Although it may seem paradoxical at the outset to be reporting on something which one must immediately admit not to exist, there are, I think, some very good reasons for giving consideration to the current status of school psychology in Japan.
Often we may see our own foibles mirrored in the deficiencies of others. If we can persuade ourselves that the phenomena so apparent in the behavior of others are relevant to an understanding of our own responses, we may learn a great deal. Moreover, the psychological community, now nearly worldwide, would do well in any case to keep informed concerning developments in all its parts.
During a visit to Japan in the summer of 1963, I made a deliberate effort to find out what I could about the status of school psychology in Japan. I was quite surprised to find that school psychology is unknown there. In fact, I was able to find only one instance of a psychologist actually employed in a school system, and he was employed in a secondary school for only one day each week. My surprise stems from the fact that there are now over two thousand members of the Japanese Psychological Association, and I have heard estimates as high as four thousand for the total number of psychologists in the country. That is the second largest number of psychologists in any country in the world.