The historical span of institutionalized teaching and learning in Japan is ancient, dwarfing the hundred or so years of public schooling. This obvious point carries a less obvious implication – that much that is taken for granted about the subject actually has deep historical roots. We begin this book with two portraits of training in contemporary institutions, a monastery and a corporation, where approaches to teaching and learning are clearly derived from premodern ideas and practices.

As will be evident, both the Zen monastic training and character-building exercises in a particular bank are similar in having personal growth as their primary focus. Unlike formal schooling, they are not preoccupied with the ultimate goal of teaching knowledge deemed useful to life in an industrial society. Very little in either approach rests on the written or spoken word, and a great deal depends on experiences designed to teach via psychic and physical challenges. Confusion, pain, loneliness, and many other sources of disequilibrium are thus utilized as teachers. How old or uniquely Japanese are such approaches? The question of historical roots is easier to answer in the case of the Zen monastery. Zen Buddhism entered Japan in the seventh and eighth centuries from China, where it had already been established for over a century. The roots of Zen trace back to India and the centrality of meditation (dhyana).