In the previous issue of the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, we began our new series on the state of distance learning around the globe with an examination of distance education in Saudi Arabia, including examination of a specific case of distance learning within the Saudi Arabia higher education context. As editors, we felt that the specific issues surrounding distance education in Saudi Arabia, which may be different than in other counties, made an examination of the Saudi Arabian context an excellent one on which to commence this series.
In this current issue, we move from the Middle East to the Far East to examine the use of distance education in what is one of the world’s most technologically sophisticated counties: Japan. Until only very recently the second largest economy in the world, with a GDP of some 5 billion U.S. dollars per year (The World Bank, 2017), the word “Japan” conjures up in the mind of people everywhere names such as Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Honda, Toyota, Yamaha, and many others. But how does Japan’s undeniable technological prowess translate into the use of technology for distance education? More broadly, what part of Japan’s overall education sector employs distance education, and via what tools and approaches?
Our guest author examining distance education in Japan, Mayuko Nakamura, speaks to these issues. In preparation for this article, Nakamura interviewed key leaders in Japan’s online education programs during her most recent visit to the country in the summer of 2017. Nakamura’s contribution to this issue of QRDE is fascinating of its own accord, but also raises some interesting questions about the potential relationship between a country’s technological infrastructure/capabilities and the amount of online education actually employed within that country. We encourage readers to reflect on this question while reading Nakamura’s article. Thinking back to Ayshah Alahmari’s article on Saudi Arabian distance education, and combining it with the Japanese case, we also encourage readers to not only consider how distance education is used in each country, but in comparison with other countries in order to develop a broader understanding of the differential motivations for a country’s choices impacting the use of distance education. Indeed, as we proceed further into this series, it is our goal to build a well-rounded understanding of such questions as we continue to examine distance education in widely different country contexts.
