Preface
This thesis has
roots in the summer of 1989, when, as an undergraduate student at North Georgia College, I
embarked on a six-month language and independent study program in Japan directed by the
Hokkaido International Foundation to find out--"how the Japanese maintained a
traditional cooperative spirit despite the competitive, individualistic nature of modern
economics." This ambitious, perhaps naive, goal did not stem from my background in
Japanese history and language, which was almost none. I had constructed the proposal
largely from the impressions I had gained from the media during the 1980s, when Japanese
industry was portrayed as offering a 'new model' in which management and labor worked in
cooperation. The image of cooperation for mutual benefit, and of executives taking
pay-cuts before pay-cuts or lay-offs were made on the factory floor, contradicted my sense
of reality. I had studied (and been affected by) enough history to know that from the
workers' perspective, management could not to be trusted; and from management's
perspective, workers could not be trusted. The apparent contradiction of this volatile
relationship was, after all, behind (directly or indirectly) most of the wars and related
propaganda of the twentieth century.
My initial study in Japan led to two years of observations
and teaching (1990-1992) at levels ranging from nursery school through high school in
Kembuchi-cho, Hokkaido, and in Kimitsu-shi, Chiba-ken. Of course I found that innumerable
factors influenced the development of the 'cooperative spirit' of Japanese-style
capitalism, but I did find that the school system played a substantial and quantifiable
role as well. In part, I attempt here to reconcile the preconceptions
of economics and modernity I took to Japan as an undergraduate student, with my subsequent
studies in Japanese. British, and world history. and with my recent field study in
England. Britain's decline during the last century, explanations of it in pathological
terms as a
'disease.' and attempts to find a 'cure' for it by importing 'models' during the last two
decades, provides a useful framework from which to consider two different industrial
histories which some say have increasingly moved toward a Japanese 'model. ' Fieldwork in
the schools of Japan (1990-1992) and England (January 15 - February 13, 1995) supplements
my largely secondary source-based analysis with a relevant core of primary source-based
social history from which to evaluate more clearly the phenomena of 'Japanization' in
Britain and its significance in world history.[1]
I approach this subject as a prospective teacher of world history and seek to establish a narrative framework from
which to analyze cross-cultural change as societies have responded the predicaments of the
age. Among the predicaments of the modern age has been how
to reconcile the workings of industrialization with traditional ideals of community and
social cohesion. The institution of public education, especially for the masses, was
conceived of partly in response to the demands for a way to manage the social-divisiveness
of industrial production.
The demands for a manageable work force, however, varied with the changing conditions of
technology and its application in a variety of cultures around the world.
ENDNOTES
[1] The names and locations of these schools are listed on the Acknowledgements page. Personal observations, interviews with faculty and students, and source materials from the schools (i.e., published plans, government documents on the most recent reform in England, and school textbooks) constitute my 'primary source-based social history.' Interviewees and sources are referenced directly in the text and in the Sources section at the end of the thesis. [back to text]