This document is an English-language abstract (approximately 1,500 words) of an article on preschool education. The author's first point is that early childhood education should be run separately from elementary education. It is true that the education of five year olds forms part of elementary education and is so practiced in the USA and the UK, but it is not desirable in Japan, where undue emphasis is already placed on intellectual development. Kindergarten should not be mere preparation for the first grade. Nurseries and kindergartens should be unified to cover all three to five year olds. Public and private kindergartens should be coordinated. In making early childhood education compulsory, not all private kindergartens should be turned into public ones. It is impossible to make early childhood education compulsory at one stroke because these institutions are so unequally distributed throughout the country. It should be done one age at a time, starting with the five year olds. More facilities and teachers are needed. Three thousand kindergartens are planned during the seven year scheme and 18,000 kindergarten teachers were to be trained by 1970. About a third of private kindergarten teachers are teaching with temporary certificates, so inservice training should be improved and intensified. (Author/GDB)