Education and the Idea of Development in Modern Japan

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This study focuses the concept of "development" and how it became central to several educational theories in modern Japan. Through the analysis of the Journal of Child Research and the thought of Fujikawa Yu, a main writer of the journal, we clarified that in Meiji period there were not only educational interests, but also medical and embryological ones in this concept of development. Yamashita Tokuji, who took a polemic on this issue in 1934, also inquired into primitive and even religious meanings to this idea. While there were fruitful approaches in this field of child research, they were hardly pursued by the majority of educationalists.