In 1958 the Japanese government introduced “morality time” (dōtoku no jikan) in Japanese public schools as a way of counteracting perceived social ills. The move was hotly contested. Some stakeholders saw morality training as indispensable in a period of rapid economic growth. Others saw morality education as a throwback to the self-cultivation (shūshin) classes of wartime Japan. School teachers dragged their feet on rolling out the new (vaguely defined) curriculum, while policy wonks said that schools had a responsibility to foster moral dispositions. Behind all of this lay a fierce debate about whether morality was inherently religious and whether schools were the proper places to instill it.