The inability to slow down or turn back from disastrous policies has been Japan s core problem in the twentieth century, so it is natural to wonder why This brings us to education, which shapes the way people ask questions of themselves and their environment. Neither Japan's system nor the lengths to which it goes once it is set on autopilot are conceivable in a society in which people ask many questions. Plutarch tells us, «King Theopompus, when one said that Sparta held up so long because their kings could command so well, replied, 'Nay, rather because the people know so well how to obey' »

The fear of speaking one's mind in Japan dates to feudal days. Closed to the outside world and ruled by a military class for 350 years, Japan developed far-reaching techniques of social control. Sumptuary laws prescribed which woods the four classes of society could use in their houses, the shapes of their gates and doorways, and the materials of the clothes they wore. Temples and shrines had to join sects registered with the shogunate, and nonorthodox faiths were outlawed. The feudal virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice became popular and abiding themes in Kabuki and puppet theater: parents killed their own children to protect those of the lord; joint suicide was a favorite ending of love stories.

No country in the world could have been more fertile ground for totalitarianism. But control of the human mind is more difficult than it appears. The provinces boasted dialects and character of their own, to the extent that outlying fiefs were almost independent states. (The government did not succeed in bringing Shikoku's Iya Valley under control until 1920, when workers carved the first road through its canyons by hand.) In the cities, class divisions created the stuff of variety: pompous samurai, meditative monks, soft-mannered craftsmen, and unruly, sensuous townspeople. Nothing could be more colorful and chaotic than the «floating world» of old Edo.

With the opening of Japan in 1868, Wakon Yosai (Japanese spirit, Western technology) became the rallying cry of the Meiji Restoration, and in the case of education Wakon Yosai involved a marriage between the old feudal desire for total control (Wakon) and compulsory education, introduced from the West (Yosai). Standardized textbooks, uniforms, school rules, marching in lockstep around the school grounds, bowing in unison – these regimens were able to achieve what 350 years of isolation could not: a triumph over regionalism and individuality. It was probably Japan's single most serious modern maladaptation.

Yet the opening up of Japan initially sparked a great outpouring of creative energy, culminating in the so-called Taisho Renaissance. Taisho, strictly speaking, refers to Emperor Taisho's reign (1912-1926), but as a cultural term people use it to describe the years from about 1910 until 1930. This was the era when Okakura Kakuzo was writing The Book of Tea; when Kabuki, traditional dance, and martial arts were taking the shape we see now; and when rich industrialists built the art collections that today form the core of Japan's museums. Great writers such as Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Izumi Kyoka wrote some of the most fascinating and inventive literature in Japanese history. Kimono design, architecture, and music flourished, and a young democratic movement began to stir.

However, only a thin stratum of society breathed the liberating air of the Taisho Renaissance. The great mass of the people were studying in militarist fashion in the schools, with children lining up in rows in the schoolyard and shouting «Banzai!» By the 1930s, this generation came into power, sweeping away the fragile Taisho freedoms and instituting the kenpeitai (secret police), censorship, and the fanaticism that drove Japan to war.

With the loss of the war and removal of military control and censorship, it was commonly assumed that Japanese education had entered a glorious new era. And, indeed, much of the credit for Japan's remarkable rebirth after the war can be laid to its well-organized educational system. This system is second only to the nation's elite bureaucracy in its appeal to foreign experts, who have devoted many books and articles to the skills that Japanese children master-so many more, it seems, than Americans or Europeans. There is no doubt that Japan's educational system produces a dedicated workforce, and that these «corporate warriors» are the engine behind Japan's tremendous industrial strength. Obedience to authority, instilled in people from the time they are small children, makes Japanese society work very smoothly, with far less of the social turmoil and violent crime that have plagued other countries. All this is on the plus side of the balance. But there is a minus side, which, like so many other modern Japanese problems, has to do with once-good ideas carried too far.

Luckily for us, the psychiatrist Dr. Miyamoto Masao, formerly of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, has put Japan on the couch, and here he can function as our guide into modern Japanese education. According to Dr. Miyamoto, foreign experts have gone wrong when they accept the tatemae (officially stated position) fed to them by the authorities rather than the honne (real intent) of education as practiced in the schools. Facts memorized for exams are only a by-product, for the real purpose of education in Japan is not education but the habit of obedience to a group, or, as Dr. Miyamoto puts it more strongly, «castration»:

Driving through the English countryside, you see many sheep grazing on the hillside, which brings a feeling of peacefulness. This peacefulness is exactly what the bureaucrats want to obtain in Japanese society. But I want to emphasize that they want this peacefulness because their ideal image of the public is one where people are submissive and subservient. With such a group people are easy to control, and the system does not have to change. How do the bureaucrats manage to castrate the Japanese so effectively? The school system is the place where they conduct this process.

Lesson One is the importance of moving in unison. The British writer Peter Hadfield describes accompanying his daughter Joy on her first day to a Japanese kindergarten, which began, as many kindergartens do, with a roll call. After that came a class when all the students had to sit quietly while the teacher taught them how to fold pieces of paper. Only then did she allow the children to go outside:

They scattered outside in different directions, and Joy ran straight for the swings. But no sooner had the children started playing than a barrage of piano music came through a set of loudspeakers, and they all ran like soldiers on parade to the center of the playground. They then went through a series of aerobic exercises to the accompaniment of the music. In other words, they were getting all the exercise they had been getting on the swings and climbing frames, but together, and in response to a set of rules. Finally, the kids were allowed to run around – but not just anywhere. They ran around together, in a circle, in a counter-clockwise direction.

But not all of them. Consternation ensued when Joy started running in the clockwise direction:

The teachers gently encouraged her to run the «right» way, and silently appealed to me for help. I was proud of my daughter for taking a stand, and proud of her for not just following the crowd. But in the end she has to be part of the system or she will suffer for it. «Turn around, Joy,» I said in the end, coaxing her with my hand. «Go the same way as everyone else.»

Lesson Two is to learn that it is a crime to be different. Dr. Miyamoto reports that when one of his friends put her child in kindergarten, the teacher advised her to bring steamed rice for her child's lunch. «Why?» the mother asked. The teacher answered, «If children bring fried rice or sandwiches, some other child may want to have that, and it is not a good idea for children to feel they want something different. If everyone brings steamed rice, then nobody is going to wish for something they cannot have.»

The natural corollary of Lesson Two, unfortunately, is xenophobia. The idea that foreigners are aliens and should not be allowed to mix with the Japanese is an idea for which schools lay the groundwork very early. There are many examples of this, but I'll offer just one: In January 1996, the Iwakuni City Office banned children of U.S. military personnel from the city's nursery schools, because, it explained, the facilities were «getting full.» Yet at that time only three American infants could be found in Iwakuni's sixteen schools.

After kindergarten, students enter Japan's compulsory-education system proper, where schooling takes on the military cast it will have until the end of high school. «Attention!» was the first word that my cousin Edan, age nine, learned in primary school in 1993 in Kameoka. At the beginning of each class, all students must stand up, hands at their sides, «at attention.» Walking in unison, with announcements from loudspeakers, continues throughout the day, and as the children grow, new rules about dress and hair are added, and often uniforms are required.

Teachers assign children to a kumi, or "group," a unit the child will stay with until graduation. «Students of the same kumi usually play together during recess, study together during the long class time, and even eat together during lunchtime in their assigned seat, all within the four walls of the kumi for two years in a row,» writes Benjamin Duke, the author of The Japanese School: Lessons for Industrial America. He continues:

The kumi mentality obviously builds within its members a strong feeling of «we and them.» Them, the outsiders, are just that, those outside the group. Japanese children often use a special phrase during play, nakama hazure [cut off from the group], to distinguish between those outside the group and those inside. Nakama hazure has the special feeling of not being part of the intimate group and, therefore, of being rejected by it. It is often used in a taunting manner. Few children want to be rejected by their peers. Most make maximum efforts to be accepted by the group and remain securely within it.