Chapter 6: Local Governments as Promoters of Citizenship Education: A Case Study of Shinagawa City, Tokyo

In 1947, the Fundamental Law of Education was enacted in Japan to secure a new democratic state. After the postwar Constitution of Japan was instated, schools underwent radical changes. Educators and administrators needed to introduce a new educational system that met the goal of forming a peaceful and democratic society as the Constitution stated, and that would replace the prewar moral education system in which citizens were treated as subjects of the emperor. Accordingly, the prewar moral education system (shushin), which had been based on the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, was banned, and the subject of social studies was introduced for the first time. Moral education would not reappear in the school curriculum until 1958, this time under the new label of dotoku, and be required to be taught during all nine years of compulsory education.