How One American Woman Understood Japan's Postwar Higher Education Reform

Abstract

 Postwar higher education reform in Japan was driven by complex political dynamics and personal relationships between Japan and the United States. The new Japanese university system, which emerged in 1949, imported many features of the American higher education system. While pre-war Japanese universities did not admit women, all universities became coeducational. New colleges for women were also established. In terms of curricula, the pre-war emphasis on specialized education was replaced by the introduction of general education. The new universities that emerged in postwar Japan differed in character from their pre-war counterparts. However, they caused numerous problems, including student disputes and, in many cases, superficial imitations of the U.S. higher education system. How did an American woman who was familiar with Japanese culture view these post-war Japanese higher education reforms? Dallas Finn stayed in Japan from 1947 to 1954 and published “Reform and Japanese Higher Education” in the academic journal Far Eastern Survey, on November 21, 1951. This paper translates Finn's article into Japanese to clarify how the U.S. evaluated postwar Japanese higher education reform.