Paper short abstract:

This paper will aim at clarifying the impact of school curriculum and civic education on youth engagement in contemporary Japan, by analysing three types of data: official documents and textbooks, surveys and existing Japanese literature, and interviews with students.

Paper long abstract:

It has been noted that, since the lowering of legal voting age in 2015, new citizens between the ages of 18 and 20 vote at a significantly higher rate than those between 21 and 30 (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2022). Could it be possible that the educational curriculum, in particular the 2018 reform of civic education courses in middle and high school (MEXT, 2018), was a decisive factor in this positive outcome? Japanese students learn about the functioning of their political system through two compulsory courses: "civic education" (kōmin, middle school). and "public" (kōkyō, high school). However, being confronted with political knowledge does not guarantee a better civic engagement (Campbell, 2006).

We consider that contemporary Japan, where youth engagement has been analysed as especially low (Endo and Jou, 2016), is an accurate case to investigate the complex relationship between education and engagement. On the one hand, this requires an analysis of various characteristics of curricula beyond class content, such as classroom climate and extracurricular activities; and, on the other hand, to connect them to the various forms of engagement, beyond conventional politics. Although citizenship courses in Japan seem to offer the content needed for understanding domestic politics, their top-down teaching method has been considered a weakness in critical thinking skills (Takeshima, 2016).

This paper will aim at clarifying the impact of civic education on youth engagement in contemporary Japan. To do so, it will first analyse the curricula and class content since the 2018 reform, so as to understand what perspective on domestic politics it offers students, as well as the way classes are taught. Second, it will study the representations of students, after being equipped with civic education, in order to better identify what skills and knowledge remain from this period of their lives. Thus, the paper will combine three types of data – official documents and textbooks, surveys and existing Japanese literature, interviews with students – in order to identify if civic education may be considered as a significant factor on the supposedly lack of interest in politics within the coming generation.