Conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is cranking out policies to strengthen the political grip on education, turning the postwar notion on its head that instruction of the nation's young people should be free of political influence.
During his first stint as prime minister in 2006, Abe revised the Fundamental Law of Education, which was brought into force during the U.S. Occupation and was aimed at "democratizing" the educational system based on a report by the U.S. educational mission.
The revised law maintained that nurturing morality and teaching students to love Japan is one of the purposes of education, something that the Occupation authorities wanted to deny under the belief that excessive patriotism fueled Japan's wars of aggression.