| This dissertation examines the process of policy formation for primary education in early Meiji Japan. I trace primary education laws through three distinct sets of actors: from the central government, where they are first formulated, through the prefectures, where they are administered, to the towns and villages, where they are put into practice. Where scholars have described the early Meiji government as autocratic, with a monopolistic hold on policy formation, an exploration of the differences in how education laws were interpreted in three prefectures has uncovered a far more complex picture, with central government education policies being revised, selectively applied, or even ignored with virtual impunity at the prefectural level resulting in the development of significantly different systems. The implementations of those systems were then subject to negotiation between the towns and villages, and in some cases even individuals, on the one hand, and the prefectural governments on the other. Thus, rather than the simple model of a government which decreed and a population which obeyed, early Meiji Japan functioned as a complex political structure, with multiple, competing centers of authority; rather than simply being imposed from above, the national education system evolved organically, through experimentation and negotiation. |
