The purpose of this study is to examine the politics of postwar educational
reform in Japan, known as the central case in the East Asian model of
education. The so-called "East Asian model" has emerged since the 1980s in
social science literature which focused mainly on the extraordinary economic
success of Japan and the subsequent development in societies such as
Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, or the Four Asian Tigers.
Among these societies some crucial differences appear especially with regard
to the relation between the state and civil society. This study examines the
politics of Japanese postwar education, focusing on the major changes in the
state and civil society around the 1990s, after the implementation of the
so-called "Third (Great) Educational Reform" under the Nakasone Cabinet. It
discusses whether some of the fundamental aspects of the East Asian model
have been changed with regard to the neo-liberal reform measures that
were targeted at challenging the strategies of the developmental state, and
concludes that a considerable discontinuity as well as continuity can be
found in relation to the shifting conjunction of politics over the state.