Celebrating Protest

The following is a transcription of a presentation by Horio Teruhisa at the East Asia: Trans-regional Histories workshop of the University of Chicago. The following description was circulated in advance of the talk. Within eight months of this talk, the Fundamental Law of Education was indeed revised.

Horio Teruhisa, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, is a leading theorist of education as the human right upon which all others ultimately depend. The author of numerous books, he is also a tireless activist within the movement to contest the Japanese state's domination of the nation's public schools. He will be speaking about the school as the site of systematic censorship and the increasingly draconian imposition of the flag and anthem, part of the current assault on the Fundamental Law of Education, the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society, and Article 9 (the "no-war" clause) of the Constitution. Professor Horio is engaged in scholarly and legal struggles to defend these pillars of democratic society in postwar Japan.

Professor Horio's work was introduced in English in the volume Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan (1988).

Professor Horio spoke in Japanese; Norma Field, E. Asian Languages & Civilizations, translated; Steven Platzer, editor and translator of Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan and a scholar of Koyama Iwao and Kosaka Masaaki, philosophers of culture as the key component of total war with profound impact on postwar educational policy, provided an impromptu introduction.

The tape was transcribed by Makiko Arima and edited by Tiffany Kwak.

Steve Platzer: Teruhisa Horio's father was a veternarian. Veterinarians were much more important than actual doctors of human beings, because there's no shortage of human beings. A human being dies, no big deal, you can always get another one. Horses were important. So, Teruhisa Horio's father had a very important role in the army as a veterinarian. Unfortunately, his father died in China in 1939 when he was only 6 years old. So, he changes his concern with being opposed to war and supporting Article 9 of the Constitution. He came to it the real way. I mean, he grew up to face his reality.

After the war, in 1951, Teruhisa Horio entered the undergraduate Law School program of the University of Tokyo. I guess it was called the "seiji" course, the political course. He was the student of—I'm sure most of you know the name—Maruyama Masao. By the time he graduated from the undergraduate Law School program, it was decided amongst a number of top people there that he would be a very good person to move over into the education world, having had the legal background and understanding of the nature of these new democratic laws, and also knew what the intellectual background was. Teruhisa could make a valuable contribution in the education world. People who continue to try to realize, if you will, the new ideals that were brought into Japan—the new democratic ideals. So, he went to the Education Faculty and took a PhD there.

I guess he increasingly became kind of a notorious figure in Japan. Those of you who studied a little bit of Japanese history know the famous Ienaga textbook trials, where the government had censored the textbooks that had been used from the early postwar view. Professor Horio was very involved at both at the level of educational thinking involved and the struggle against the state's attempt to control the textbooks from the educational and the legal point of view. In one case that actually, really, decided the educational movement as one where people were against the state's authority, the one case that they won the famous decision called the Sugimoto decision. It was basically based upon his testimony. If you read his testimony in the court, and you read the judge's decision, pretty much the judge followed and was persuaded by Professor Horio. At this time, Professor Horio was over in France at the Sorbonne studying himself. He came back to Japan in 1969, and he was instantly a notorious figure. It was the only time that the Ministry of Education had ever gotten that had ever happened to them before. So, he was considered someone who had to be kept in line after the loss. He became very active in the teachers' movement, the teacher's union movement. I don't want to go into too much detail, but we can talk about that afterwards if any of you are interested.

I'll just conclude with one funny little story that kind of puts it all in perspective for me. I first went over to Japan in the late 1970s on an exchange program at Chicago with Waseda. Waseda was really terrible. They told me I had to meet with some professor there before I was allowed to do any work on education, which was what I wanted to study. It was kind of a… I had one meeting and he didn't show up. Second meeting, he didn't show up. Third meeting. Finally the fourth meeting, he showed up. He told me I couldn't study education, and I just had to waste my time studying Japanese, and I always thought I was already a little bit passed on. Through a couple of connections I had met some people at Tokyo University, and I started hanging out with people—graduate students—in the Education Department there. And most of my contacts asked me to go be a student there the next year. Well, during the course of my first year there, I had done some works for the Ministry of Education. They had groups of American schoolteachers or they had American big shots from the Department of Education come over to Japan, they used me as free labor—the only way to get out of paying for it—to show these people around. I got to go around and see schools, and I also got to see how these American educators and administrators were seeing Japanese education. It was interesting to me. But at the end of this year, I went to the person at the Ministry of Education who I had been doing this for. And I said, "Well, I've done my share for you guys." So, I'm going to be going into Tokyo University, you think that maybe you could cough up a Monbusho scholarship, so I could support all of this. So, they asked me who I was going to work with. And I had mentioned the name of the first professor who I had been introduced to who asked me to come to Tôdai. And they go, "hmm, he's a little dangerous, but he's all right." I told them the name of the second person who I wanted to work with. And they go, "hmm." Then the third person I said was Horio Sensei. And all of a sudden their faces went white, or whatever white means to you. But their faces went pale, let's just put it that way. And I was told that if I ever mentioned his name again, if I ever showed any connection with him whatsoever, I would not only never get any funding from the Japanese government, but I would have trouble getting…I mean they'd let me know—this was not the mood today. So after getting such a good recommendation from them, I decided he was the only person worth studying with. I think that kind of puts it in perspective.

Do any of you have any questions about him? Anything you want to know about him? Or say anything that you want to know? I'm too embarrassed to say. He's also the author of a book—here, Norma will maybe pass it around—it's called Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan, which I translated based upon—I went through this whole corpus of writing and put together a book that didn't really exist in Japanese. Taking from here and there, there's a whole history of education and a number of court reviews, which really aren’t terribly the most interesting. But he goes into the way the Supreme Court decided a number of decisions that would confirm the state's authority to control education even though the Constitution very clearly said they didn't have, which is really what his works are about, this contesting, this attempt to reinterpret the Constitution, to say things that are never said, giving the state the right to control what people learn, what they are not allowed to learn, what's allowed to be in textbooks, etcetera. Anyway, I guess it's a little past my…

Norma Field: Let me just add that books of Professor Horio's have been translated into Korean and Chinese, too, so for those of you who study those languages and those societies, you might want to look them up. I know the Regenstein library has the Korean translation.

Teruhisa Horio: Good afternoon, my name is Horio. I seem to be very notorious, but I think I am especially well known among good Japanese teachers. Anyhow, thank you very much. I was invited by both Norma and Steven here to talk to you about my work. I was just in Mexico and on my way to Japan. In Mexico, I had a conference and on the way to Japan, I just stopped here in Chicago to say hello. I didn't expect to be able to have a chance to speak. Anyhow, today I will talk about Japanese education a little bit. And after, have an actual discussion—communication—with you. I will speak in Japanese from now on, and Norma-san will translate.

いいですか。今日お話することは、日本の教育が今どうなっているか ということをまずお話して、その後、先ほど教科書裁判のことが紹介されましたけれども、今実は君が代裁判とういうのが大変大きなイシューになっていまし て、その裁判でも私、この２月の６日に東京の地方裁判所で証言をしてきたばかりですけれども、何が問題になっているのか、どういう証言をしたのかというこ とを後半お話ししながら、日本の教育全体が相当に問題だぞ、ということがお分かりいただければと思います。

Field: Today, I want to talk to you about the general situation of Japanese education. In the course of that, Steve Platzer referred to the textbook trials, but there's something that is going on called the "kimi ga yo trial"or, the trial concerning law suits about the national anthem. In fact, on February 6th of this year, he just served as expert witness in the Tokyo District Court, so he will talk about that in the latter part of his presentation. And through that, try to give you a sense of what's going on—what's at stake—in Japanese educational issues today.

Horio: その話で、そうですね、今日アジアの研究者が多いということですね。アジアに関心を持っている研究者、と言った方がいいのでしょうか。

Field: 人権と。

Horio: それと人権と。だからアメリカでの状況がどうなっているか、それのコンパリソンも私自信は関心があるんだけど、それは是非後で何とか教えていただければと思っております。

Field: I understand that many of you are interested in researching Asia today, and I added, human rights. Horio says, "I myself am interested in comparison with the U.S. and I'd like to learn from you." But I should tell you right now that he knows more than most of us about what's been going on in the U.S.

Horio: 日本の教育の状況を、例えば皆さんは一般的にどういう知識を持っておられるか、ということでもあるんですけれど、1980年代は日本の高度成長、そして経 済が非常に成長していた時期、「ジャパン・アズ・ナンバーワン」というようなことも言われ。そして、そういう日本の経済発展と教育がどう関係しているかと いうような形で、諸外国からも随分関心を持たれましたし、アメリカからもそういう意味での日本の教育への関心がかなり高かったと思います。しかし、今はそ うではないと思っています。

Field: I don't know what your general knowledge is here, but we could characterize the 1980s as a time of high growth economics. Think "Japan as number one." And in that sense, from the rubric of economic growth, there was considerable interest by other countries in the world, including the U.S., in Japanese education. I think the situation has changed at present.

Horio: 現在の問題は、むしろやはり世界史的な視点をどうしても入れて見る必要があるんですけれども、特に９・11以降、この21世紀はどうなるのかという、その 世界の未来をどう考えるかということと結びつけながら教育改革論が非常に盛んに行われています。これはアメリカでもそうでしょうが、日本でもそうなんで す。

Field: I'm assuming it's the case in the U.S. too, but since September 11, there has been a great deal of discussion about what is to happen to the world in the 21st century, and what sort of education is needed for that future, and it is something that we can only argue with by taking world history into account. But this is something that is going on very vigorously right now.

Horio: 日本でも教育改革論が非常に盛んです。で、その場合に、現在の日本の教育の基本的な枠組みというものは、実は1945年、敗戦、つまり過去を反省し、新しい日本をどう作るかということで、憲法が作られ、教育基本法が作られました。

Field: If we are to think about the context in which educational reform is discussed, of course the basic framework begins with 1945, defeat in the war, a critical self-reflection on Japanese history at that time. And in that context, the formulation, the establishment, of the new Consitution and, a very important document, the Fundamental Law of Education, which is also translated in the back of the book that's going around.

Horio: その時にできた新しい考え方と、教育のシステム、そして、その教育を支えている考え方、そういうものが問題だという指摘を改革論者はしきりにしているのです。

Field: The reformers are bent on insisting that it's the kind of thinking that took place then in the wake of a defeated WWII era. And the kind of educational system established on the basis of that kind of critical self-reflection that is the problem today and needs to be reformed.

Horio: その際、今の憲法ではなくて、古い方がいいんだ、というそういう発想で現在の憲法や教育基本法を批判する人がいます。

Field: And there are those who are saying, therefore, that it's not the current Constitution that is desirable, but that the basis of educational reform today ought to be the older, i.e., the imperial, constitution. And also, that another problem is the Fundamental Law of Education.

Horio: それは復古主義的な発想、改革論、というふうに呼んでいいと思います。

Field: Horio wants to call this a revivalist theory of educational reform—a return to the past.