Education in a More Affluent Japan

Comparing with the other developing countries in Dore's book, it was only after Japan had reached a quite high level of industrialisation that the diploma disease appeared. Clearly there is a lot more work to be done on the link between the starting date of the modernisation drive, the late development effect and unique national factors. As is clear from the fact that the late development effect appears faster and appears in a more unmistakeable form the later development begins, it is an effect associated with low levels of economic development; in short with poverty. Should one then expect that when poverty is overcome and the society reaches a stage of affluence, the diploma disease will remain unchanged in incidence and character? If the advanced industrial countries also undergo a transition to a credentialling society as part of the ‘advanced country effect’, is there not some difference in character between the developing country type, and the advanced country type of diploma disease? And has Japan's diploma disease changed in transition from the one type to the other? Twenty years after the publication of Dore's book, these are the sort of questions which the Japanese case suggests one should tackle.