Discipline: Education, Social Science
The opportunities for higher education in Japan have been widely opened to any man or woman of intellectual calibre, but the status of the graduates in society remains pretty much fixed by which university or college one graduates from. Therefore, fierce competition among the many contenders becomes highly intensified by the time they become high school students. So much pressure upon their preparation for entrance examination practically eliminates any other activity and suppresses normal youthful life. The majority of those who go to the nation's first-class universities usually spend .one or two more extra years after high school, at preparatory schools. The long process of competition imposed upon them raises in many minds a serious question of the alienation of individuals from each other.