Fundamental Issues Regarding the Establishment of the Kominkan System: Toward the Revitalization of a New Institutional Design

Abstract

On the one hand, it has been pointed out that the concept that underlyies the Kominkan system was an expression of the nationalism that persisted in Japan after the Second World War, while on the other hand, Sakuo Teranaka, who originally conceived the Kominkan system, clearly stated that social education is “the self- and mutual education of the people.”

Teranaka has been viewed from these two contrasting perspectives. This paper will examine Teranakas ideas, including the fundamental theme that the process of adopting the Kominkan system into the postwar Japanese social education framework was linked to the original concept. It will then reexamine the continuity and discontinuity between prewar social education reform and the Kominkan concept. Furthermore, this re-examination of the historical issues of postwar social education reform and the institutional design of the Kominkan system, has clarified the various issues related to the establishment and development of the Kominkan system.