{"product_id":"140116","title":"The Birth of Japanese Meritocracy ","description":"\u003ccenter\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/tmgdisk01.cafe24.com\/images\/vs\/4172\/sv\/3jYGWrp2EUvSIL8VZvxZQL9s2VgZUX.png?v=1765127188\" style=\"max-width:100%;max-height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center;font-size:30px;font-weight:bolder;line-height:1.6em\"\u003e The Birth of Japanese Meritocracy \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"border-bottom:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted;border-color:;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable align=\"center\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody style=\"border:0px\"\u003e\n\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\" style=\"line-height:1.2em;text-align:center;font-size:18px;color:black;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px;\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/image.yes24.com\/goods\/165435000\/XL\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%;{split_style6}padding-top:20px;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e Description \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;word-break:break-all;font-size:14px;line-height:1.6em;\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eBook Introduction\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e The original title of this book is 『Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age』. \u003cbr\u003eThe authors critically argue that over the past several decades, as globalization has progressed, the ideology of meritocracy has not only served to criticize educational gaps and inequalities, but also to justify these gaps and inequalities.\u003cbr\u003e Like other countries, Japan, as it went through the process of modernization, set out the goal of providing “equal education for all.”\u003cbr\u003e The ideal of “equal education for all” has now been established as “deep-rooted egalitarianism close to absolute,” but the situation of trying to implement this ideal into concrete policy has faced challenging difficulties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Japan was no exception.\u003cbr\u003e After World War II and through the 1950s, Japan faced constraints in implementing policies toward educational equality due to a lack of educational resources. \u003cbr\u003eThat is, despite the clear desire among major postwar Japanese policymakers for a model of individual equality rooted in individual differences, the financial constraints of education at that particular historical juncture made it impossible to establish the individual student as the fundamental unit of education.\u003cbr\u003e Due to the poor educational cost situation, Japan's unique educational equality was created and implemented through an educational finance approach that replaced per-student tuition with the number of teachers. The authors show that the Western view of educational equality, \"individual equality,\" was transformed into Japan's \"spatial equality,\" which has become the unquestioned formula for educational equality today.\u003cbr\u003e This book describes it as an \"unknown revolution,\" emphasizing that it was \"an ambiguous consequence of historical constraints that were not initially intended\" or \"an unintended policy outgrowth rather than a carefully planned policy intervention.\"\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cul\u003e  \u003cli\u003eYou can preview some of the book's contents.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cspan\u003ePreview\u003c\/span\u003e\n\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eindex\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e Acknowledgmentsㆍⅰ\u003cbr\u003e Translator's Prefaceㆍⅳ\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 1: Introduction: Rethinking Education and Equality in an Age of Inequalityㆍ1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Global Meritocracy? A Brief History of the Formation of the Meritocracy Ideal \/ A Meritocracy Utopia? The Importance of the Japanese Context in the Debate \/ Purpose of the Book \/ Sub-Objectives \/ Chapter Outlines\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 2: The Story Begins: Why 1958?ㆍ33\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Why the late 1950s? \/ The meaning of a “centralized curriculum” - differences of opinion \/ Ministry of Education vs. Japan Teachers' Union (JTU) \/ State control \/ Ministry of Education explained \/ From left to right \/ The Great 6-3 Experiment - Regional educational inequality \/ Inequality in educational provision: educational resources, teachers, academic achievement \/ Differences in curriculum implementation \/ Unraveling the problem: Beyond the left\/right divide - departure from new education and learning \/ How to reduce educational inequality?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter 3: Negative Prewar Legacies and the Roots of the American Modelㆍ71\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Distribution of educational resources before the war - public finance in poor areas \/ Equal educational opportunity and the education finance system \/ Unequal conditions among teachers \/ How to solve problems - teacher unit \/ The most important problem since 1872 \/ The roots of America: The scientific management revolution - the turn of the century \/ Ensuring uniformity of educational facilities \/ Resolving inequality in education finance \/ Technology of unit costs \/ Student time standard \/ Individualization of learning and the logic of education finance - shift from school-centered to child-centered \/ Learners as individuals\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 4: Draft Education Blueprint for the Postwar Periodㆍ107\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePostwar, Restarting - Institutionalization of Compulsory Education \/ Ministry of Education's Perception \/ Postwar Demands - Independence of Educational Finance \/ Ensuring Qualitative and Quantitative Equality in the Educational Environment \/ Minimum School Standards \/ The World of Standardization as an Approach to Equality - Hidden Assumptions \/ Three Key Elements of the Calculation Formula \/ World Per Student \/ Another Factor: Demographic Change \/ Second-Best Options\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 5: The Unknown Revolutionㆍ139\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Spatial equality \/ Trends in education finance and regional inequality \/ Expanding public input \/ Structural changes in the distribution of education expenditures \/ Unknown revolution - homogenization of educational conditions - student-teacher ratio \/ Improving the number of teachers \/ Unexpected results \/ Spatial equality: Towards greater equality - The reality of remote islands \/ Allocation criteria \/ Securing extensive regional human resources for teachers \/ The case of Gifu Prefecture \/ The case of Fukushima Prefecture \/ The phenomenon of hollowing out local decentralization \/ Strong will from below\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 6: The Duality of Standardizationㆍ189\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNational Survey of Educational Achievement: Reanalysis - Test Administration \/ The Significance of the Achievement Survey Debate \/ Connections to Teacher Performance Evaluation \/ How Standardization Worked \/ Common Criteria \/ Establishing Standards for Educational Materials \/ Connections to Achievement - Reversing Achievement Rankings \/ Economic Indicators and Achievements \/ Achieving Excellence and Equity \/ Spatial Equality and Ambivalence: Classes, Collective Order, and Exam Competition - Classes: Equalization Techniques \/ Collective Order \/ High School Entrance Exam Competition\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 7: The Future of Spatial Equality in Modern Japanㆍ231\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Too Easy a Criticism Target \/ Dismantling the Standardized World? Policy Reform 1995-2020 \/ Curriculum and Teaching Methods (1992-present) \/ Cultivating Global Talent (2011-present) \/ Decentralization (2004-present) \/ The Conflict between Spatial Equality and Reform for Individualized Learning \/ The Image of One-Way Knowledge-Instilling Education \/ Stereotypes of Centralized Education: Uniformity in Educational Administration \/ A Distorted Perspective: The Illusion of Individualization and Individualism\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 8 Conclusionㆍ261\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eImplications for the Global Era \/ Neither Dystopia nor Utopia: Revisiting Michael Young's Vision \/ The Paradox of Standardization \/ Meritocracy and Achievement in Reducing Inequality \/ Japan in the Global Dialogue: Is Japan Still on the Brink of Meritocracy? \/ Changing Inequality \/ The State of the Individual \/ Japan in the Global Discourse \/ 30 Years of Neoliberalism: Education and Equality\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Searchㆍ291\u003cbr\u003e Referencesㆍ298\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003ePublisher's Review\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e Everyone should have access to an inclusive and equitable quality education.\u003cbr\u003e These words are not someone's angry claim, but a joint promise made by the UN member countries in 2015 to work together until 2030.\u003cbr\u003e These are not words or promises that are that difficult to understand.\u003cbr\u003e Let's look a little deeper into the meaning of this sentence. \u003cbr\u003e'All', 'inclusive', 'equitable', 'quality', 'education' must be 'provided'.\u003cbr\u003e Inclusive education means that everyone should have access to educational opportunities, regardless of their individual characteristics (disability, gender, class, race, ethnicity, language, etc.).\u003cbr\u003e To say that education should be equal means that the basic good of education should be distributed fairly and equitably.\u003cbr\u003e Although the meanings of the two words seem slightly different, if we define them in the most comprehensive sense, I think there is little difference between these two concepts in education.\u003cbr\u003e In other words, individuals should be able to receive as much education as they want, and society should provide quality education according to individual needs. \u003cbr\u003eThat is, no one should be restricted from educational opportunities or discriminated against in terms of educational attainment for any reason.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The former case is often discussed as equality of opportunity, and the latter case is often discussed as equality of outcome (in an ideal, though not perfect, sense).\u003cbr\u003e In this way, the discussion surrounding educational equality (or 'equal education') has always been a difficult educational issue to resolve, both theoretically and practically.\u003cbr\u003e Although it is expressed differently with terms such as ‘inclusion’, ‘equality’ or ‘fairness’, education must be ‘equal’ for all.\u003cbr\u003e It is difficult to disagree with this statement, and no one dares to suggest a way of speaking that contradicts it.\u003cbr\u003e It seems as if 'equal education for all' has taken a firm position as an unbreakable proposition. \u003cbr\u003ePerhaps this is because the expression that conveys the comprehensive meaning of these two concepts is expressed as ‘quality’ education.\u003cbr\u003e For education to be of high quality, it must be inclusive and equal in terms of educational opportunities, processes, and outcomes, beyond the physical educational environment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But what exactly does \"equal education for all\" look like? I can't help but feel embarrassed by this question.\u003cbr\u003e Even though we cannot deny the proposition of 'equal education for all,' the realistic form of that proposition and the way it has been realized are not very clear.\u003cbr\u003e Secondly, it is unclear, and it is so vague that you wonder if such a thing really exists.\u003cbr\u003e Each society has developed different sociocultural systems regarding what is valuable and effective to teach and how to teach it. \u003cbr\u003eInterestingly, in these societies, 'equal education for all' has been accepted as a kind of global ideology.\u003cbr\u003e However, this ideology is only recited as rhetorical expression in each society, and equal education for all remains a distant goal in different educational systems.\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps the opposite is true: the unequal nature of education continues to be produced, reproduced, reinforced, or even spread.\u003cbr\u003e In short, it cannot be anything other than the globalization of educational inequality.\u003cbr\u003e Even though voices advocating for equal education are growing louder.\u003cbr\u003e It's a great paradox.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In his book, The Illusion of Fairness, Michael Sandel captures the dark side of a society that, contrary to the discourse on educational fairness in American society, seeks to use education as a pipeline to achieve class reproduction. \u003cbr\u003eIn his book, \"You've Got a Good Job: Luck and the Myth of Meritocracy,\" Robert Frank argues that inequality in American society is solidified through education that exaggerates and justifies individual abilities.\u003cbr\u003e In his book, Oxford's Super-Elite, Simon Cooper uses the educational backgrounds of elected high-ranking officials to illustrate how Britain's long tradition of elite education fails to reach the common people and instead expands and reproduces social inequality and instability.\u003cbr\u003e In 『Engines of Privilege: Britain's Private School Problem』, Green and Kynerstone explore the social function of private schools as a mechanism for reproducing social privilege that violates equality.\u003cbr\u003e This type of criticism is not limited to the United States and the United Kingdom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eClive Hamilton, in his book The Privileged Class, cites the case of Australia and argues that an extremely small privileged class dominates the world, and that this privilege is maintained and strengthened through prestigious private schools that exercise their privileges regardless of social order.\u003cbr\u003e Korea seems to be no exception.\u003cbr\u003e Kim Dong-chun's \"Testing Abilityism\" and Park Kwon-il's \"Korean Abilityism\" show that Korean school education functions as a mechanism to reinforce social inequality by cultivating, measuring, and evaluating certain abilities, while they serve as key criteria for distributing social status.\u003cbr\u003e Cases such as China (Liu, 2023) and Taiwan (Chen et al., 2021) also highlight educational inequality based on meritocracy in East Asia, pointing out that unequal educational outcomes in this region are negatively impacting people's quality of life (Kim, 2024).\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEach society's specific practices toward educational equality actually reveal the unequal state of education more clearly.\u003cbr\u003e It seems as if the engine of education in each society is burning brighter with the fuel of 'meritocracy', rushing towards an unequal and unfair society, the opposite of equality.\u003cbr\u003e The current global debate surrounding educational equality continues to debate what hinders educational equality, why this is so, and what social policy measures can be taken to rectify this.\u003cbr\u003e For example, Sandel's proposal for 'college entrance through lottery', Kim Jong-young's proposal for 'creating 10 Seoul Universities', and Kim Dong-chun's proposal for 'improving the social structure through education-labor linkage' are examples of such proposals.\u003cbr\u003e In extreme cases, the 'abolition of Seoul National University' in Korea and the 'abolition of private schools' in the UK are also mentioned as possible options. \u003cbr\u003eThat is, these arguments emphasize that specific sociopolitical policies and interventions can address structural problems in education that undermine social equality.\u003cbr\u003e Does education, as a process of nurturing talents who are considered the elite of a society, truly have the fundamental capabilities to overcome criticism that it is a channel for the reproduction of the privileged class?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But here's an interesting study that uses the Japanese case to uniquely illustrate the interrelationship between educational equality and meritocracy.\u003cbr\u003e The authors, Takehiko Kariya and Jeremy Lafley, criticize the existing interpretation that Japan is a utopia that has achieved both quantitative and qualitative “equal education for all” based on meritocracy, and argue that educational equality in Japan has become an ideological realm that is not even properly discussed. \u003cbr\u003eIn particular, neoliberalism, which emerged in the 1980s, took the position that educational achievement based on individual ability should be a specific mechanism for acquiring social status, and portrayed Japan as a utopia based on meritocracy.\u003cbr\u003e In that sense, rather than showing how the already established meritocracy has deviated into a social problem, this book focuses on a historical-sociological explanation of why meritocracy came to be established in such a unique way in Japan.\u003cbr\u003e The two authors properly criticize the point at which Japan's current meritocracy is intertwined with criticisms of other countries' meritocracy, not through the function of the ideology of meritocracy, but through the formation of the ideology of meritocracy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The original title of this book is 『Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age』. \u003cbr\u003eThe authors critically argue that over the past several decades, as globalization has progressed, the ideology of meritocracy has not only served to criticize educational gaps and inequalities, but also to justify these gaps and inequalities.\u003cbr\u003e Like other countries, Japan, as it went through the process of modernization, set out the goal of providing “equal education for all.”\u003cbr\u003e The ideal of “equal education for all” has now been established as “deep-rooted egalitarianism close to absolute,” but the situation of trying to implement this ideal into concrete policy has faced challenging difficulties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Japan was no exception.\u003cbr\u003e After World War II and through the 1950s, Japan faced constraints in implementing policies toward educational equality due to a lack of educational resources. \u003cbr\u003eThat is, despite the clear desire among major postwar Japanese policymakers for a model of individual equality rooted in individual differences, the financial constraints of education at that particular historical juncture made it impossible to establish the individual student as the fundamental unit of education.\u003cbr\u003e Due to the poor educational cost situation, Japan's unique educational equality was created and implemented through an educational finance approach that replaced per-student tuition with the number of teachers. The authors show that the Western view of educational equality, \"individual equality,\" was transformed into Japan's \"spatial equality,\" which has become the unquestioned formula for educational equality today.\u003cbr\u003e This book describes it as an \"unknown revolution,\" emphasizing that it was \"an ambiguous consequence of historical constraints that were not initially intended\" or \"an unintended policy outgrowth rather than a carefully planned policy intervention.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThese authors' interest in educational equality does not lie in the interpretation, critique, or explanation of education as an instrumental phenomenon that should promote equality in society.\u003cbr\u003e As mentioned earlier, the methods of implementing ‘equal education for all’ have been formed in various ways in each society.\u003cbr\u003e While the Japanese case presents itself as the meritocratic utopia that neoliberals long to see in the international community, the authors' analysis suggests that Japan's meritocracy has a distinctly different historical lineage and formative process from those of other societies, and should not be judged through Western eyes. \u003cbr\u003eThe authors narrow the selection process to the implementation of 'equal education for all' as an inherent logic within the education system, and interestingly describe the competition between intention ('effective means considered to achieve the goal') and unintentionality ('alternative means that must inevitably be chosen') in this process.\u003cbr\u003e In the West (especially the United States), the policy for providing equitable educational opportunities was the question of how to distribute public education funds per student, but in Japan, a different method was chosen under the policy goal of realizing the same discourse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In other words, public education expenses are not allocated based on the number of students, but rather on the number of classrooms (or the number of teachers teaching each classroom). \u003cbr\u003eAlthough the direct cause was a lack of budget, it was also due to the socio-cultural context in which it was acceptable for the basic unit of teaching and learning that constitutes education to be understood and accepted from the individual to the group, that is, the group of people who teach and learn.\u003cbr\u003e So, although the rhetoric of “equal education for all” is the same, the policy planning and implementation in the West and Japan (I’m not sure if the two can be compared in this way) have taken different paths.\u003cbr\u003e The authors argue that Japan's historical and sociological conditions have led to a series of unintended choices, as different paths have been taken under the same policy goals, ultimately resulting in Japan's own ideology of educational equality becoming deeply entrenched in society. \u003cbr\u003eThis can be seen as an example of a decolonial approach to educational research, demonstrating through historical evidence that Westernized explanations of the operation and evolution of the education system do not apply to East Asia, or more specifically, Japan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Therefore, the academic significance of this book is not small.\u003cbr\u003e The academic significance and strengths of this book, as well as the authors' outstanding insights, can be considered as follows.\u003cbr\u003e First of all, the ideology of 'meritocracy' is not an ideology that one must dichotomously decide whether to accept or not.\u003cbr\u003e In this book, the authors urge us not to dichotomize the global rise of meritocracy, accepting it optimistically or avoiding it pessimistically. \u003cbr\u003eThe debates that have swept the world over the past decade or so—global inequality, a society of disparity, the privileged class, elite dominance, birth, connections, and success—have forced us to reflect on the tyrannical atrocities of meritocracy.\u003cbr\u003e Meritocracy, cynically described by sociologist Michael Young, enjoyed a golden age as an ideological orientation to be implemented by Daniel Bell, who sharply reshaped it as a measure of competence in management.\u003cbr\u003e That is, a noisy battlefield debate ensued over whether meritocracy should be pursued or eliminated.\u003cbr\u003e In particular, the debate surrounding the framework and content of the education system that internalizes meritocracy is still in a state of intense tension.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe ongoing criticisms of Japan's intellectuals about the gap in society and the role of education, as well as the Moon Jae-in administration's critique of the fairness debate in Korean society, which states that \"opportunities will be equal, processes will be fair, and results will be just,\" are also understood as part of this tension.\u003cbr\u003e However, this book argues that it is inappropriate to evaluate social phenomena embodying meritocracy and to pursue or not pursue them by calling them “good” or “bad.”\u003cbr\u003e Rather, I believe that explaining how and why 'meritocracy' is implemented in a society is better for understanding the relationship between that society's educational ideology and practice.\u003cbr\u003e To some, Japanese society might seem like a utopia where meritocracy has borne fruit, where one's circumstances at birth have the least influence on social success. \u003cbr\u003eHowever, rather than understanding meritocracy as a flat technology, the authors seek to explain the characteristics of Japanese society that go beyond \"good\" or \"bad\" by examining the process of forming a system that has established itself as an educational ideology over the past several decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Second, the rhetoric used to achieve policy goals is not always implemented as intended, depending on the social, cultural, political, and economic context in which the policy is implemented.\u003cbr\u003e Ideas planned according to policy goals undergo a process of being refracted or adjusted according to various unintended factors.\u003cbr\u003e This process is well depicted in this book, which deals with the case of Japan.\u003cbr\u003e The authors emphasize, in the introduction and elsewhere throughout the text, that the process by which Japan's meritocracy was realized as an equal education system was shaped by tensions and adjustments between the intended and the unintended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn particular, 'spatial equality', which appears as a key keyword in this book, is a surprising discovery that leads to a new perspective on educational equality while responding to the existing 'individual equality'.\u003cbr\u003e Why does Japan maintain a different logic for allocating educational funding than other Western countries (especially the UK and the US)? How did this system come to be established in Japan, and what does it mean for educational equality? The authors' questions clearly demonstrate how different institutional approaches within education systems pursuing the same goals lead to context-dependent implementation of the underlying ideology.\u003cbr\u003e In other words, Japan's unique attempt to achieve educational equality shows that it was neither unilaterally decided under the influence of the social, political, and economic factors surrounding education, nor was it solely based on educational logic. \u003cbr\u003ePerhaps this is a result that clearly demonstrates the characteristics of educational historical sociology as a methodology and the methodological uses of historical sociology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Third, this book contains a non-Western perspective on educational ideology.\u003cbr\u003e The methods and policy concepts presented as educational ideals in each society have been accepted as advanced achievements within the framework of modernity in Western society.\u003cbr\u003e There may be many reasons, but it is probably because we have never had a proper framework to view and explain the social phenomena around us from our own perspective, nor have we received proper training to do so.\u003cbr\u003e To put it more bluntly, it is because we lack the insight to see whether the education we have, the framework for analyzing the larger society, is ‘ours’ or not. \u003cbr\u003eIn that respect, Kwan-Sheng Chen's \"Asia as Method,\" which argues that Asian social practices must be viewed and understood through Asian eyes, is a masterpiece that will undoubtedly refresh the eyes of Asian social scientists.\u003cbr\u003e In light of this, educational practices in East Asia must be understood and explained differently from those in Western societies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The book explicitly states that its ultimate goal is to \"show what Japan's experience can teach us about global issues and, as mentioned earlier, to restart a more rigorous discussion about meritocracy, equality, and education at this point, which is already long overdue.\"\u003cbr\u003e The educational vision presented in the first part of the introduction, ‘inclusive and equal quality education for all,’ comes across as an objective, natural concept that everyone should pursue. \u003cbr\u003eHowever, the concept in society that must understand and implement this is not the same, and the social, political, cultural, and economic systems that implement this are not the same in shape, level, or even direction.\u003cbr\u003e The justification for which one should take priority and why is also not the same.\u003cbr\u003e In that respect, the two authors' presentation of the uniquely Japanese situation in which Japan's meritocracy emerged and the foundation of educational equality, which has become a kind of powerful educational ideology, operates can serve as a useful guide for understanding educational characteristics beyond a Western-centric perspective.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Fourth, this book reveals through historical-sociological analysis that educational equality without a material foundation is nothing more than a fiction.\u003cbr\u003e The Japanese case shows that the ideology that education should be equal and provided fairly, almost a religious belief, is the product of successive policy decisions. \u003cbr\u003eIn other words, educational equality as a strong belief is the result of a policy based on material conditions being realized in society.\u003cbr\u003e In other words, an educational ideology that advocates equality (whether equality of opportunity or equality of outcome) cannot emerge without a material foundation, and educational equality will always remain an incomplete policy goal without resources as a concrete means of implementation.\u003cbr\u003e The authors call this process an \"unknown revolution,\" and trace how Japan's educational equality emerged in the form of \"spatial equality as a result of the logic of resource distribution.\" \u003cbr\u003eInterestingly, the educational ideology that once established itself as a ‘deep-rooted, almost absolute egalitarianism’, despite the clear intentions of postwar policymakers to favor a model of ‘individual equality rooted in individual differences’, ‘due to financial constraints at a particular historical point in time, it was not possible to establish the individual student as the basic unit of education.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In this book, it is not particularly new to understand the implementation of educational equality as a logic of resource allocation according to the educational budget situation.\u003cbr\u003e However, discussions on implementing educational ideals, including educational equality, often focus excessively on sociocultural explanations, or on raising public awareness and promoting participation, excluding resource mobilization.\u003cbr\u003e Interestingly, this story soon raises the question of whether it is really necessary to spend 'a lot of money' to supplement, innovate, and reform the education system. \u003cbr\u003eTo put it simply, the state is reluctant to spend a lot of money on social policies.\u003cbr\u003e Needless to say, the state is passive in forming and promoting the education system as a social policy.\u003cbr\u003e In a society where education is an individual matter and educational outcomes are treated as a matter of personal interest, why would the government find any reason to invest in a system that serves individual interests? Unfortunately, education is not an independent activity, requiring individuals to individually acquire and utilize their socioeconomic and cultural capital.\u003cbr\u003e In that respect, a society centered on the state must invest in education and, through education, enhance the material foundation for social cohesion and a humane life for its members.\u003cbr\u003e In other words, resource mobilization is essential to education, and the degree to which a society's education can reflect social interests varies depending on the degree to which it is mobilized. \u003cbr\u003eIn this respect, this book once again emphasizes, through historical and sociological sources, that it is impossible to realize educational values ​​without mobilizing resources.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Fifth, the ideology of education has a deep correlation with more macro-level socio-political and economic ideologies.\u003cbr\u003e Since the 1980s, we have been living in an era of educational reform that prioritizes global competition and excellence.\u003cbr\u003e In short, neoliberal ideology is firmly established as the foundation for reforms in useful education.\u003cbr\u003e Interestingly, the ideology of educational equality, which advocates fairness, is a constant theme in a series of educational reform agendas.\u003cbr\u003e However, the current rhetoric that education must be equal does not go beyond the level of understanding that it is about strengthening educational accessibility, that is, equal educational opportunity. \u003cbr\u003eWe are unable to move beyond the idea that 'education is equal if everyone has equal access to education provided as a system.'\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps for this reason, educational reforms in modern countries are rapidly moving toward ‘standardization,’ ‘decentralization,’ and ‘privatization’ of the system under the banners of ‘individualization,’ ‘internationalization,’ and ‘ease.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The authors argue that ‘the obsession with the utopian hope that education can resolve the tensions inherent in modernity fails to acknowledge its fundamental ambivalence and leads to a situation in which neoliberalism is “invited” in the form of a global meritocracy’, and they critically explore how ‘curriculum and educational reforms aimed at individualized learning, internationalization, and financial and administrative decentralization have been sustained’. \u003cbr\u003eIn other words, the three policy reforms are based on the belief that the postwar system produced the pathological phenomena of uniformity and standardization that stagnated Japan in the new global world. The authors criticize this policy interpretation as a problem because subsequent reforms only addressed the superficial phenomena of a “standardized world” and failed to recognize the deeper mechanisms.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ultimately, in the authors' eyes, these neoliberal educational reforms have led to the failure of reform-driven educational policies and unintended consequences.\u003cbr\u003e This book once again confirms that the foundation of the existing neoliberal orientation that operates as the ideology of educational reform is considerably weak, and that education is ultimately swayed by a larger discourse system that reflects political and economic interests. \u003cbr\u003eIn conclusion, this book demonstrates that the idea of ​​\"educational equality\" should not be explained solely through the input-output gap within the logic of the education system, but rather should be critiqued, evaluated, and reinterpreted through its relationship to the macro-social system directly and indirectly linked to education.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The arguments of these authors provide insights that allow us to think more deeply and approach education as a social phenomenon more critically.\u003cbr\u003e However, looking at their critical arguments, I cannot help but ask the following question. \u003cbr\u003eIf the Japanese meritocracy that created the ideology of educational equality shaped Japanese society as neither utopia nor dystopia, then does that mean the current problems in Japanese education have little to do with meritocracy? What are the next steps for Japanese education to achieve the equal education it has long strived for? This question is essentially the same as asking how we should understand the meritocracy internalized in the education system around us.\u003cbr\u003e The authors describe the situation in which the ideology of educational equality as a means of social success based on meritocracy has taken root, using the example of Japan, and conclude that meritocracy takes an intermediate form that cannot be viewed as positive or negative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTheir position is explained as pointing out 'the inherent danger in the belief that individual freedom and equality can be achieved simultaneously, rather than accepting or rejecting meritocracy.'\u003cbr\u003e That is, the authors are criticizing the public's assessment that Japan is a meritocratic society that has achieved a certain harmony between individual freedom and equality. \u003cbr\u003eSo what function does meritocracy play in Japanese education? While Japan has built its education system on meritocracy, isn't it reinforcing, expanding, and reproducing the class inequality fostered by Western meritocracy? Persistent political conservatism since the war, an economic system dependent on large corporations, growing inequality across various social sectors criticized as a \"gap society,\" growing collectivism fueled by hatred and discrimination against vulnerable individuals, the entrenched privilege of academics and the educational elite, the reproduction of privileged classes, and the function of education that reflects this. \u003cbr\u003eCan we deny that \"meritocracy,\" a concept cynically promoted by Michael Young, not only hinders the diversity of abilities in Japan today, but also perpetuates the reproduction of existing privileged classes and widens the gap between members of society? Unfortunately, the authors' approach to meritocracy in this book offers little insight into how to understand, or even necessitate, the implementation of education based on specific abilities and the institutional changes that reflect this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Moreover, the authors express concern that critical discussions of \"educational inequality\" within Japan are scarce in this book, and they anticipate that historical-sociological discussions of Japanese meritocracy will be meaningful in reviving these discussions.\u003cbr\u003e With these authors' expectations, this book can also be read as an attempt to explore the possibility that Japanese educational research may not be situated within the Western educational research tradition. \u003cbr\u003eThat is, it seems that it is expected to be seen as an example of what content and how decolonial educational research in East Asia can be carried out.\u003cbr\u003e This emphasizes that education is a special characteristic that must be explained historically and sociologically within the long-term systemic changes of a society, and therefore must be understood and explained on a different axis from the application of universal theories or the exploration of universal theories.\u003cbr\u003e While the translators applaud the authors' critical awareness and the academic contribution of this book to the Western-centric decoloniality, they question how these specific Japanese cases and analyses differ from the pursuit of universal theorization in another sense—in other words, from theorization in another sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eUnlike Western approaches to educational equality, which focus on individual educational opportunities, the translators believe it is difficult to overstate the significance of Japan's shift toward collective educational opportunities, encompassing a structure within a single space, across regional and temporal contexts.\u003cbr\u003e Still, there is a need for deep thought on how to appropriately understand education in Asia, East Asia, or specific countries (such as Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Singapore) based on mainstream Western theories, and what the methodology for doing so might look like.\u003cbr\u003e While this book is an important study in this regard, it should be read with caution and caution against being read as representing or even replacing a decolonial discourse that seeks to escape Western predatory colonialism, beyond simply emphasizing the uniqueness of Japanese education. \u003cbr\u003eThis is why we need ongoing discussions on how to think about and study similar social and educational issues (such as population decline, social disparity, and low inclusiveness) in communities within East Asia, particularly Northeast Asia, which share significant cultural similarities with other regions of the world, and how to bring about educational changes that can foster an advanced democratic society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There are many people to thank as the translation of this book is being completed.\u003cbr\u003e I would like to express my special gratitude to those who provided meticulous advice and assistance during the process of refining the translated manuscript.\u003cbr\u003e The comments and suggestions you each gave me were the spur I needed to make this book more readable.\u003cbr\u003e First of all, I would like to thank the editorial staff of Park Young Story, which published this book. \u003cbr\u003eEven in these challenging publishing market conditions, publishing an academic book must be a significant burden. I am grateful that they readily agreed with the academic significance and approved the publication.\u003cbr\u003e Although this article has been proofread, reviewed, and revised quite a few times over a considerable period of time, its sentences are still lacking and its dry writing style is noticeable.\u003cbr\u003e Any possible mistranslations, errors, or typos are solely the responsibility of our translators, and cannot be anything other than the result of our arrogance in rushing to translate an academic book.\u003cbr\u003e I would appreciate your generous understanding and reading.\u003cbr\u003e Through this book, which covers the modern and contemporary history of meritocracy and educational equality through the lens of Japan, we hope to understand the formation and transformation of education in Korea over the past 100 years, and to create a forum for public discussion on how to create a more democratic and transformative education in the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e - November 2025\u003cbr\u003e Yoo Seong-sang, Ha Seung-cheon \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%;padding-top:20px;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e GOODS SPECIFICS\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:14px;line-height:1.6em;\"\u003e\n\n \u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e- \u003cstrong\u003eDate of issue:\u003c\/strong\u003e November 10, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003ePage count, weight, size:\u003c\/strong\u003e 324 pages | 153*224*30mm\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9791172790165\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eISBN10:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1172790167 \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\n\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/center\u003e","brand":"LIBRAIRIE COREENNE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43894272294954,"sku":"140116","price":32.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0683\/2750\/5962\/files\/3eb28317229d8e7e1bb08ec21292ec7e.jpg?v=1765430184","url":"https:\/\/librairie.coreenne.fr\/en\/products\/140116","provider":"LIBRAIRIE COREENNE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}