Democratizing Education, Adjusting Students: Occupation Reform, Pupil Guidance, and the Discourse of <i>Tekio</i> in Postwar Japan

Abstract The Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) sought to democratize the nation’s education system; pupil guidance was expected to play a key part of this process. American reformers promoted new guidance practices (e.g., the comprehensive collection of students’ personal data, guidance interventions based on the case-study method, an expanded homeroom curriculum) that emphasized the psychological adjustment —translated as tekio (適応)—of students to school and society in a new Japan. By tracing the evolution of prewar and postwar Japanese guidance discourse, this study examines how American pupil guidance’s emphasis on student adjustment interacted with, and transformed, twentieth-century Japanese education. Drawing from prewar, Occupation-era and post-independence sources, the essay explores three points. First, by comparing prewar life guidance with Occupation-era and post-independence pupil guidance , it emphasizes the important changes effected by tekio -oriented guidance during the late 1940s. Second, by examining the way these practices related to Occupation’s educational democratization, it explores how their psychological approach to democracy defined—and arguably constrained—the dynamism of this broader project. Lastly, the work discusses who supported and opposed this new tekio discourse. American authorities succeeded in garnering the support of many elites in Japanese education (e.g., Ministry of Education officials, leading academics), but other educators remained skeptical.