Page 9 - Japanese Growth and Education: 演講人：Motohisa Kaneko教授

Japan’s Development and Education - Past, Present and Future -c109

However, it was only after World War I that they started growing

substantially in number. By the end of 1930s, participation rate at the secondary
education reached the 50 percent level. The government, however, did not
necessarily drove expansion of secondary and higher education over this period.

The driving force was rather the emerging economic growth itself.
As Japan had to develop its modern industries almost from nothing, the
Meiji government imported technologies, social and physical capital from the

West. That created an enclave of capital-intensive and efficient modern sector,
while the vast majority of the economic activities were still taking place in the
agriculture or traditional manufacturing or commerce. This resulted in a dual
structure with a wide schism between the modern and the traditional sectors. On

one hand there was a group of modern firms equipped with modern technologies,
which were typically of large scale and affiliated with business groups. On the

other, there was a large sector of medium- an small-scale firms which relied
primarily on low-wage labor. It was natural then that larger corporations tended
to offer better wages and benefits than the medium and small sizes.
It drove many households to demand education beyond compulsory

primary education. Meanwhile, economic growth bore increases of households
that could afford the cost for secondary education. That created political

pressures for the Local governments to build secondary schools. Most of them
charged a fairly substantial tuition fees. There are also various kinds of private
secondary schools that were run on tuition.
Thus economic development and the growth of secondary and higher

education went on hand in hand. This mechanism functioned more fully in the
postwar period, which will be discussed in Section 2.