Education in the East Asian region has been shaped through the layered interaction of diverse factors, including long-standing intellectual traditions and institutional frameworks, as well as rapid social transformations since the modern period, changes in political systems, tensions and cooperation in international relations, and shifts in economic development and demographic structures. Education is not merely a mechanism for the transmission of knowledge; it constitutes an important intellectual and institutional framework that reflects the values shared by each society, its historical consciousness, and its visions for the future. Analyzing education in this sense is therefore deeply connected to the foundations of social understanding.

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Scholarly examination of such educational formations goes beyond understanding the education systems of individual countries or regions. It enables the clarification of interrelationships, differences, and commonalities within East Asia as a regional space, and contributes to reconsidering the roles that education has played within international contexts. In this sense, such research provides the foundation for re-envisioning East Asia as a single intellectual space.

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Established on the basis of this shared perspective, the East Asian Institute for Educational Research focuses primarily on educational thought, educational systems, and educational practices in various parts of East Asia. Its objective is to examine these phenomena comprehensively in relation to their historical, social, and cultural contexts. Rather than limiting its focus to particular periods or institutional arrangements, the Institute adopts a long-term and comparative perspective in order to capture educational phenomena in their multiple dimensions.

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The Institute does not rely on any single academic discipline or methodological approach. While education serves as its central point of reference, the Institute places strong emphasis on collaboration with adjacent fields such as history, sociology, political science, and international relations. Recognizing the multilayered and complex nature of educational phenomena, it adopts pluralistic theoretical frameworks and analytical methods, advancing research through cross-disciplinary dialogue and cooperation. This orientation provides the basis for comparative and cross-referential research that avoids being confined within a single national perspective or normative framework.

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In its research activities, the Institute takes as its point of departure a careful examination and critical review of existing scholarship, and places strong emphasis on analysis grounded in diverse research materials and data. Ensuring transparency in research processes and analytical methods, as well as maintaining verifiability, are regarded as fundamental principles of academic inquiry. Without presupposing specific political positions or value judgments, the Institute places fidelity to academic procedures at the core of its research ethics and values the accumulation of careful and open scholarly debate.

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Furthermore, the Institute considers it an important mission not only to accumulate research outcomes in the form of academic articles and research reports, but also to disseminate them widely through public research meetings, symposia, and international exchanges. Academic research should not remain confined within closed specialist domains; rather, its significance is continually questioned and deepened through intellectual dialogue with society. At the same time, the Institute does not aim merely to respond to short-term social demands or topical concerns, but seeks to sustain the public nature of knowledge from a long-term perspective—an essential role of academic research institutions.

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Through collaboration with researchers and research institutions both in Japan and abroad, the East Asian Institute for Educational Research promotes academic exchange across national and linguistic boundaries and aims to contribute to the sustainable development of East Asian educational research. By fostering a forum in which diverse researchers learn from one another through dialogue and critical engagement, the Institute seeks to enhance research standards and open new intellectual possibilities. Moving forward, it remains committed to advancing East Asian educational research by balancing academic rigor with open and sustained dialogue.

                                                                                        Zhang Jian, Representative Director