Institutional Change in Meiji Japan: Image and Reality

The substantial institutional and organisational changes in Japan that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868 have often gone down in history as an unmitigated success story. The objective of this paper is to analyse the course of the Meiji reform process to indicate how far it might offer any lessons for institutional and organisational reform in Japan at the start of the twenty-first century. I argue that the reality of the Meiji transformation was invariably more problematic than the successful image often portrayed. Analysis of the Meiji experience of three key areas at the heart of current debates in Japan financial institutions, business enterprise and the labour market suggests that in all three cases the process of institutional and organisational change before the First World War was slow and sporadic. The transformation was stimulated by a sense of national urgency and driven by political will. I suggest that great caution needs to be exercised in drawing any lessons for contemporary Japan from the Meiji experience, but that the analysis suggests firstly that it is unrealistic to expect fundamental institutional change within a very short time span, and secondly that the relative merits of importing new institutions and modifying existing ones are rarely clear cut. A further key difference between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries is also the nature of the global economy, and Japan’s radically different position within it.Japan; Meiji Restoration; revolution; reform; institutional change; labour market; financial institutions; business enterprise; globalization.

Earthquakes in Japan: a review article

This review examines three monographs that make conspicuous contributions to our understanding of major earthquake disasters in Japan from the mid-nineteenth century through to 2011. They focus on different events and different time periods, and ask different questions, but raise a host of shared issues relating to the ongoing importance of disaster in Japan's history over the long term. They cause us to consider how seismic disaster is explained, understood, interpreted and actualised in people's lives, how the risks are factored in and how people respond to both immediate crisis and longer term consequences. One recurrent issue in these volumes is the extent to which these large natural disasters have the capacity to change, and actually do change, the ways in which societies organise themselves. In some cases disaster may be perceived as opportunity, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that a desire to return to the previous 'normality' is a powerful impulse in people's responses to major natural disasters. The review also argues that the issue of trust lies at the core of both individual and collective responses. A lack of trust may be most conspicuous in attitudes to government and elites, but is also inherent in more everyday personal interactions and market transactions in the immediate aftermath of disaster.

Knowing and teaching: the impact of teachers’ knowledge on students’ early literacy achievement

Children in rural and remote schools typically underperform in measures of literacy achievement (e.g., NAPLAN) from as early as year three. Data collected over time indicate that as children get older, the gap increases between those students who meet the national benchmarks and those who do not. Additionally, Indigenous children are overrepresented in this group of students who are underperforming in measures of literacy achievement. This study seeks to explore the conditions surrounding this phenomenon and to tease out the complexities present in rural and remote contexts that might contribute to this underachievement. One remote and six remote‐rural schools in Western Australia were the focus of the study. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to collect data over three years. Qualitative data were collected using an ethnographic approach, through classroom observations and informal and formal interviews with students, teachers, school leaders, support staff and some parents. From these observations and interviews, teacher and student case studies were constructed. Quantitative data were collected from children through a range of early literacy assessment tasks. Around 60 children were assessed each year for three years. Approximately half of the children each year were Indigenous and half non‐Indigenous. The notion of educational criticism and connoisseurship (Eisner, 1985) was used as a way to describe, interpret and evaluate the literacy teaching practices which occurred in schools and classrooms. Habermas\u27s (1971) “knowledge constituent interests” were used as lenses through which to interrogate the data. The quantitative data informed the technical interest, while the qualitative data were interrogated using the practical and critical lenses. The study indicated that barriers to children’s academic success may exist at a number of levels. First, many children enter such schools with limited knowledge to support the development of school English literacy, therefore particular attention needs to be paid to this during their first years of schooling. While all children are likely to make progress in developing school English literacy, for many children the extent and rate of progress is dependent on focussed and knowledgeable teaching. Second, such schools are typically staffed by teachers in the early years of their career, who need support to develop their pedagogical, content and cultural knowledge to the degree necessary for successfully teaching early literacy in such contexts. Additionally, the relative remoteness of the context in which they are working often makes it difficult for them to access ongoing professional learning and support. Third, school leaders are typically in their first position in that role, with the consequence that they may be less able to support new teachers at the classroom level. This study is significant because it seeks to unravel the complicated web of factors that impact on the quality of literacy instruction that is provided for children in in remote and remote‐rural schools in Western Australia. There needs to be available a range of measures at every level, that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular school at any given time

The implementation of first steps in four primary classrooms

The First Steps Project was developed by the Education Department of Western Australia to facilitate literacy learning of students who were perceived to be at risk . The project has resulted in state-wide professional development for teachers, and the subsequent marketing of the program interstate and overseas. The purpose of this study is to present an insight into the various ways that teachers use First Steps in their classrooms and to discover where different teachers stand within the theoretical framework of language learning, and what orientation and experiences lead them to make the planning, teaching and evaluation choices they make. The study examined the literacy teaching practices of teachers in four classrooms in Perth metropolitan schools. In two of these classrooms, two teachers taught together in team-teaching situations. The teachers reflected a diversity of professional development experiences related to First Steps. One teacher had received First Steps professional development in a Core School, which was supported by four Collaborative Teachers. Another teacher had learned about First Steps as part of her teacher education program at University. The other teachers in the study had received their professional development through Central or District Office, and two of these had received further training as First Steps Focus Teachers. Data was collected through participant-observation and interviews. Using a form of educational criticism (Eisner, 1985), a case-study was constructed for each classroom and a cross-case analysis was performed to identify patterns of shared or conflicting understandings and the ways in which these understandings influenced language learning events. All the teachers in the study used a variety of First Steps teaching strategies, and all teachers, to varying extents, used the First Steps developmental continua. Teachers who appeared to have a deeper understanding of the philosophies of literacy development underpinning First Steps were more able to manipulate First Steps resources and teaching strategies to suit to needs of their own particular teaching situation. While all teachers made planning decisions on the basis of the assessment of their students\u27 progress, this process \u27most often happened in teachers\u27 heads, rather then being recorded in any documents. Teachers who demonstrated a deep understanding of First Steps theoretical principles appeared to have internalised the First Steps developmental indicators as part of their tacit monitoring system. Other teachers seemed to have their own sets of indicators, which they translated to First Steps language when the time came to record students\u27 progress on the developmental continua. The study demonstrates that, while all case-study teachers used a variety of First Steps practices in their classrooms, both for teaching and assessing students\u27 learning, the extent to which teachers used and adapted First Steps materials was influenced not only by their professional development experiences, but also by their own life histories and the context of their teaching situations, and the ways in which these factors impacted on their understandings about the nature of literacy development

Teaching Writing: Effective Approaches For The Middle Years

Book revie

Studies in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1923)

Daniels examined British media views of Japan by sampling local and national dailies, with emphasis on The Times and The Economist and magazines like Punch, The Graphic and The Illustrated London News. While the metropolitan papers were broadly supportive, some provincial journalists, favouring free trade, were critical of Japan and the alliance.British trade, first world war, British overseas investment, Anglo-Japanese tariff agreement, Takahashi, Japanese immigration, British Press, cartoons, illustrations, trade relations, American hegemony, open door in China, Washington Conference (1921), Paris Peace Conference (1919), China, Korea, Russia, League of Nations.

Price shocks in disaster: the Great Kantō Earthquake in Japan,1923

This paper tests the operation of markets in the wake of a sudden exogenous shock in prewar Japan, the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Using a unique monthly wholesale price dataset of provincial cities, we found that the earthquake had a positive impact on the price of rice and timber in the sample cities. Our results also indicate that the wholesale price of rice in cities in the northeast of Japan, which were more closely integrated with the affected region, experienced more significant price rises than those in western Japan. Nevertheless, although further research using retail as opposed to wholesale prices of goods is needed, these preliminary findings suggest that the diffusion of price instability outwards from the affected region was on a lesser scale than might have been expected