Abstract
This report aims to present the recent development of Japan’s geography education. It focuses
primarily on development from the 1980s to the present, but also covers earlier periods depending on
the topic.
This report is structured as follows. Chapter I describes the objective and background of this report.
Chapter II provides an overview of the general geography curriculum in Japan. In postwar Japan, the
educational curriculum has been announced approximately every 10 years by the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Science, Sports and Technology (MEXT) using the Course of Study as a standard. We
summarized the system of the Course of Study and its historic development. Chapter III presents a
discussion of research results in articles and books on geography education published between the
1980s and 2013. The subsections are overall review, geography education research, overseas research
on geography education, geography curriculum/coursework composition theory research, cognitive
research, and geography education content theory/methodology theory research. We also touched on
the changes in the research environment concerning geography education during this period. Chapter
IV describes the promotional and training activities promoted by academic groups. Activity contents
were classified into activities that are targeted for children/students (e.g. promotion of the Science and
Geography Olympiad Japan Championship) and those targeted for school teachers (e.g. implementation
of training activities). Chapter Ⅴ presents conclusion and problems of this report.
