This essay is a history that relates the Japanese tradition of accepting and adapting aspects of foreign culture, especially as it applies to the learning of foreign languages. In particular, the essay describes the history of English education in Japan by investigating its developments after the Meiji era. The author addresses the issues from the…

On January 17, 2008, the Japanese Central Education Council submitted a newly revised set of official curriculum guidelines to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan. These guidelines for elementary schools will become effective in the 2011 academic year and include a controversial new policy: the…

Murasakino High School is a municipal senior high school located in the northern part of Kyoto, an ancient capital city of Japan. With a little over one thousand students studying in three grades (from fifteen to eighteen years of age), Murasakino has a distinctive scholastic tradition that makes it different from other high schools in Kyoto. Over…

For the past ten years, the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UHM-COE) and Bukkyo University in Kyoto, Japan have enjoyed a special relationship designed to promote cooperation and academic exchanges between the two institutions. The agreement of cooperation was signed on June 5, 2000 by President Shinko Nakai of Bukkyo…

For the past six years the authors have been working together on a major study of early childhood education in China, Japan, and the United States. This study, "Continuity and Change in Preschools in Three Cultures," is a sequel to "Preschools in Three Cultures," a book by Joseph Tobin, David Wu, and Dana Davidson that was…

Discusses various factors in the relationship between postwar Japan and the United States which may have influenced Japan's phenomenal rise in the world economy. The role of General Douglas MacArthur is considered. (JN)

As a result of rapid developments in information and communication technology (ICT), dramatic changes are taking place in approaches to teaching and learning in university and school classrooms. These changes offer new opportunities to explore entirely new methods of instruction in teacher education. ICT provides alternatives to conventional…