During the U.S. military occupation of Japan after World War II, few sectors of Japanese society were left untouched. Reforms during the occupation included education, religion, moral values, and gender relations. By contrast, in Germany, except in the Soviet-controlled zone, no radical changes were introduced in the education system during the occupation (1945-1949). The West Germans, who determinedly rejected U.S. educational ideas, began to discuss the deficiencies of their education system and tried to solve them after the withdrawal of the Allied military governments. In Japan, a number of educational reforms failed. Why has Japan been unable to review the education system established under the U.S. occupation? This paper explores specific components of the Japanese education reforms and those in the U.S. occupied zone of Germany to explain the basis for the peculiarly radical changes brought to Japanese education under the occupation. It examines the difficulty in post-war Japan for discussion about the contemporary relevance of these changes. The paper clarifies what occurred in Japanese and German education during the occupation. The Japanese education system largely shifted toward the U.S. model, but the German education system did not. The paper also analyzes conditions for reforms during the occupation. (Contains 95 notes.) (BT)