Robert W. Aspinall
Middle-Class Boys’ Schools in Japan and England
London: Routledge, 2025. 206 pages. Hardcover, $153.00; ebook, $48.44. ISBN 9781032380810 (hardcover), 9781003343417 (ebook).

In this book, Robert W. Aspinall examines middle-class boys’ schools in Japan and England though the lens of his own experience as a schoolboy in England and a teacher in Japan. By “middle-class schools” he refers to those established in England during the industrial revolution and those in Japan that emerged from the Meiji modernization period. In both countries, these schools would come to serve a growing middle class, offering, and perhaps also limiting, the potential for upward mobility. In his introduction, Aspinall refers to social anthropologist Roger Goodman, who notes: “We study things that we know about and that interest us. We tend, however, to be very bad at acknowledging that fact” (Goodman 2020, 29, quoted in Aspinall 2025, 5). Aspinall by contrast is very good at acknowledging his personal involvement in his study, making extensive use of diary entries from both his school days and teaching career. The book weaves Aspinall’s knowledge of Japanese history and school culture with his own personal experiences to give the reader a unique portrait of what defines Japanese and English boys’ school culture, how the middle class sustains itself through education, the implications of gendered schooling, and how changes in policies have affected educational institutions over time. Finally, Aspinall’s work clearly shows the importance that longitudinal experience within social institutions has for socio-anthropological research.

The book first gives a historical overview of social theories that lay the groundwork for the societal changes that ushered in our current models of equity in education. Aspinall discusses how Marxist ideology, with its focus on the contractual nature of the individual’s relationship to the dictatorial power of a capitalistic business model, sowed the seeds for further social theories developed later in the twentieth century, particularly those of Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, and finally, Pierre Bourdieu. Aspinall mentions Parsons’s student Ezra Vogel, who explored Parsons’s “structural functionalism” in his research on early 1960s Japanese society. Vogel furthered Parsons’s theory with research in postwar Japan that demonstrated how individuals work together, not just in company organizations, but on all levels of society. Vogel suggested that Japanese schools and other social organizations blend in an overarching sociocultural system to assign meaning and responsibility to each member of a family, company, or organization in meeting a common social goal. This work introduced scholars to the sociocultural characteristics behind Japan’s rise to economic success and helped to usher in a focus on the role education played in the creation of a strong middle class in works such as The Japanese Educational Challenge (White 1987), Japanese High Schools (Rohlen 1983), and The Japanese School (Duke 1986), just to name a few.

With this overview as a backdrop, Aspinall discusses his own experience as a schoolboy in England and then moves on to recount his work as a teacher in England and as a JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme) instructor at Daitoshi High School (pseudonym) in Japan. He uses Bourdieu’s theory of social and cultural capital to describe how the boys’ schools, both those he attended and taught at, reflect middle-class social ideals in Japan and England. His analysis focuses on how students accumulate social and cultural capital, how membership speaks to notions of gendered identities in both cultures, and how school association may or may not relate to the reproduction of social class. Out of this emerges a sort of Dahrendorf-like social model in which the chances and ligatures an individual is offered within a society reflect the values of that particular culture, making choice not truly as individualistic as one might imagine.

Bourdieu’s ideas regarding the types of capital that an individual possesses as they maneuver through the world are appropriate for this comparison. Social capital with its social connections and symbols gives group membership the power to shape a person’s life, both socioeconomically and personally. Meanwhile, cultural capital becomes a permanent part of an individual’s persona, a lasting possession in the form of educational credentials, the personal objects of achievement related to those credentials (degrees, books, etc.), as well as the culturally embodied capital transmitted seamlessly from parents to child in the early years of development. Aspinall realizes that certain sociocultural transformations have taken place since Bourdieu first proposed his theory but feels the notion of cultural capital remains useful in comparing boys’ schools in the United Kingdom and Japan. He shows us what happens within the schools, covering every aspect of school life: schedules, traditions, clubs, gendered identities, social pressures for change, and parental and social expectations. Social changes since his attendance are also discussed. So as not to leave girls out, he discusses the pressures on boys’ schools in both countries to turn coeducational and to address issues regarding diversity and inclusion.

Aspinall then proceeds to describe the history and ideology behind both the Japanese and British middle class boys’ school in order to make a fair comparison of schools that outwardly may seem quite similar. An important difference in their development was the pace of industrialization in the two countries. In England, developing earlier and one might say organically, schools of this type were intended to educate non-elite boys for the new opportunities emerging in the burgeoning business atmosphere of the nineteenth century. In Japan, which was developing in response to the existential threat posed by the West, boys’ schools were established to advance the interests of the nation and create a modern state out of the remnants of a feudal past. Aspinall credits the rise of the English middle class, with its spirit of industrious independence, as mainly responsible for the rise and continuity of these schools in England. Even in times of financial duress, English boys’ schools have strongly opposed being absorbed into a state-run system. He notes that in recent years, when some of these boys’ schools have become coeducational, they still hold tight to their independence from the state system in both curricular and financial regards. This deep reluctance to admit state control is in striking contrast to Japan’s school development. The nation-building role Japan’s schools played means it would be almost unthinkable for a school or sub-set of schools like boys’ schools to assert independence from government influence. However, government involvement also means government responsibility, making the government a ready target for blame when things go wrong.

Having carefully laid out the theoretical and historical background, Aspinall goes on to provide a more detailed picture of specific boys’ schools in the two countries. Sprinkling in vignettes from his own student and teacher experiences, he describes the physical buildings, daily schedules, friend networks, teachers, family support (emotional and financial), and intramural activities of the schools themselves. Aspinall is aware that though his own experiences are valuable sources of information, they necessarily offer a very limited perspective on something as dynamic and changing as a school. From this point the book relates these school observations to Bourdieu’s ideas regarding social and cultural capital and how they are reproduced. The notion of conformity as a strategy stands out in this regard, although the Japanese and British approaches to conformity hardly conform to each other.

One strong characteristic of all middle-class societies seems to be the desire to perpetuate family success, at least to the degree of remaining in the middle class if not actually rising higher. In Britain, as Aspinall notes, there was a tendency among students to rebel, or at least to make a pretense of rebelling, as a kind of rite of passage. The tendency was so strong and widespread as to constitute a mark of conformity in its own right. To whatever extent the boys may have felt they were truly rejecting their middle-classness, they were in fact, with unconscious irony, actually helping to secure their middle-class status. In Japan, by contrast, conformity is not disguised as anything else. While in the Japanese context it sometimes appears to be an end in itself, for students at an all-boys’ school, as Bourdieu might note, it constitutes the surest route to the perpetuation of social and cultural capital.

Aspinall also addresses the now unusual and perhaps outmoded nature of an all-boys’ school. He observes that despite the debates and changes, masculine values in these schools continue to have an appeal, as these qualities still have relevance for achievement in the modern professional world. Successful participation in the culture of a boys’ school can still be thought of as valuable preparation for life in a competitive society. Regarding Japan’s view of gendered education, Aspinall reminds the reader that despite its postwar coeducational reforms and possession of an equal rights amendment for women, Japan remains far more gendered than Britain, with a continued preference for males in positions of power and authority. Whereas an all-boys’ school may be something of an anachronism in the West, and even politically problematic, it most certainly is not in Japan.

The book then enters into a discussion of language, class, and education in which Aspinall addresses the core differences in the role and function of a national language in both countries. He argues that in Japan the national language (kokugo) helps to crystallize a sense of Japanese cultural belonging in the country as a whole despite the existence of many regional dialects. Language differences in Britain, however, serve to fragment society into social classes. Differences in accent and usage tend to stand as markers of one’s origins and education, often creating a class divide that cannot easily be overcome. In Japan, the national education curriculum educates students out of whatever regional accent they may have been exposed to at home, creating in the process a kind of nationwide language equality. Elite status in Japan is therefore not indicated or achieved by speaking with the right accent. It is instead largely a matter of attending the right schools. In Britain, however, attending the right schools is firmly tied to speaking with the right accent. Another difference is that rhetorical skill is not much valued in Japan, whereas in Britain it often amounts to one of education’s primary goals. As a teacher, Aspinall naturally brought his own rhetorical training to his job in Japan, actively promoting speech contests at his boys’ school. He was especially disappointed to find that his fellow teachers did not share his enthusiasm for developing these skills among their students, not realizing that in Japan saying the correct thing is far more important than saying something deliberately persuasive. In fact, saying the correct thing may itself be persuasive in so far as it shows an essential awareness of situation and feeling, whereas consciously persuasive speech may be regarded as tone deaf and manipulative.

If there is a weakness in this work, it is that we lose Aspinall’s personal perspective when his diary entries come to an end. Although he supplies us with well-documented examples of the sociocultural changes that have most impacted schools in the intervening years and the educational policy reforms that have been adopted to address these changes, this somewhat dry approach contrasts with Aspinall’s observations from personal experience. That said, the intimate accounts have now taken on a historical dimension, particularly those related to his school experience in England, and while interesting from that perspective, they naturally raise the question of contemporary relevance. This is an important issue in a book that seeks to compare schools in two very different places, since the addition of a temporal difference threatens to undermine the basis for meaningful comparison. To be sure, Aspinall is aware of this deficiency and updates his work with interviews that fill in the gaps nearly up to the time of publication. Overall, he offers us a remarkably comprehensive view of this interesting topic, enlivened by his insider knowledge as both student and teacher in middle-class boys’ schools coupled with his deep and intimate knowledge of the education systems of both England and Japan.

Michelle Henault Morrone
Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences