Risk management by a neoliberal state: construction of new knowledge through lifelong learning in Japan

This article examines the current developments in Japan's lifelong learning policy and practices. I argue that promoting lifelong learning is an action that manages the risks of governance for the neoliberal state. Implementing a new lifelong learning policy involves the employment of a political technique toward integrating the currently divided and polarized Japanese population popularly called kakusa into the newly imagined collective, namely, atarashii kokyo or the New Public Commons. Examining the macro policy discourse on Japan's educational policy, this article demonstrates Japan's inflections of neoliberal governmentality with the new distribution of responsibility between the state and the individuals through the construction of new knowledge supporting the New Public Commons. In fact, new knowledge is the epicenter of the national educational policy discourse aiming at generating social solidarity in local communities.