The balance between individual independence and social interdependence is a perennial debate in Japan. This book discusses these debates and shows how reforms have been implemented at the school level. It explores how the balance between individuality and social interdependence is managed in practice.

Balancing the development of autonomy with that of social interdependence is a crucial aim of education in any society, but nowhere has it been more hotly debated than in Japan, where controversial education reforms over the past twenty years have attempted to reconcile the two goals. In this book, Peter Cave explores these reforms as they have played out at the junior high level, the most intense pressure point in the Japanese system, a time when students prepare for the high school entrance exams that will largely determine their educational trajectories and future livelihoods.

Cave...