<p>Studies on educational practice and research overseas have been very popular in Japan, a nation with a centralized national curriculum system. In particular, in the social studies subject field, many studies have been conducted in geography education. However, much of this research has focused on the state of geography education in specific countries, like the United States, European countries, and Australia, or on introducing the Japanese situation to non-Japanese people. Few studies have provided a comprehensive international comparative perspective on geography education. To address this gap and foster more research of this sort in the future, we have to grasp the past and present state of geography education practice and research around the world, that is, from a historical and global viewpoint. In pursuit of this goal, this paper aims to focus on the Commission of Geographical Education (CGE) of the International Geographical Union (IGU).</p><p>CGE, established in 1952 under UNESCO’s mandate to promote education in the service of the goal of peace, has had as a perennial focus on professional geography teacher education research, as well as a succession of other research themes from international understanding to teaching/learning theory, environmental education, and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The IGU-CGE conference in Tokyo in 1980 was a turning point for participation in CGE activities by Japanese researchers and teachers. The 1992 IGU-CGE Conference in Colorado and Washington, D. C., which many Japanese also attended, provided significant encouragement to the international geography learning resources development project, and to research.</p><p>Papers in International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE), published since 1992 by CGE, have presented much valuable information. One such paper, which investigated the state of geography education practices around the world, informs us that the regional geography curriculum approach has never been rejected entirely, as previous Japanese research had reported. Some other papers have revealed the controversy surrounding the relationship between geography education and environmental education, which revolved around the fundamental nature of the values and attitudes embodied in the geography classroom. One consequence of this debate was a decrease in papers specifically focused on environmental education in IRGEE.</p><p>Based on the above observations, a sense of the uniqueness of Japanese geography education emerges: namely, it ascribes greater importance than geography education in other countries to the understanding of regional geography, in particular covering all regions in the same detail. This implies a need for students to master an enormous amount of factual knowledge. In order to resolve this issue, it will be necessary to reconsider the sequence of the Japanese geography curriculum and the concept of a “region” in Japan, with reference to the expertise of academic geographers and the successes of IGU-CGE.</p>