Professor Takehiko Kariya
Professor Takehiko Kariya joined the University of Oxford in 2008. After completing his BA and MA degrees at the University of Tokyo, he studied at Northwestern University in the US, where he got his PhD in Sociology in 1988. After going back to Japan, he worked at the National Institute of Multimedia Education from 1988 to 1991, and then moved to the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo, where he taught sociology of education for almost two decades until he came to Oxford. His teaching at Oxford includes the Sociology of Japanese Society and Research Methods for Japanese Studies.
Please note that Professor Takehiko Kariya will be retiring at the end of September 2024.
His research interests cover sociology of education; social stratification and social mobility; social changes of Postwar Japan; social and educational policies. In these areas, he has published 16 books in Japanese, including A Sociology of School, Occupations, and Selection (1991); The Rise of Mass Education Society (1995); Education in Crisis in Stratified Japan (won Osaragi-Jiro Rondan Shō Promotion Award in 2002); The Century of Education, (won Suntory Gakugei Shō, Academic Award in 2005); Education and Equality (2009); and Who killed Japan’s modernity? What Comes after ‘Catch-up’? (2019), (won the Humanities and Social Sciences Prize by the 74th Mainichi Shuppan Bunka Sho - The Mainichi Shimbun Culture Prize). Additionally, he has edited and co-authored 13 other books, and published more than 50 articles in Japanese academic journals. He was recently awarded a Japanese Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon (紫綬褒章), the Medal awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to academic and artistic developments, improvements, and accomplishments.
His books in English include Education Reform and Social Class in Japan (Routledge; https://www.routledge.com/Education-Reform-and-Social-Class-in-Japan-The...) published in 2013; and Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age (Teachers College Press; https://www.tcpress.com/education-equality-and-meritocracy-in-a-global-a...), co-authored with Jeremy Rappleye and published in 2020.
He is a co-editor of Challenges to Japanese Education: Economics, Reforms, and Human Rights (Teachers College Press, 2010; https://www.tcpress.com/challenges-to-japanese-education-9780807750537); and The State and Higher Education (Symposium Books, 2013; http://www.symposium-books.co.uk/bookdetails/83/).
Furthermore, he has recent published works in academic journals and books which include ‘From Credential Society to “Leaning Capital” Society: A Rearticulation of Class Formation in Japanese Education and Society’ (2009); ‘The End of Egalitarian Education in Japan?: The Effect of Policy Changes in Resource Distribution on Compulsory Education’ (2010); ‘Reimagining Self/Other: ‘catch-up across Japan’s three great education reforms’, (2011); ‘The State’s Role and Quasi-market in Higher Education: Japan’s Trilemma’ (2013); ‘Resource allocation, historical background of egalitarian education and its changes in Japan: A silent revolution and its unintended results’(2013; https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/education-in-east-asia-9781474235488/); ‘The two lost decades in education: the failure of reform’(2015); ‘Understanding structural changes in inequality in Japanese education: from selection to choice,’ (2017; https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317245346), ‘Education and Social Disparities in Japan’, In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (2018;http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.00...); ‘Meritocracy, Modernity, and the Completion of Catch-up: Problems and Paradoxes’ (2018); and ‘Can Non-Western Countries Escape From Catch-Up Modernity? The Troubling Case of Japan’s Education Reforms in a Global Era’ in The Oxford Handbook of Education and Globalization (2023; https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-education...).
