What Is Tankyū?
— Japan's Integrated Study and Integrated Inquiry Periods, Explained

1. What "Inquiry" Means — a Cycle of Four Phases

Start with the definition. MEXT's official guide to the period for integrated study describes what inquiry-based learning looks like for a child as a repeating cycle of four phases:

1. Setting the question (kadai no settei) — finding one's own question, growing out of the curiosity and puzzlement that arise when looking at daily life and society
2. Gathering information (jōhō no shūshū) — collecting what is needed to work on the question
3. Organizing and analyzing (seiri/bunseki) — sorting the information and thinking it through
4. Summarizing and expressing (matome/hyōgen) — pulling together one's findings and ideas and expressing them

The key point is that one loop is not the end. The guide states explicitly that from the expression phase, learners "find a new question there and set off on further problem-solving, repeating the learning activity in a developmental way." At the same time it notes that "the four phases need not be understood rigidly" — the intended image is not a march through steps ①→④ but a spiral that moves back and forth while deepening.

2. The Period for Integrated Study — Grades 3 Through 9

The class period built around this inquiry cycle, from grade 3 of elementary school through the end of junior high, is the period for integrated study (sōgō-teki na gakushū no jikan). In the current Courses of Study (2017 promulgation), its goal opens with this sentence:

Two features are worth holding onto. First, "cross-disciplinary and integrated." The reading skills built in Japanese class, the data-handling built in arithmetic, the local knowledge from social studies — this period is designed to mobilize, across subject boundaries, the ways of seeing and thinking learned in each subject. The absence of a textbook is not neglect; the design has each school set the content to fit its region and its children.

Second, the latter half of the goal. Inquiry's endpoint does not stop at "solving the question" but extends to "coming to consider one's own way of living." Not: research a local issue, present, done. Rather, through that process, the learner's thoughts reach "how do I want to live?" — this is the period's distinctive feature, and the guide describes it, alongside the integration of subject-specific perspectives, as the "inquiring way of seeing and thinking" peculiar to this period.

3. The Name Changes in High School — Integrated Inquiry

In high school, the period becomes the period for integrated inquiry (sōgō-teki na tankyū no jikan). This was a change made in the current revision (2018 promulgation); before it, high schools also had the "period for integrated study." And it is not a mere relabeling. Following the Central Council for Education's December 2016 report, the official guide explains the intent: building on what students gained in integrated study in elementary and junior high, the high-school period was repositioned to give more weight to genuinely inquiry-driven activity.

Institutionally, the period for integrated inquiry is required of all students, with 3–6 credits by graduation (reducible to 2 where specially necessary). Inquiry is not a special program for elite college-prep schools — it is part of the formal curriculum every Japanese high schooler passes through.

4. The Heart of It: the Word-Order Inversion

So what actually differs between "study" and "inquiry"? In the previous article I introduced the method of reading the Courses of Study starting from the goal statements. Let's practice it here. Set the two opening sentences side by side and the difference surfaces.

Do you see it? "Question" and "way of living" have swapped places. In elementary and junior high, considering one's own way of living comes after — as the fruit of — the experience of solving questions. In high school, "while considering who one is and how to live" comes first, and on that basis the student discovers and solves questions. The official guide spells out the contrast: integrated study in the lower stages is "learning in which solving questions leads one to consider one's own way of living," while high-school integrated inquiry is "learning in which one discovers, and works to solve, questions inseparable from who one is and how one lives."

Unpacked, it comes to this. In elementary and junior high, whether the topic is the neighborhood's waste problem or revitalizing the shopping street, students first tackle the question in front of them, and through that experience come to think about their own lives. In high school the order turns around: the question "how do I want to live, who do I want to be?" enters the learning itself, and students are asked to find, by themselves, questions that cannot be separated from that — which is why inquiry in high school runs continuous with thinking about one's future path, career, and field of study. The verb "discover," present only on the high-school side, exists for the same reason: the weight on question-setting has increased.

5. Inquiry Spreads into the Subjects — Koten Tankyū, Risū Tankyū

In the current high-school Courses of Study, inquiry is no longer confined to the integrated-inquiry period. A series of subjects now carry tankyū in their names: Koten Tankyū (Classics Inquiry) in Japanese; Chiri Tankyū, Nihonshi Tankyū, Sekaishi Tankyū (Geography, Japanese History, and World History Inquiry) in geography–history; and Risū Tankyū Kiso and Risū Tankyū (Basic and Advanced Math–Science Inquiry) in the subject cluster Risū.

The subject-based inquiry courses put each discipline's own way of seeing and thinking to work in depth; the period for integrated inquiry crosses disciplinary lines. The two are a division of labor. When you spot tankyū on a timetable, checking whether it is inquiry inside a subject or the cross-disciplinary integrated period makes the school's curriculum design much easier to read.

6. What Teachers and Parents Can Do with This

For teachers — design units around movement among the four phases

If you go back to the standards and guides when building an integrated-study unit, two things reward attention. One: do not treat the four phases rigidly. A schedule that marches once through ①→④ fits the guide's picture of inquiry less well than a design that builds in returns — from analysis back to question-setting, from mid-summary back to more gathering. Two: give question-setting real time. Especially in high school, where "discover" entered the goal, designing the moments where students form questions — rather than receive them — decides the quality of the unit.

For parents — ask about the question, not the answer

When integrated study or inquiry comes up at home, the response most in tune with the design is, I think, to ask about the question rather than the product: "So what question are you chasing right now?" Inquiry learning is designed to be seen as the whole process from question-setting to expression, not as whether a right answer was reached. And knowing that high-school inquiry is tied to "who one is and how to live" helps you see that a student's choice of inquiry theme is naturally continuous with conversations about their future path.

7. What the Next Revision May Do to "Sōgō"

Finally, a look at the deliberations now under way on the next Courses of Study. The "issues paper" published on September 25, 2025 by the Central Council for Education's Special Committee on Curriculum Planning lays out directions that touch this period directly: for elementary schools, a framework of "the period for integrated study + an information domain (provisional name)"; for junior high, coordination with a provisional "information and technology" subject; for high school, continuing the period for integrated inquiry with its "questions inseparable from who one is and how one lives"; and, across all subjects, enriching learning activities with inquiry elements.

In short, the deliberations are moving toward giving inquiry even more weight. All of this, though, is still at the issues-paper stage and may change through the Council's report (planned within fiscal 2026) and the eventual promulgation. I will be following the deliberations in my upcoming "next Courses of Study watch" series.

8. Summary

The sorting-out and suggestions here are one way of looking at it. Integrated study and inquiry are periods with wide school-by-school variation, so if you have thoughts — "our school builds it this way," "here is how I ask at home" — I would love to hear them via the contact form (the article name is filled in automatically).