（8）Special Regulations concerning Educational Personnel

Questions with regard to the status and working conditions of teaching personnel arose as soon as the schools began to function again after the war. A number of ad hoc measures were taken to deal temporarily with these questions, but an overall regulatory policy was not clarified until the enactment of the Law concerning Special Regulations for Educational Public Service Personnel, which was promulgated on January 12, 1949, and put in force on that day. This legislation took into account the special role of the teacher in both the national and local public schools and prescribed somewhat different personnel regulations than those that applied to public officials in general. The employment and promotion of teachers was to be determined by means of nomination rather than a competitive examination. Other measures regulated teachers' status, duties, in-service training, and the like. Moreover, the autonomy of the university in matters related to its own teaching personnel, heretofore observed as custom, was written into law.

It is also noteworthy that during the social and' economic upheaval of the immediate postwar period, teachers banded together to form a number of unions to protect their working conditions. By June, 1947, a nationwide Japan Teachers' Union had been established, with the initial intent of pressing for the improvement of teachers' working conditions and the establishment of democratic education. Very quickly, however, political activities such as lobbying for specific educational policies and election canvassing came to play as important a role in the Union's activities and the Union came under heavy criticism for its "leftist orientation"; in June, 1952, at the time of its ninth regular convention, the Union issued a statement on Teachers' Moral Principles.