Bücher der Reihe Routledge Studies in Education and Society in Asia

This book analyses the portrayal of Japan in the societies of East and Southeast Asia, and asks how and why this has changed in recent decades, and what these changing images of Japan reveal about the ways in which these societies construct their own identities. It examines the role played by Japan, as an Other, in the construction of national selves across the East Asian region, and examines the views fostered through a broad range of media ranging from school curricula and textbooks to film, television, literature and comics.

This book analyses the efforts throughout East Asia to deploy education for purposes of political socialization, and in particular in order to shape notions of identity. Written by a group of international education experts chapters discuss the enduring focus on the role of curricula in inculcating homogenous visions of the national self, and indeed homogenized visions of significant 'others'. The book also looks at the alternative approaches to textbook design, including the new trend of common textbook initiatives which operate with the aim of defusing the tensions that mutual representation have tended to fuel. It also breaks new ground in the alaysis of East Asia's textbook wars by including contributions from scholars and curriculum developers involved in writing national and multi-national history textbooks.

This book presents analyses of a range of contemporary projects of citizenship formation across Asia in order to identify those issues and concerns most central to Asian debates over the construction of modern identities. The book main focus is on schooling, but also features other vehicles for citizenship-formation, such as museums and the internet; the role of religion (in particular Islam) in debates over citizenship and identity in certain Asian societies; and the relationship between state-centred identity discourses and the experience of increasingly `globalized¿ elites.