This chapter examines the origin and growth of modern universities from 1868, the first year of the Meiji era, until 1948, when the new postwar University Law came into effect. Its major objective is to analyze the origins, development, challenges and legacies of modern universities in Japan. To this end, the first section traces the development of universities in prewar Japan. The challenges and opportunities that faced modern Japanese universities are then analyzed before a conclusion which summarizes findings against the above objective.

Before Meiji

In the 7th century Japan’s first institutes of higher education were established. These were training schools for monks attached to major temples, such as Horyuji Temple in Nara built by Prince Shotoku. Influenced by the Tang Dynasty system of higher education in China, Emperor Tenmu legislated the first written laws to establish higher education in Japan in 701. Just as the first European universities founded in the Middle Ages differed from their modern descendants, Japan’s early institutes of higher education also differed considerably from the modern universities which were developed after the Meiji Restoration. During the feudal era, the Shogunate Government developed a number of institutes of higher education. Included were a school to train elite samurai and four academies, each devoted to the area studies of Japan (kokugaku), China (kangaku), the West (yōgaku), and Western medicine (seiyō igaku). With the surrender of the Shogunate rule to the Emperor in 1868, these institutions were abolished or absorbed into new institutions.

The new government prohibited the mixture of Shintoism and Buddhism as the former became the state religion. Many Buddhist temples were separated from Shinto shrines, even though most of them coexisted on the same site. Initially, the fledgling government did not have a clear vision for higher education, though it had a vague anachronistic educational policy. It attempted to set up a Shinto-based Japan study school (kokugaku dokoro) and a Confucianist China study school (kangaku dokoro) in Kyoto, but these failed owing to major changes in administration—primarily because of the transfer of Japan’s capital from Kyoto to Edo, which was re-named Tokyo.

Japan’s first university

As one of its first acts in the new capital, the new government emphasized the importance of education, especially that of knowledge transfer between Japan and the West.