Divs-poole

JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION 

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criteria and objectivity was questionable, the Gourman Report ranking of the 

University of Tokyo at a mere 67th among universities worldwide was an 

embarrassing but oft-cited statistic, part of the “culture of self-criticism” in 

Japanese education circles. This reaction speaks loudly to 1) the high prestige with 

which Tokyo University is held in Japanese society and 2) the history of sensitivity 

in Japan of criticism from the west (as well as a self-criticism, a sort of “What do 

the foreigners think of us?” syndrome), which may be a throwback to the post-

Meiji push for modernization. The University of Tokyo has been given some 

belated redemption in recent international university rankings of research quality 

by the Times Higher Educational Supplement and Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

and in both studies ranks first among all universities outside North America and 

Europe and 12th and 14th, respectively, in the world. 

The name was changed to Tokyo Imperial University with the Imperial 

University Act of 1886, its purpose defined by the Teikoku Daigaku Rei (The 

Imperial University Ordinance) as “to provide instruction in the arts and sciences 

and to inquire into the mysteries of learning in accordance with the needs of the 

state” (Nagai 1971, p. 21). Within thirty years, the Meiji government had 

established four more imperial universities (Kyoto, Tohoku, Kyushu, and 

Hokkaido). All institutions were expected to, and did, contribute to the 

modernization process, so important to Japan’s “mission” at the time. Entrance 

examination competition to the national universities was (and arguably still is) 

fierce, as it also was for the university preparatory schools, the higher schools 

(kōtōgakkō). The imperial universities included faculties of law, engineering, 

agriculture, medicine, and natural sciences, a much more vocational focus than had 

been the case with higher education in the past.  

The demand for higher education increased tremendously during this period of 

rapid modernization, and to fill this need a private tertiary sector parallel to the 

flagship national institutions also developed. Keio Gijuku (Keio University), the 

oldest of these private institutions of higher education in Japan, actually predates 

Tokyo University by twenty years, though it has been argued that the institutional 

roots of Tokyo University can be traced back to a shogunate research institute for 

Dutch studies, the Tenmon-kata, or Astronomy Office, established in 1684 under 

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the fifth shogun of the Edo period. On the other hand, Keio 

Gijuku was founded in 1858 by an intellectual leader of the time, Fukuzawa 

Yukichi (whose portrait adorns the Japanese ten-thousand yen note), as a private 

school for Dutch studies in Tsukiji, Edo (present-day Tokyo). Along with Waseda 

University (founded twenty-five years later as the Tokyo Senmon Gakkō by 

Ōkuma Shigenobu, a scholar and government leader), Keio University developed 

into one of the two most prestigious private universities in Japan. Keio and the 

other privates received no government subsidies and for lack of financial resources 

were initially forced to focus on the cost-effective subjects of the humanities and 

social sciences, foregoing the establishment of strong departments in the hard 

sciences for lack of money (Yamamoto 1999). Despite this, and the fact that they 

were not granted full legal status until 1918, these private universities grew in 

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CHAPTER 1 

number, and by 1925 more than half of all university graduates in Japan had 

attended private institutions (Amano 1989). Except for the institutions led by the 

liberal minds of Fukuzawa (Keio University), Ōkuma (Waseda University), and 

Niijima (Doshisha University), most of the other privates were not necessarily 

“united in the quest for academic independence and freedom of inquiry,” either 

seeking to restore pre-Meiji traditional values (e.g., Toyo University) or provide a 

semiofficial conservative education for aspiring lawyers (e.g., Chuo, Meiji, and 

Hosei Universities) and “private higher education during this period was the scene 

of active conflict among these heterogeneous elements …” (Nagai 1971). 

Before the Second World War, the role of the university in Japan was to provide 

education for the elite, while the multitrack system of higher schools and technical 

schools served the needs of mass education. The United States Education Mission 

arrived in Japan in March of 1946, and under the Fundamental Law of Education 

and the School Education Law of 1947, the prewar system was streamlined into a 

single-track of higher education that defined three types of tertiary institutions: 

four-year universities and two or three-year junior colleges for graduates of high 

school, and five-year colleges of technology available for students directly from 

lower secondary school (i.e., middle school). The Education Mission 

recommended that tertiary education be available to the masses, “setting a standard 

of free thought, bold inquiry, and hopeful action for the people” (Nagai 1971, p. 

48).  

Accordingly, the Occupation stressed a liberal arts education, and the present 

state of (relative) confusion in the nationwide General Education (GE) curricula at 

universities can be traced back to 1947, when the Education Mission converted the 

curricula of the state-run higher schools along with the independent, postsecondary 

prep schools (yoka) into the first- and second-year General Education curricula at 

public and private undergraduate schools throughout Japan. These higher schools 

and prep schools were literally transferred in their entirety into the universities—

materials, methods, and faculty—with little effort at integration with the more 

specialized subjects of the university faculties. In fact, the prep school curriculum 

of the 1920s is strikingly similar to the GE curricula at most universities today, 80 

years later (Terauchi, 1996, 2001). There was little attempt to incorporate a system 

of majors and minors that might have better harmonized the disparity. Instead, a 

dichotomy between General Education professors and specialist (SE) faculty 

evolved. Many in Japan could not accept the lack of differentiation and specialist 

training that was imposed by the “liberalist” Occupation. The new tertiary colleges 

were clearly inferior institutions labeled “universities” (Schoppa 1991, p. 36), a 

situation that still exists—as mentioned above, daigaku does not necessarily 

translate into “university” in either an American or British sense of the term 

(Kinmouth 2005, p. 107). Even in the ivory-white echelons of Tokyo University, 

the festering debate amongst the faculty over the lack of quality in GE compared 

with that of specialized training came to a head in the 1980s; three senior 

professors resigned in disgust (Marshall 1994, p. 247). 

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