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The Tradition of Conflict in the Governance of Japan's Imperial Universities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Byron K. Marshall
Byron K. Marshall*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

The past decade has been a tumultuous one for Japanese higher education with faculty pitted against students, students against government, and government against both in an often chaotic and seemingly incessant search for an answer to the question “Who governs Japan's universities?” The answer given by many analysts is “no one”—that the conflict between these three bodies have rendered Japanese universities ungovernable. Failure to achieve consensus and implement needed reforms in higher education has been attributed largely to the decentralized internal organization of the leading universities and the tradition of deep-seated hostility between academic intellectuals and the Japanese government. Although the more violent and dramatic of the conflicts in the late 1960s and early 1970s have received considerable attention by observers outside Japan, the long tradition of conflict over university governance which provides such a significant part of the intellectual and political context for those caught up in the contemporary debates has received far less attention. The purpose of this essay is to provide an historical perspective on this conflict by sketching in the prewar background that constitutes the heritage of academic self-government at Japan's oldest and still foremost universities, the imperial universities of Tokyo and Kyoto.

Type
Article II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , Winter 1977 , pp. 385 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. See Michio's, Nagai Higher Education in Japan: Its Takeoff and Crash (Tokyo, 1971) especially pp. 129–137, and 251–252. Nagai has recently stepped down as Minister of Education, the first bonafide scholar to hold that position since the end of the American Occupation. Ivan Hall and William Cummings are two American observers whose recently published analyses have reached conclusions similar to those of Nagai. See Hall's, “Organizational Paralysis: The Case of Tōdai,” in Vogel, Ezra, ed., Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-making (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 305–330; and Kitamura, Kazuyuki and Cummings, William K., “The ‘Big Bang’ Theory and Japanese University Reform,” Comparative Educational Review (June 1972): 303–324. For translations of other Japanese views of the problems in higher education, see the special issues of The Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, I (December 1963), and 5 (December 1967).Google Scholar

2. The only in-depth study in English of the prewar experience is an unpublished 1952 doctoral dissertation by Suh, Doo Soo, “The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Japan Universities before 1945” (Columbia University). Although Dr. Doo presents a wealth of information and a valuable bibliography, his study was completed too early to take advantage of the research and memoirs published in the last twenty-five years, and the account here differs in interpretative perspective as well as on some facts. For more general introductions to the history of Japanese education, see Passin, Herbert, Society and Education in Japan (New York, 1965); and the writings of Ronald P. Dore listed in my review essay, “Universal Social Dilemmas and Japanese Education History,” History of Education Quarterly, 12 (Spring 1972): 97–106.Google Scholar

3. The figures, which include twenty-two foreign teachers, are taken from Teikoku Daigaku ichiran [Bulletin of the Imperial University] (Tokyo, 1890). Details of the early history are found in Daigaku, Tōkyō Teikoku, ed, Tōkyō Teikoku Diagaku goj&uacrnenshi [Fifty Year History of Tokyo Imperial University; hereinafter cited as TTDGS] (Tokyo, 1932; 2 vols.), Volume 1.Google Scholar

4. For details on the roles played by Tokyo University professors in the period 1870–1910, see my “Professors and Politics: The Meiji Academic Elite,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, 3 (Winter 1977).Google Scholar

5. The series was reprinted as a pamphlet entitled Gakumon no dokuritsu [The Independence of Scholarship] in Gijuku, Keiô, ed., Fukuzawa Yūkichi zenshū [The Works of Fukuzawa Jukichi] (Tokyo, 1959), 5,pp. 369–370.Google Scholar

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7. The relevant regulations are reprinted in TTDGS , 1, pp. 258–288; 459–462; 507–510. Ivan Hall, in his brilliant biography of Mori Arinori (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 404, suggests that foreign teachers held the positions of divisional head until Mori's reforms of 1886. According to the University's own history, they were filled in 1881 by Japanese professors and no foreign teachers are listed as having attended the 1881 Shijunkai meeting. See TTDGS, 1, pp. 512, 524; and 2, pp. 1229–1230.Google Scholar

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16. See Marshall, , “Professors and Politics”. Ivan Hall describes the Tokyo president in these years as “chosen for his administrative talents” (“Organizational Paralysis,” p. 318). This was, no doubt, true in Mori's appointment of Watanabe Kōki, but one could just as plausibly argue that after 1893 rapport with the faculty was the critical attribute in the appointments of Professors Tōyama Masakazu (1897–1898), Kikuchi Dairoku (1898–1902), and Yamakawa Kenjirō (1901–1905 and 1913–1920). As we shall see below, Hamao Arata's reappointment in 1905 was part of the settlement in the Tomizu Incident.Google Scholar

17. For greater detail on the political atmosphere and the role of the Tomizu group, see Marshall, , “Professors and Politics,” and Shumpei, Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

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24. See Mitchell, Richard H., Thought Control in Prewar Japan (Ithaca, 1976), pp. 22–27.Google Scholar

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34. Ienaga, , Daigaku no jiyū rekishi, p. 46; and Tanaka, ,et al., Daigaku no jichi, pp. 32–34.Google Scholar

35. Speech by Morta Kotarō to the 31st Session of the House of Representatives, January 30, 1914; reprinted in Abe, , Teikoku Gikai Kyoiku gigi sōran, 3, pp. 199–202.Google Scholar

36. Danshaku Yamakawa Sensei den, pp. 262–273. Later accounts often cite this as the first instance of the “election” of an imperial university president, although there seem to be no details on whether there was indeed a formal ballot of the faculty; Tanaka, , et al., Daigaku no jichi, pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

37. TTDGS, 2, pp. 84–85, 553; Shigeru, Nambara, Masamichi, Rōyama, and Teiji, Yabe, Onozuka Kiheiji [Biography of Onozuka Kiheiji] (Tokyo, 1961), pp. 135–137; and Tarō, Yamanouchi, “Diagaku to semmongakko.” [Universities and Colleges], in Tokiomi, Kaigo, ed., Rinji Kyōiku Kaigi no kenkyū [Studies on the Extraordinary Commission on Education] (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 517–592.Google Scholar

38. Yamanouchi, , “Daigaku to semmon gakko,” p. 555; and Mombusho [Japan Education Ministry], eds., Meiji ikō kyōiku seidô hattatsushi [History of the Development of the Educational System since Meiji; hereinafter cited as MIKSH] (Tokyo, 1964–65; 12 vols.; 2d ed.), 5, pp. 464–472.Google Scholar

39. See the lists in Daigaku, Tōkyō Teikoku, Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku gakujutsu taikan (Tokyo, 1942–1944; 5 vols.).Google Scholar

40. See the autobiographical account in Yikitoki, Takikawa, Gekiryū [Raging Current] (Tokyo, 1963). A number of magazine articles written at the time by participants are collected in Sōichi, Sasaki, Kyōdai jiken [The Kyoto University Affair] (Tokyo, 1933). See also the account and bibliography in Doo, , “The Struggle,” pp. 168ff. For a description in English of the pressures being brought to bear on Japanese intellectuals in the mid-1930s, see Miller's, Frank O. account of the 1935 Affair, Minobe, Minobe Tatsukichi (Berkeley, 1965). It should be kept in mind, however, that Minobe had previously retired from Tōdai and thus the university was not directly involved.Google Scholar

41. A description of the actions taken by faculty leaders and a verbatim record of the meeting with Araki is given in Tanaka, , et al., Daigakn no jichi, pp. 116–139. In English, see Doo, Soo Suh, “The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Japan University before 1945”.Google Scholar

42. The influence of Hiranuma and his protégés is documented in English monographs by Mitchell, Richard, Thought Control; and Yasko, Richard, “Hiranuma Kiichirō and Conservative Politics in Pre-War Japan” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973).Google Scholar

43. Kiyoshi, Ōshima, Takano Iwasaburō [Biography of Takano Iwasaburō] (Tokyo, 1968), pp. 166–174; Masato, Miyaji, “Morito Tatsuo jiken,” in Sakae, Wagatsuma, ed., Nihon seiji saiban shiroku: Taishō [Historical Record of Japanese Political Trials in the Taishō Period] (Tokyo, 1969), pp. 228–272. In English see Mitchell, Richard H., “Japan's Peace Preservation Law of 1925,” Monumenta Nipponica, 28 (1973): 317–345; and my “Academic Factionalism in Japan: The Case of the Tōdai Economics Department, 1919–1939,” forthcoming in the journal Modern Asian Studies. Google Scholar

44. Itsurō, Sakisaka, Arashi no naka no hyakunen [A Century within the Storm] (Tokyo, 1952), pp. 170–171; Hyōe, Ōuchi, Keizaigaku gojūnen [Fifty Years of Economics] (Tokyo, 1959), pp. 201–203; and Watakushino rirekisho [My Curriculum Vitae] (Tokyo, 1956), pp. 252–258; Tanaka, , et al., Daigaku no jichi, pp. 62–65; and Nambara, , et al., Onozuku Kiheiji, pp. 171–172.Google Scholar

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