Engaging with the More-Than-Human and Decolonial Turns in the Land of Shinto Cosmologies - Negative Comparative Education in Practice

Oct 15, 2026

Explorative, self-reflective study extending a “negative” approach to comparative education through practice shaped by an academic workshop at East China Normal University. The article treats participation as a disruptive moment that challenges prior ways of knowing and being, reshaping the author’s engagement with ecofeminist and decolonial literature in relation to Japanese education. It focuses on reconsidering Shinto’s role in schooling and questioning the author’s settled liberal–left political identification.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Purpose

Design/Approach/Methods

Findings

Originality/Value

Negative learning

Linguistic and epistemological gaps

Writing in English and research recognition

Tensions and possibilities in cross-community writing

Engaging with the More-Than-Human and Decolonial Turns in the Land of Shinto Cosmologies:“Negative” Comparative Education in Practice Keita Takayama Kyoto University ECNU Review of Education 2020, Vol. 3(1) 46–65 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/2096531120906298](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120906298)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120906298)[journals.sagepub.com/home/roe](journals.sagepub.com/home/roe) Abstract Purpose: In this explorative, self-reflective article, I attempt to extend the methodological discussion of a “negative” approach to comparative education that I have recently articulated elsewhere. Here, I demonstrate how I attempted to put in practice negative comparative education by drawing on my experience at the Shanghai workshop, Beyond the Western Horizon in Educational Research, organized by Iveta Silova, Jeremy Rappleye, and Yun You at the East China Normal University. Design/Approach/Methods: I conceive my participation in the Shanghai workshop as a disruptive moment wherein my previous forms of knowing and being were challenged. More specifically, I discuss how my attempt to situate the ecofeminist and decolonial literature, the two of the three main bodies of literature introduced through the workshop, within the context of Japanese education triggered me to reconsider the role of Shinto in Japanese education and question my own firm identification with the liberal–left politics within Japan. Corresponding author: Keita Takayama, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. Email: [takayama.keita.7w@kyoto-u.ac.jp](takayama.keita.7w@kyoto-u.ac.jp) Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Findings: I reflect upon how the initial sense of discomfort and the remaining sense of ambivalence took me on a journey of unlearning and relearning about the limits of my knowing, my own political subjectivities, and the place of Shinto cosmologies in Japanese education. Originality/Value: I conclude the discussion with a few provisional thoughts that point us to an approach to comparative education that makes our research “a matter of concern” across multiple linguistically bounded, national and regional scholarly communities. Keywords Comparative education, decolonial, ecofeminism, negative education, Shinto Date received: 1 May 2019; accepted: 1 October 2019 Negative learning As someone who researches Japanese education and publishes both in English and in Japanese, I have always been keenly aware of the linguistic, cultural, and epistemological gaps between the body of international scholarship written in English, on the one hand, and the Japanese language scholarship of education, on the other. It is certainly not my intention to suggest that these two language-based scholarly communities are mutually exclusive and respectively monolithic. Indeed, many Japanese scholars are attuned to the current debates and new theoretical developments in the English-language scholarship, and there exist considerable differences in methodology among Japanese scholars. However, the irrefutable fact remains that the majority of Japanese education scholars write in Japanese only (Yonezawa et al., 2018), though a small number of scholars have been attempting to break this trend in recent years (see Okitsu et al., 2018) . By and large,

FAQs

What is the purpose of the article?

It extends the methodological discussion of a “negative” approach to comparative education and shows how that approach was put into practice through the author’s experience at a Shanghai workshop.

How does the author frame participation in the workshop?

Participation is treated as a disruptive moment that challenges the author’s previous forms of knowing and being, prompting rethinking of Shinto’s role in Japanese education.

What major issues does the author discuss under “negative learning”?

The author examines linguistic and epistemological gaps between English-language international scholarship and Japanese-language education scholarship, and the expectations for rigor in English-dominated venues.

Oct 15, 2026

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