JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION AS MYTH

JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION AS MYTH

JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION AS MYTH

A Japanese student once told me that good university students have “eyes that shine,” presumably the opposite of many students who have eyes that express listlessness. I am interested in why so many students have eyes that do not shine, and yet tolerate the emptiness of Japan’s tertiary-level education system and seem to passively accept its prevarications. In a sense, then, this book is about lying, but a very special kind of lying: how shams, shenanigans, and subterfuge are solidified at the institutional level. Authorities and elites have always lied to maintain their power, but we would do well to come to terms with how and why people tell each other untruths that are countenanced, thereby supporting elite power structures, if not the whole edifice of society.

Brian J . McVeigh