2018 Volume 85 Issue 2 Pages 150-161
In December 2016, the Japanese Diet passed the Act to Guarantee Access to Education. The supporters of “free” (alternative) schools had first begun lobbying for this legislature, followed by activists supporting night junior high schools (yakan chugakko), who threw their lot in with them. This case was very important because a very powerful argument to radically re-conceptualize public education was provided from the peripheral areas of the public school system. However, the finally endorsed law differs strikingly from the earlier drafts in many crucial points, and those concerned with this legislation have sharply criticized the modifications. This article especially focuses on the question of why the earlier title, the “Act to Guarantee Diverse Access to Education,” was altered to omit the word “diverse”. Based on the ideas of the American historian/sociologist of education David F. Labaree, this case is interpreted as a process in which the formalism of education defeated the substantialism, and as a triumph of the view that sees public education as a private good, the educational consumer view, over that which sees it as a public good.
