Revival of Imperial Rescript on Education

Shinzo Abe administration decided on Friday that Imperial Rescript on Education, which had been an ideological guideline for education in pre-war Japan, would not be rejected as an educational text. Although IRE was resolved in the Diet to be excluded and void in 1948, Abe administration looks like reviving the spell for making the people servants for state power. IRE calls the people our subjects.

IRE was the lesson of Meiji Emperor to the people issued in 1890. “Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education,” says the rescript.

IRE is used for determining the relationship between the people and the Emperor. While it lays moral standard in ordinary relationship, including respect for parents, cooperation of brothers and sisters, harmony of spouses or reliance between friends, IRE requires the people to obey national cause. “Should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State, and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne,” tells the rescript.

Minister of Defense, Tomomi Inada, had said in an interview to a magazine in 2006 that Japan had to regain the core concept of IRE, which required morality of the people or the state. In the discussion in House of Councillors last March, Inada still insisted on her conviction that IRE should not be excluded from public education. A member of House of Representatives, Akihiro Hatsushika, submitted questions to Abe Cabinet last month that pointed inconsistence of the Diet resolution in 1948, which defined IRE as based on imperial sovereignty and mythical state body.

The answer of Abe Cabinet was something surprising. While it rejected an education solely rooted on IRE, the answer allowed the schools to use IRE as a text as long as it would not violate Constitution of Japan or Basic Act on Education. Fundamental error of Abe Cabinet was to giving power to an abolished educational guideline in Imperial Japan, contradicting its past definition of IRE as void.

True lesson of IRE is that it was taken advantage of by highly bureaucratic pre-war government to mobilize people to a hopeless war. IRE was abolished as a symbolic concept of Imperial rule and to establish people’s sovereignty in post-war Japan. Respect for parents, brotherhood or good relationship with friends has already been discussed without IRE in the classes of morality. Abe administration is highly interested in sneaking into individual mind.