Page 17 - Japanese Growth and Education: 演講人：Motohisa Kaneko教授

Japan’s Development and Education - Past, Present and Future -c117

workplace. Lifetime employment provided its basis.

Even college graduates were not necessarily required to be equipped with
specialized and theoretical knowledge taught at college. They were required
to have a high level of basic academic ability to participate in creation of

knowledge and absorb what had been created. Such an informal process of
creation, accumulation and sharing of knowledge in working organization is
considered to be the critical key to efficiency.

From this perspective, the fierce competition over admission on more
selective institutions constituted a very refined system to locate academic ability.
Entrance examination became increasingly elaborate to measure academic
achievement, albeit at the time of entrance to college, rather than graduation.

It gave the business enterprises a good means of locating of basic competence,
which presumably provides the basis for the kind of knowledge and skill

formation in the workplace.

J-Mode as a development strategy

The arguments above indicate that the J-mode functioned as a mechanism
of connecting education and economy in an unique way.

First, it worked as a mechanism to mobilize financial resources into the
education system. Through the period of rapid economic growth, the growth of
government revenue was limited relative to the growth of GNP. The surplus was

spent on investment for further economic development. As it was pointed out
above, the government concentrated its limited resources on upgrading basic
education, and on building capacities of higher education institutions to train

strategic manpower for economic growth. The rest of educational opportunity
was financed by the contribution from the family.