This paper discusses possibilities and issues for promoting education for sustainable development (ESD) in universities, based on a study of the “International Environment Leaders Training Program” in Japan. The program, implemented by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, has financed seventeen universities throughout the country to establish an environmental leadership education system and curriculum for post-graduate ESD since 2008. The paper analyzes the reports of these universities to identify problems and achievements for their organization structures to promote the all-campus and continued efforts, and for their educational practices to satisfy the major characteristics required for ESD. As a result, four key points for promoting ESD in universities emerge. First, it is important to facilitate the collective understanding and vision-building for ESD among stakeholders such as faculty members through promoting their collaboration in actual practices. Second, the transformation of existing degree course curricula toward ESD is indispensable while the mere introduction of an add-on ESD program often leads to conflicts between the existing course and the new program. Third, it is important to highlight diversities and connections among different local realities to relate learning to each student’s reality. Finally, ESD in universities should promote mutual learning among people with diverse backgrounds such as disciplines, countries, and generations, which facilitate the development of values for sustainability in each learner.

  The purpose of this study is to logically clarify radical elements in Nature Schools to further clarify the significance of Nature Schools in building a sustainable society. Nature Schools solve regional social problems using experiencing nature as a tool. However, so far experiencing nature has been thought of as difficult to change social structure.
  This paper investigates the relationship between people and nature in Nature Schools, taking a cue from Vandana Shiva's criticism of modern science. As a result, this study showed that the relationship between people and nature constructed by Nature Schools is fundamentally different from the relationship between people and nature in modern times.
  That is to say, by experiencing nature, people can build a friendly relationship with nature and experience nature comprehensively. Nature is never decisively destroyed through nature experiencing activities. This kind of alternative relationship between people and nature that is created through experiencing nature is a radical element of Nature Schools. Moreover, the Nature School movement contains the element "sharing and diversity," and this can be valued as a radical element as well.

  After the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima nuclear power station accident on March 11th, 2011, Nature School played an important role in the after disaster assistance activities. This article mainly shows the significance of nature school, a new study stronghold of rural-urban interaction, in the process of long-term reconstruction and the sustainable development of community in the future. According to statistics of questionnaire survey and the analysis of free answers, most volunteers who join in disaster relief activities organized by Nature school prefer to long-term and continued participation. Besides, most of them realize their own changes after these activities. More than 50% of them continue to keep in touch with the disaster area by all means. Community and support centers with different themes of activities nearby are the key points in supporting these volunteers in continuing these activities. Meanwhile, nature school is also considered to be an important organization in supporting the long-term activities and reconstruction of the devastated areas. How to promote the learning of community development through urban rural communication, develop education project as well as cultivate professional talents will become a new topic. In short, this essay demonstrates the effect of nature school in the long-term reconstruction of the devastated areas as well as the sustainable society construction.

  The rapid modernization and westernization has led to more and more Japanese forget the relations between environment and the agriculture production and a Japanese original gastronomic culture .Therefore, how to improve people’s,　especially the young generation ,awareness of the values of the environment, agriculture production and keep their Japanese traditional eating habit has become an important problem. So far many relevant researches have been conducted in Japan, however, the majority of which focus on the city area. This research analyzed the effects of farming experience on the environmental awareness, agriculture production and eating habits among rural children in Japan. The results indicated that farming experiment could significantly improve rural children’s awareness of environment and agriculture production, except for their daily eating habit. Therefore further researches should be done to detect the factors which could positively change their behavior of eating habit.

  The main purpose of environmental education in Japan is to deliver the information on global issues. Most specialists do not yet reach basic agreement on the systematic methodology of environmental education study. It is the fundamental theory of environment learning that everyone need to learn the environment around them, to develop their aptitude and individual nature, and to live in comfort. The methodology of environmental education study has stayed mostly on the practical stage but does not advanced highly to the theoretical stage.
  Today, the modernized human being got away from the natural environment, promoted remarkably the cultural evolution, and then greatly developed the complex civilization by science and technology beyond their abilities. The capacities, which made up the “mind structure” of human being, rather lost the integrating function in accordance with their urbanization and development of computer programing language. It is a fundamental issue of environment that urban residents cannot learn nor do the environment from the nature and subsistence in rural areas. The modernized people need to acquire the scientific knowledge at schools, and experience the traditional knowledge at rural communities. They must learn the environment for recovering the integrating function and also nurture their world view for their fertile lives throughout their lifetime.
  The author proposes a working hypothesis, named “a Structure of the Environment Learning Process for Life.” This model is integrating the whole knowledge on subsistence, science, their relationship, and intuition in an individual “mind structure.” It is desired to promote theoretical studies based on educational practices for designating a new subject “environment studies” in the school education as a result of the research meeting for environment studies curriculum. Moreover, it is necessary to construct “the Fundamental Theory of Environment Learning.”