Japanese Art Education: Introduction of Zokei-Asobi (Playful Art Study)

This article focuses on the activities of the Japanese art education group called Do no Kai, based in Osaka in the 1970s. Its activities were reportedly inspired by cultural trends around the early 1970s. The contents of Zokei-Asobi (hereafter referred to as Playful Art Study) were introduced for the first time in the 1977 revision of the 5th Elementary School Art and Handicraft Section of National Course of Study, but young teachers in the Do no Kai group practiced an embryonic form of Playful Art Study as early as the first half of the 1970s. To clarify the fundamental issues involved in its introduction and its effect on art education, I reviewed relevant literature of early Playful Art Study.