Showa,” referring to the reign of Emperor Hirohito from December 25, 1926, to January 7, 1989, is a useful metaphor for change and continuity in 20th-century Japanese society, but deeply impractical for the purpose of historical periodization. In the course of the Showa period Japan went from fledgling liberal democracy to authoritarian, militarist state, from the devastation of defeat and occupation to the exhilarating, but equally disillusioning, experience of recovery and rapid growth, and on through to the heady years of the bubble economy. The immense macro-level changes of the Showa period are reflected in the development of Japanese social institutions, making simple, linear narratives difficult to construct in any area.

Early Showa

In the case of higher education, if it is possible to characterize the entirety of Showa in any way at all, it would be to say that this was the period in which virtually all the distinguishing features of Japan’s contemporary system took shape.

This chapter elaborates on this simple idea that Showa as a whole, and notwithstanding the vast transformations which punctuated it, was the key formative period for Japanese HE. Let us begin the elaboration with a brief review of the features of Japanese education generally at the start of the Showa period: (almost) universal primary schooling; institutional heterogeneity at the post-primary level; significant regional and gender disparities in access to higher educational opportunities; a growing degree of administrative centralization and state control; increasing importance of advanced credentials for access to highly-skilled occupations. In the first year of Showa, 1926, Japan already had 34 fully-fledged universities (35 counting the one established in colonial Korea in 1924), almost 30 higher schools (kōtō gakkō), which provided the main pathway to university entrance, and well over 100 professional and advanced vocational colleges (senmon gakkō and jitsugyō senmon gakkō), some of which already called themselves “universities” (daigaku) and were working, despite onerous requirements, to gain formal recognition under the University Ordinance (daigakurei) of 1918. The HE sector was also growing rapidly in size: the number of students in HE increased almost threefold in the 1920s, and by another 40 percent in the 1930s (see Table 2.1). The sector also became more privatized: by 1940 well over 60 percent of all HE students were attending private institutions.