Re-Contextualizing Foreign Influence in Japan’s Educational History: the (re)reception of John Dewey

Abstract

This work explores John Dewey's reception and re-reception in the Japanese context. Although Dewey's two month visit to Japan in the spring of 1919 coincided with the hopeful Taishō democracy movement, his ideas appear to have made little impact in a political, intellectual, and educational landscape dominated a complex interplay of traditional neo-Confucian, nativist, and German ideas. Yet the story does not end there: following World War II, there was a remarkable Dewey 'boom' across Japan lasting more than a decade that far surpassed Dewey's original reception in 1919. Here we find Dewey central to revamped reform debates and a focal point for the reinterpretation of Japan's prewar educational history. Given this curious resurgence-cum-paradox of increasing interest in Dewey, few national contexts would seem to hold more evidence than Japan in support of the idea that political and ideological shifts qualify definitions of what counts as educational 'knowledge'.