Other Japanese educations and Japanese education otherwise

Engaging with the More-Than-Human and Decolonial Turns in the Land of Shinto Cosmologies: “Negative” Comparative Education in Practice

“…While the "denaturalizing" potentials of comparative education research are important, this work tends to reinforce the binary national framing of differences, often in the form of West-East binary. As I have argued elsewhere, it not only falls short of addressing the domestic politics of schooling but could potentially present the hegemonic educational discourse as part of the Japanese cultural pattern of schooling, hence reinforcing the existing uneven power relations within Japan (Takayama, 2011a(Takayama, , 2011b. There is a concern here that the very cultural patterns of Japanese schooling, which international scholars identify and mobilize to relativize 50 ECNU Review of Education 3(1) the universalist premises of "theories," might serve to marginalize minoritized students in terms of "race," gender, class, and sexuality within Japan.…”

“…That is, the question of research rigor is often conflated with epistemologies in the so-called international scholarly field (deWaal, 2003; Takayama, 2011a; Tierney, 2018). Much of my recent writings have explored the tensions, possibilities, and challenges of writing across multiple language-based scholarly communities in comparative education (see Takayama, 2011a, 2011b, 2018, 2019). Writing across different national/linguistic communities of scholarship, especially when they are not in sync, requires us to take multiple epistemological positionings, that is, to assume different expectations, readerships, and scholarly conventions.…”

“…In the case of the international scholarship of Japanese education, this balance has been rather lopsided in favor of international relativism (Takayama, 2011a(Takayama, , 2011b. Much of the international scholarship of Japanese education positions Japanese education as a "denaturalizing" other.…”

“…possibilities, and challenges of writing across multiple language-based scholarly communities in comparative education (see Takayama, 2011aTakayama, , 2011bTakayama, , 2018Takayama, , 2019. Writing across different national/linguistic communities of scholarship, especially when they are not in sync, requires us to take multiple epistemological positionings, that is, to assume different expectations, readerships, and scholarly conventions.…”

“…In this article, hence, building on my earlier works (Takayama, 2011a(Takayama, , 2011b(Takayama, , 2018(Takayama, , 2019, I try to deepen my reflection on the potentials, risks, and contradictions involved in such linguistic/ epistemological crisscrossing work, this time, engaging with the current intellectual shifts triggered by the more-than-human ecofeminist and decolonial turns. Drawing on these recent intellectual shifts witnessed in the broader international scholarship of humanities, social science, and education, I explore what they actually mean in the context of Japanese education research and what tensions these theoretical positions might bring to my scholarship.…”