Contexts and challenges of widening access to education in japan

Abstract

Today Japan stands tall and is virtually unrivalled among nations as an industrial and economic miracle. It remains at the apex, yet to be overtaken by any other nation in the international competition in manufacturing and high technology, particularly in telecommunications. To date, Japan remains one of the greatest global exporters of capital. In 1984 alone, Japan's net long-term capital outflow was USS50 million (Duke, 1986: 5). Japan has continued to rank higher than many other developed nations in technology (in particular, semiconductor production), military technology, and automobile technology and in the manufacture of cameras, videos, televisions, and musical instruments. It is perhaps that feat in economic achievement that partly led to anticipation that Japan's economic performance over the next 15 years would be stronger than that estimated for the 1990s. At the same time, however, there is concern that the relative importance of Japan in the global economy may decrease for various reasons. Prominent among them, at least from the perspective of the layperson, is Japan's seeming inability to manage its demographic challenges. For Japan's population is aging rapidly, which means it will need millions of new workers by 2015 to be able to manage the social dependency ratios that exist between the working population and retirees. It is feared that current Japanese strategies for meeting such challenges-for instance, requesting overseas Japanese to return to Japan, broadening opportunities for women in terms of economic participation, and doubling investments elsewhere in Asia-may prove inadequate. The global implication is that if such strategies do indeed fail, the resultant economic burden the United States economy would have to bear could be so great that it would weaken the global economy. In view of such forecasts, many political leaders, scholars, and economists in Japan would do well to consider how access to education could be widened enough so as to provide at least part of the solution to the current challenges and thereby help to stave off the looming economic crisis. In this chapter we examine how the widening of access to education in Japan has been evolving and what challenges and prospects recent developments hold. In what follows we shall, first, provide historical background on education in Japan; second, examine the issues in educational access prior to the Meiji Restoration; third, examine the growth and prospects of educational access after the Meiji Restoration; fourth, highlight innovative cases in widening access; fifth, discuss the challenges and prospects involved in widening access; and, finally, make some tentative suggestions on the basis of the foregoing as to how widening access to education should enable Japan to continue to provide economic leadership in an era of globalization. © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.