This article investigates the relationship between globalisation and national cultural identity through Japanese educational policies for music. Japan is often referred to as a society that provides a model of cultural hybridisation that is a phenomenon in globalisation. However, what actually happened in Japan was not hybridisation, but the replacement of traditional music with western music in the process of the re-construction of national musical culture. Even the recent state emphasis on Japanese elements in music teaching can be interpreted as no more than an attempt to further transform Japanese music culture so that it will resemble that of Europe. (Contains 7 notes.)