancy through a focus on "the psychological and cultural aspects of Burakumin children's lives" (p. 124), in his own case drawing on John Ogbu's cultural model theory. Nabeshima also points out that the decline in academic attainment that has set alarm bells ringing in Japan over the last decade or so has affected burakumin children more severely than the national average. This essay would make an excellent text for undergraduate or graduate teaching on minority issues in Japan, yet it is also very stimulating to the scholar, not least to the comparative educationalist. The copious references provided to relevant studies are a bonus.

Haruhiko Kanegae's essay on the schooling of buraku women in eastern Japan complements Nabeshima's chapter and provides vivid case studies of the educational experiences of burakumin women of different eras over the last century. The focus on eastern Japan, where consciousness of buraku discrimination was often weaker, is a useful supplement to the more common focus on buraku issues in the Kansai region. The experiences of the women interviewees are striking: some grew up entirely unaware of the notion of buraku, some find supposedly antidiscriminatory dōwa education acutely painful because of the comments of fellow students or teachers, some much prefer the children's liberation gatherings organized by buraku activists to official dōwa education at school. The essay leaves one wanting to learn more, its main shortcoming being limited analysis and contextual information for the nonspecialist reader—for example, more exploration of the contrasts drawn between "liberation gatherings" and official dōwa education would be very welcome.

Taeyoung Kim's chapter on education and zainichi Koreans is less revelatory simply because of the significant number of publications on this topic in English in recent years. Nonetheless, being apparently designed as an introductory essay, it would be very useful for teaching, especially as it incorporates vivid case studies of the experiences of two zainichi young women. The essay also briefly but importantly raises the issue of the danger of cultural essentialism within the minority community. Kim suggests that "ethnic education of zainichi has failed by ignoring individual diversity within the group because strengthening the...