Review Section Some Recent Lessons in Japanese Education ROGER GOODMAN Ikuo Amano, Education andExamination in Modern Japan, translated by William K. J. Cummings and Fumiko Cummings with a foreword by Ronald P. Dore, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1990. pp. xxiii, 234. ¥5562. Edward R. Beauchamp and Richard Rubinger, Education in Japan: A Source Book, Garland Publishing Inc., NewYork and London, 1989. pp. 300. £22.50. Benjamin C. Duke (compiler and editor), Ten Great Educators of Modern Japan: A Japanese Perspective, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1989. (with a foreword by Edwin O. Reischauer). pp. 237. ¥5974. Teruhisa Horio, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan: State Authority and Intellectual Freedom, edited and translated by Steven Platzer, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1988. pp. xxvi, 410. Mike Howarth, Britain's Educational Reform: A Comparison with Japan, Routledge, London and NewYork, 1991. pp. xiv, 193. £35.00. Leonard James Schoppa, Education Reform in Japan: A Case of Immobilist Politics, Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series, London and New York, 1991. pp. xv, 319. £40.00. Education, it would seem, has become the latest 'key' to understanding Japanese economic success. The six books listed above are only a section-a superior section - of the sudden rush of books and articles which have appeared about Japanese education in the past two to three years. The reasons for this rush of publications are not hard to find. Previous attempts to explain Japan's economic growth in terms of unfair trading practices have been generally dismissed. The flurry of accounts of how-to-learn from Japanese management practice - such as the revised version of the sixteenth century classic The Book of Five Rings written originally by the samurai Miyamoto Musashi - also failed to have any effect on the growing trade deficits that western countries were developing with Japan. New explanations had to be found and education has been lighted upon not least because it is an explanation that the Japanese themelves are particularly keen on: the number of books in an average Japanese bookstore on Japanese education outweighs those on Japanese management practice by a significant margin.