Presentation Information
[U14-02]Obstacles to international Research in Japan: Working amidst academic dreams of isolationism, complexes and research de-funding - Return from 10 years experience★Invited Papers
*Christopher A Gomez1 (1.Kobe University Faculty of Maritime Sciences SABO Laboratory)
Keywords:
academic colonialism,Japan,academic racism,adaministrative instrumentalization,control,Michel Foucault
Born in the post-WW2 era in Western Europe (in 1978), and being educated through an academic realm that promoted exchanges and friendships between nations, I spent a significant amount of time in (then) West Germany and the UK as part of my younger years. Surfing the same wave after my PhD on Indonesian volcanoes, working in California on the Sacramento River, then in New Zealand on various geoscientic aspects, those experiences felt inclusive.
But, working in a country where the defeat of the war is never mentioned as such but named the "end of the war", where colleagues can bluntly state that two foreigners on the staff out of seventy is already too many, when in staff meetings colleagues can explain that classes taught in English instead of Japanese (for foreign students) is the end of academia, when at a society conference an older academic made a speech in 2025 on how Japan did not need foreigners and that Japanese were better scientists.... I knew something had changed between my idealistic young years and the present I was living in.
Behind those racist words however hides another reality, a sum of inadequacies to deal with 21st century reality. It is more a set of signs of systemic failures and the inability to fix those problems nor appropriately evolve to overcome the challenges that the emerging challenges that the academic communities are facing in Japan. Through examples of university administrative policies geared towards international collaboration, through a view of the role of foreign interventionism in Japan as well as the deep cultural stronghold of conservation and preservation (which is there for very good reasons), I am offering an inside view from an outsider perspective (insiders who never leave the stronghold do not know how the walls look like from the outside) in the challenges Japanese tertiary education and research is facing when engaging with foreigners... from administrative burden plaguing Japanese universities to Nobel Prize winners held like Olympic Winners, Victors and champions of Japanese superiority over the rest of the world, I will discuss how the national interests and international collaborations reveal the present state of affairs.
But, working in a country where the defeat of the war is never mentioned as such but named the "end of the war", where colleagues can bluntly state that two foreigners on the staff out of seventy is already too many, when in staff meetings colleagues can explain that classes taught in English instead of Japanese (for foreign students) is the end of academia, when at a society conference an older academic made a speech in 2025 on how Japan did not need foreigners and that Japanese were better scientists.... I knew something had changed between my idealistic young years and the present I was living in.
Behind those racist words however hides another reality, a sum of inadequacies to deal with 21st century reality. It is more a set of signs of systemic failures and the inability to fix those problems nor appropriately evolve to overcome the challenges that the emerging challenges that the academic communities are facing in Japan. Through examples of university administrative policies geared towards international collaboration, through a view of the role of foreign interventionism in Japan as well as the deep cultural stronghold of conservation and preservation (which is there for very good reasons), I am offering an inside view from an outsider perspective (insiders who never leave the stronghold do not know how the walls look like from the outside) in the challenges Japanese tertiary education and research is facing when engaging with foreigners... from administrative burden plaguing Japanese universities to Nobel Prize winners held like Olympic Winners, Victors and champions of Japanese superiority over the rest of the world, I will discuss how the national interests and international collaborations reveal the present state of affairs.