| This study explores the evolution of Japanese education aid policies to developing countries during the half century from the 1950s to the year 2000. It was over the course of this fifty-year period that Japan emerged from the ashes of military defeat to become an economic superpower. During this half century, Japan also merged as a major international donor, becoming, in 1989, the largest bilateral aid donor in the world, even surpassing the United States. It was during this period that Japan discovered the importance of education aid as an important feature of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA). Additionally, Japan acquired sufficient economic and political potential to shape the contours of international education aid discourse, and the education capacities of developing countries. What factors enabled Japan to emerge as a top education aid donor? What external and internal pressures shaped the development of aid policies? What role did the government play? What Japanese interests were served and organized? What international pressures, if any, were reflected? How, if at all, has the Japanese government constructed and exercised a capacity for global leadership in education aid policies for developing countries? This study addresses these questions by tracking the evolution of education aid policies as they have been revealed and shaped by subgovernments which refer to specialized decisionmaking units within a government.; This study revealed the emergence of two separate education aid systems---one centering around the ODA Subgovernment and one around the Education Subgovernment. It suggests that aid policies were affected by shifting international trends, interaction within each subgovernment, and the interactions or non-interactions between the two subgovernments. Like economic aid policies, education aid policies have not been determined by political pressure, elite decisionmaking, nor development debates alone. They have, rather reflected diverse ministry interests and diffuse structures that were reinforced by rigid, but stable bureaucracies, and weak political leadership. The competition among and within diverse ministry interests over education aid led to the expansion of education aid over time, contributed to Japan's growing power in the world, and caused some of the confusions that beset Japan's role as a global power. |
