Social studies curriculum in Japan primarily adopts an inquiry-based design. This study analyzed the “National Curriculum Standards for Elementary Schools— social studies” and the textbook “New Social Studies,” published by Tokyo Shoseki in Japan, specifically examining units on change and causality. This study conducted a text analysis to examine the educational perspectives in the Japanese curriculum standards and to identify the characteristics and key elements of the textbook’s curriculum design. The findings revealed several key points: First, the Japanese curriculum standards emphasize the importance of providing educative guidance and adopting inquiry and problem-solving as primary learning methodologies. They provide specific descriptions of learning objectives, curriculum content, and content processing methods for each grade and unit. Second, the textbooks employ a structured approach of “grasp, investigate, integrate, and apply” as their guiding framework. They utilize the “exampleproblem” format as a scaffold for learning, enabling an integrated approach to inquiry learning. However, the analysis results revealed that the content generally neglects civic engagement and scarcely addresses the fourth dimension of the Inquiry Arc, which involves “communicating conclusions and taking informed action.” These findings provide a novel perspective and a reference for the development of Taiwan’s elementary social studies curriculum.