<Individual Papers>The various aspects of the “Kyouiku-Roudousya” concept in the Japan Teachers’ Union’s movements in early postwar years : A focus on the conflicts between the aspects of educator and laborer

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the “Kyouiku-Roudousya” concept and to re-examine the axis of conflict in the Japan Techers’ Union (JTU)’s movement from 1947 to 1951.The reason why I focus on these years is that 1947 was the year when the JTU was organized and 1951 was the year when it held its first Kyouken Taikai. I found that the “Kyouiku-Roudousya” concept had three aspects. The first aspect was to identify educators with laborers. Second was to emphasize the nature of labor and to claim the particularity of educational labor. Third was to emphasize the nature of educators more than the nature of laborers. And then, the relative strength of these aspects of discourse depended on the social situation in which the JTU found itself, and also the way scholars and intellectuals participated in its activities. These findings suggest that the JTU had not only the political axis of conflict but also that of “educators-laborers”. And if we don’t address this “educators-laborers” axis, we will misunderstand why the JTU acted so hard in the postwar years