In the early 1960s, Japan’s political leaders announced a new project of doubling the nation’s GDP within a decade. Inspired by sociologist Max Weber’s influential account of the American “Protestant Ethic,” education experts responded to this project by trying to invent a homegrown Japanese analogue that could instill a sense of religious vocation (tenshokukan) in students. Ministry of Education officials described the ideal product of such training as the “human figure we can hope for” (kitai sareru ningenzō), imagining a pious subject who was technically proficient yet immune to the deleterious influences of technological progress and sexual licentiousness. For all this celebration of religion as an aid to human resources development, constitutional prohibitions against direct confessional instruction in public schools remained in place, making it impossible to actually inculcate piety in Japanese youths. Although policy makers idealized the “human figure” who found personal fulfillment in work, in the end it was a stunningly dehumanizing testing regime that fostered the human capital capable of shouldering Japan’s explosive economic growth.