Abstract
This paper examines a controversy in the late 1950s between Kuwabara Masao of the Council of Hometown Education (Kyodo Kyoiku Zenkoku Kyogikai) and Takahashi Shinichi of the History Educationalist Conference of Japan (Rekishi Kyoikusha Kyogikai), and reconsiders it in the context of the history of post-war education in social studies.
This paper analyzes a wide range of material, such as textbooks and sub-textbooks in social studies and papers written during the period of the controversy with a focus on descriptions of street advertisers (chindon-ya), and examines the process and causes through which the relationship of the two councils transformed into controversy in 1957 and 1958 despite the cooperation seen in the making of the 1955 elementary school social studies textbook Akarui Shakai. In addition, the paper looks at the supplementary teaching materials made by Kuwabara in an attempt to put his theory into practice after the controversy. The issues of the controversy included dimensions of the conflicts of the relationship between teachers and parents and the conflicts of social epistemology over what aspects of society should be taught in social studies. Kuwabara described competition among small and medium-sized capital in his sub-textbook, intended to give children a capitalist perspective to begin with, and then tried to make children notice how their hometown was deeply involved in the system of capital competition. This form of Hometown Education originated as a mediating item between Seikatsu-Tsuzurikata (life narratives) and history education in social studies. Due to changing movement policy on Seikatu-Tsuzurikata and history education, Kuwabara’s Hometown Education in social studies faded from view after the controversy. However, it presents us with many suggestions, given its aspect rooted in the diversity of parents’ lives in society, and its intentions to make children aware of the diversity of their parents’ lives as structural relationships based on the commonality of working capital.
