The impact of Western progressive educational ideas in Japan: 1868–1940

Abstract

Little is known about the impact of Western educational ideals in Japan during the Meiji (1868–1912), Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (post‐1926) eras, although, in reality, there was considerable interest among Japanese educators in Western thought and practice and there were numerous attempts to disseminate these ideas widely. This article highlights some of the more significant of these developments and attempts to assess their impact and their interpretation in a Japanese context. Translations of foreign philosophical and educational works on the one hand and the publication of teachers' magazines on the other were the two viaducts for what became little short of a Japanese educational movement that was one of the stepping stones to the modernisation of Japan and which has resonated down to the present. In this article this process is described through its chronological phases, during the period which saw Japan's transition from an intellectually isolated, inward‐looking society into one which developed as a democracy and saw the coming of industrialisation before moving into a period of Fascist supernationalism.