Abstract
This paper clarifies why and how the central government promoted the school consolidation policy (SCP) in the 1950s (a period of municipal mergers in the Showa era). Some previous studies have suggested that there were three purposes of the policy. The first is rationalization of local governments, the second is enhancing new municipality cohesion, and the third is improvement of educational achievement. In this article, I focused on process tracing and inter-ministerial relationship. From the result of the analysis, the following facts became clear: the early SCP was promoted by the Agency of Home Affairs (AHA) to achieve financial retrenchment. With the advancement of municipal mergers, the AHA implemented school consolidation to enhance new municipality cohesion. Before 1956, the SCP was one of the regional system reforms. With these situations in mind, the Ministry of Education (ME) had recognized the SCP as a non-educational policy, and felt the necessity to regain initiative. After that, the Central Education Council had recommended guidelines, produced scientific evidence of appropriate and coordinated the SCP standard. And ME published the guidebook ("TEBIKI") and coordinated the SCP through bilateral policy dialogues with AHA. Finally, ME reconstructed the SCP as an educational policy.
