Abstract
This paper takes up the report issued by the Central Council for Education in 2003, suggesting revisions to the Fundamental Law of Education. Since this law had been left untouched for decades since its original postwar enactment, the debate over revisions to it developed within the framework of the conventional progressive-conservative political debate. The report suggested that the law should be reformed to take account of 60 years of social change, thereby gaining the support of the conservatives, who emphasized that the original imposition of the law did not take sufficient account of Japanese traditions. Only on the point where the report suggested that the original policy of co-education should be replaced by the concept of gender equality, which is now considered to be a more advanced way of tackling sexism, did they disagree. This point of disagreement on the part of the conservatives was entirely to be expected. Strangely enough, this section of the report is also criticized by the conservatives, who over-value the postwar concept of co-education, inaccurately interpreting it as an ageless idea that should be adopted today, and who are opposed to reform of the law on the grounds that it belittles postwar democracy and marks an initial step toward revising the Constitution in the direction of militarism. Regrettably, because the media organs have jumped on the issue within the rigid framework of political ideology, failing to analyze and deal with sequential education reform today, the level of public attention to the issue has been low.
