Japanese Higher Education as Myth

Brian J. McVeigh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780765609243
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317467021
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

In this dismantling of the myth of Japanese "quality education", McVeigh investigates the consequences of what happens when statistical and corporatist forces monopolize the purpose of schooling and the boundary between education and employment is blurred.

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Introduction

The Potëmkin Factor

The fact is that Japan suffers both from a lack
of conceptual clarity about the nature and purposes of
the university and from the hollow and desultory
character of the education it offers.

—Nagai Michio (1971:4)

There is a dark spirit plaguing the Japanese university classroom. It is the ghost of opinions suppressed, voices lost, self-expressions discouraged, and individuality restrained. This ghost is malevolent, and in its vengeance demands silence, self-censorship, and indifference from the students it haunts. This specter often masks itself as “shyness,” “modesty,” “humility,” or some other “unique” cultural trait, perhaps ancient in origins, that only Japanese possess. But such disguises hide the baneful nature of this ghost.

In this book, I attempt to perform an autopsy on the corpse that this ghost belongs to, to dissect its anatomy and describe what drove this ghost to acts of retribution. But most of all, I am interested in what this ghost does to the students, as students, it haunts. Once out of the university classroom, it should be stressed, the haunting seems to cease and students do what students do everywhere; participate in clubs, meet and make friends, date, shop, and work part time. Eventually, they graduate, enter the labor force, and raise families. While it is very difficult to judge what the ghost has prevented them from learning, one wonders how much liberality of thought, generosity of spirit, and breadth of cultivation is not gained while in the university classroom.

The argument of this book is that most of Japan’s institutions of higher education do not accomplish their aims. My own working experiences in a number of Japan’s institutions of higher education since 1989 have shaped this book’s argument (in the next chapter I explain in more detail my research methods). However, it is worth noting at the outset that the claim that Japan’s higher education is malfunctioning is not news to the Japanese, who readily and incessantly describe their universities and colleges as “playgrounds,” “kindergartens for adults,” “places for enjoyment,” “resorts,” or “moratorium” before regular employment.¹ Japanese universities, according to one observer, “have become a Disneyland” (Hashizume 1998). Others characterize them as “Mickey Mouse universities” (Kajita 1996) or as places suffering from “leisure land-ization” (rejārando-ka). Or as one student put it, “university is just four years of freedom before we have to find a job.”² Others have a less cheerful view: “Although there are many universities around the country, they all appear in spirit just like the monotonous barracks of a military base” (Terashima 1999). According to some of my Japanese colleagues, Sugimoto is being generous when he writes that “Though called universities and colleges, most cases in the bottom half of this group of institutions do not really deserve the label” (1997:110). Most point out that “Very little teaching, and very little study, goes on at almost all undergraduate liberal-arts campuses. Graduate programs in all disciplines, meanwhile, range from seriously impaired to nonexistent. And far too many schools do not care” (Cutts 1997:60). In the words of one student, a well-known Japanese university’s graduate program is a “store opened for business with nothing to sell” (kaiten kyūgyō). Indeed, according to colleagues, standards at even the well-known universities are surprisingly low. Karel van Wolferen, who taught at Waseda University for four years, relates how he was told to pass all students as long as they attended class regularly (1989:85). Many universities and colleges are, in fact, institutional tokens, meant to stand for what are called universities and colleges outside Japan. Their actual purpose—regardless of their promising and inspiring pledges found in glossy and colorful brochures—is quite different from what one would ordinarily believe. Japan’s universities and colleges, taken together, are a nationwide educational failure.

None of this is new. Recognition of serious problems in Japan’s higher education system dates to the early postwar period, and scholars such as Ienaga (1962), Watanabe (1960), and others anticipated some of the problems that are now constantly discussed in councils, conferences, books, and in the media: for example, problems in research and education (Hattori ed. 1961); how private universities have lost their “individual characteristics” (Yomiuri shimbun chōsabu 1963) and kosei (individuality) (often a code word for “freedom” from the state); how quality has been corrupted by political economics (Pempel 1971, 1973); mismanagement at Tokyo University (Hall 1975); the sorry state of social sciences (Tsuratani 1985); personal descriptions of substandard academics (Bronfenbrenner 1985); and the desperate need for genuine reforms (Nishimura 1987). The title of Nagai’s Higher Education in Japan: Its Take-off and Crash (1971) speaks for itself, as does a chapter called “Educational Administration Has Turned Our Universities into Garbage” (Yayama 1993:199–208). Internationally, Japan’s higher education is often criticized, and much is made of the fact that Japan has so far only produced six Nobel laureates in the natural sciences (the United States has produced 179; Britain 67; Germany 61; France 21; and Switzerland 14). In University Reforms That Aim for the Future, the first chapter is called “The Actual State of University Students—Nine ‘Why’s’”: (1) Why can’t they write sentences? (2) Why can’t they write Chinese characters? (3) Why can’t they speak English? (4) Why do they hate science and math? (5) Why do they lack a sense of economics? (6) Why can’t they think critically? (7) Why do they lack physical strength? (8) Why do they cut classes? and (9) Why don’t they excel in both academic and martial arts? (Sugiyama and Yamagishi eds. 1996). As ironic as it may sound, more than one elderly Japanese has told me that when they attended school before 1945 (or not long afterward) they were taught to think critically and to be independent: “Today’s students are different—they do not represent true Japanese education,” a man in his early seventies once told me, shaking his head as he sighed.

More currently, headlines regularly appear such as “Soul-searching over the intellectual decline of Japanese universities” (Oikawa 1999), “Universities rotting within” (Katsuta 1995), “Govt report slams university education system” (1998), “Curing the lazy professor” (Yamagawa 1996), “A thing or two that professors need to learn” (Kajita 1996), and “Where to with Japan’s universities?” (Coulmas 1993). Truant students are such a problem that it makes national news: “in some universities and in some courses students can often get credits without even attending classes. Some skip classes or, even worse, do not go to school at all” (“Reconsider purpose of study,” 1998).

At the same time, what is considered newsworthy indicates just how much room there is for improvement: the first time a private university graduate was appointed as a professor in 1995 in a Tokyo University clinical department it became news (“Tokyo University medical faculty appoints outsider,” 1995), as did the establishment of a four-university interlibrary loan system (“College libraries turning over new leaf,” 1995) and an agreement among seventeen universities to allow the transfer of ten credits (“Grad schools to let credits be transferred,” 1997; “Strict grading, fall admissions urged for nation’s universities,” 1998). Changes instituted at Keiō, Ritsumeikan, Asia, Tōyō, and Tama Universities, while perhaps radical in Japan, are taken for granted in North America (from where ideas for reform often come) (“Private universities learn to change with the times,” 1994). Consider what one student at Keiō University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus had to say: “At the beginning of each semester, teachers show us the syllabuses so we know what we’re going to study. He also noted that students were free to visit their teacher’s office during certain hours, ‘for advice or just to talk’” (“Taking higher education higher,” 1994).

Also consider news about early admissions to university. While early admissions is quite common in the United States, it is almost unheard of in Japan. When it did happen, it was big news. Three talented students were allowed to skip their last year of high school and enroll in Chiba University. The program was originally limited to mathematics and science and only five slots were set aside each year, with only fourteen students taking the special test in 1998. It was reported that high schools discourage students from taking the special tests and according to an official of the Japan Teachers’ Union, “The high school system in Japan is not ready for this.” Such thinking illustrates well the special brand of “egalitarian” (i.e., standardized) education for which Japan is known. “The Education Ministry has put tight controls on the program.” So does Chiba University, which “keeps the students on a short leash. Officials refused to allow face-to-face interviews with them, insisting on written questions and responses” (Coleman 1999; see also “Gifted students hit the fast track … but early-entrance debate continues,” 1998; and Nakanishi 1998).

One can dismiss all the aforementioned as the usual media hype about failing educational institutions, falling academic standards, and tritely remark that—with a sigh of resignation—“there are bad students everywhere” (especially if one is an educator; after all, with their mission of constantly correcting, rectifying, and improving, teachers, instructors, and professors are the first to find fault). Or, one can adopt a more comprehensive and systematic perspective that takes into account the overwhelming bad news about Japanese higher education, that is, we are not dealing with just a few bad apples.

There are, of course, good students, professors, and departments, especially in the science and engineering programs, which supposedly are of better quality than social sciences and humanities (though it might be worth mentioning that the 1993 Gowman Report of the world’s universities ranked Tokyo University—the “Harvard of Japan”—ninety-third in the fields of science and technology [Fukukawa 1999]). But these are the exceptions. Schools with academic standards as commonly understood seem to be the exception. It is within this context that the president of Hokkai Gakuen University views his school as the exception and says that “We have made it a rule not to give flunking students a second chance, by having them retake examinations, for example…. Our university is relatively difficult to enter and it is certainly difficult to graduate from” (“Outside expertise boon to society,” 1998).

In any case, the barrage of official surveys, media reportage, on-the-ground observations, and anecdotes reporting on the lack of quality cannot all be wrong. For example, according to a survey of 5,000 first- and second-year students (mostly in economic departments), “One out of five students at private universities cannot solve questions on mathematics at the primary school level despite being enrolled in courses that require some knowledge of the subject” (“University students failing in basic mathematics,” 1998). In another survey of 601 students, 67.1 percent said they were studying a subject they did not understand, and among those studying natural sciences at state and local state universities (whose students are supposedly better than those in the social sciences and humanities), 85.1 percent reported having trouble following the lectures (“Freshmen worry about ability to grasp lectures,” 1999). It was also reported that among 503 universities and two-year colleges, about 30 percent have rimedeiaru kyōiku (remedial education) or supplementary lessons (hoshū jugyō), and among the same schools, about 70 percent reported that they have taken measures to deal with the problem of poor academic ability among students (faculty meeting memo; original source unknown). According to another Ministry of Education survey, “About 40 percent of universities modify their curricula for students whose high school education is partially lacking” (“Colleges adapting courses to match students’ needs,” 1997).

Such problems are not limited to low-prestige private institutions, but can also be found at the supposedly better-quality state schools. For example, another report revealed that nearly 80 percent of ninety-five state university deans reported that the academic levels of college students have declined, and “many cited a declining interest in getting actively involved in assignments” and “the poor ability of students to think logically and express their ideas.” At some universities, “students are made to read aloud in class because of poor reading skills in Japanese, let alone English.” One dean said, “We can no longer call my school a university education” (sic). The same survey revealed that about 50 percent of science department deans at state universities said they hold extra classes so students can catch up in their work. Measures include making classes more understandable, hiring teaching assistants, and increasing the course load (“Academic levels declining at universities,” 1999; “Universities face decline in student abilities,” 1999). There are other problems. The “Foreign Students Plan” (initiated in 1983) was supposed to increase Japan’s intake of foreign students to 100,000 by the year 2000, but after peaking at 53,847 in 1995, the plan was abandoned (“The elusive 100,000 target,” 1997; “Ministry admits projection for foreign students too high,” 1999; “Fewer exchange students prompt government to review program,” 1996).

For many of us, educational failure is associated with a lack of funding, facilities, or personnel. More ominously, images of dilapidated urban schools, broken windows, metal detectors in corridors, intra-classroom violence, and the drug scene come to mind. It is very difficult for many of us to associate educational disaster with a thousand universities and colleges—many of which are well-equipped—that now “graduate” approximately half a million students annually. But what many fail to see is that there are many forms of educational poverty, and as disheartening as decrepit buildings, senseless violence, and “social promotion” are, these are just more obvious expressions of educational failure. There are other types of educational failing, and the existence of many schools, students, teachers, and resources—as statistically impressive as they may be in Japan—does not in itself constitute academic quality. It does not, in fact, even constitute education in certain respects. Indeed, such quantity (often confused with quality by some observers), with universities and colleges readily, predictably, and mechanically graduating so many students, should alert us that something strange is occurring. “Thus the large number of students and institutions of higher education masks internal degeneration” (Nagai 1971: 4). We should also note that in spite of a declining youth population, new universities continue to be established and graduate school enrollments are booming. Indeed, the number of those progressing on to four-year universities is increasing (though enrollments at two-year colleges are declining) (Busch 1996) (see Appendix A, Table A5). The belief, shared by many, that demographic changes, easier examinations, and deregulation will somehow improve the quality of higher education lacks evidence.

The reasons for the nonperformance of Japan’s universities and colleges are, except perhaps for the details, not disputed—that is, Japan’s higher education has been sacrificed on the altar of rapid modernization, slain by the gods of statism and corporatist forces. This explanation requires some discussion (Chapter 3) and elsewhere I have explored some of these issues (McVeigh n.d.a), but for now consider the discourse about Japan’s educational problems. The discourse about educational reform, which saturates the media, relevant literature, and the pontifications of various experts, has been hung on terms such as “initiative,” “individuality,” “diversity,” “creativity,” “choice,” and “liberalization.” What some non-Japanese fail to realize is that in Japan this discourse carries a much heavier political load and has profound ethical implications. Indeed, the aforementioned terms, as cheerful and optimistic as they may seem, attract attention precisely because they point to what is patently lacking in Japanese schools. Talk about the need for “initiative” is not about students who just need a pep talk; rather, it is a recognition of what happens to people who are never asked to participate in class or are not taught the value of thinking critically in a systematic, publicly acceptable way. Talk about “diversity,” “creativity,” and “choice,” as if the problem were a lack of art classes or not enough optional classes, is a realization that students are starved for some basic schooling ingredients, a problem ultimately caused by interference by the state and economic interests. The real problem is that because students have been so thoroughly directed, guided, and monitored, “individuality” and “being creative” is the last thing on their minds when in a classroom. But make no mistake: it is not that students cannot be creative; they can be and are under the right circumstances, especially when left to their own devices outside the classroom. And they certainly do not lack individuality. The problem, in a certain sense, is simple: pretertiary level students are not given the mental breathing space and the time to be themselves. The problem is that they carry with them into the university classroom negative associations concerning self-presentation so that a disturbing number of them will not (i.e., not necessarily cannot) produce the simplest answers if called upon. According to one professor, “I have noticed that there is often not only a lack of ability, but even more a lack of willingness to put in any effort to learn something” (“Lazy days,” 1998). They have, it seems, been dissuaded from participating in their own schooling. As for “diversification,” there is a sneaking suspicion that the politico-economic elites have a particular view of what “diversification” means: by forcing the student population through a finely tuned educatio-examination machine, students are graded and firmly positioned in the sociopolitical pyramid. Not surprisingly, during my years in Japan, many of the less naive educators have told me they are cynical about real reform.

The point, as any analysis of the Japanese schooling system must take into account, is that many educational problems in Japan are political, not pedagogical. That is, these problems may manifest themselves in the classroom, but ultimately, as I argue in later chapters, their roots are in too much statist intervention, corporatist domination, and bureau...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables, Figures, and Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: The Potëmkin Factor
• 2. Myths, Mendacity, and Methodology
• 3. State, Nation, Capital, and Examinations: The Shattering of Knowledge
• 4. Gazing and Guiding: Japan’s Educatio-Examination Regime
• 5. Schooling for Silence: The Sociopsychology of Student Apathy
• 6. Japanese Higher Education as Simulated Schooling
• 7. Self-Orientalism Through Occidentalism: How “English” and “Foreigners” Nationalize Japanese Students
• 8. “Playing Dumb”: Students Who Pretend Not to Know
• 9. Lessons Learned in Higher Education
• 10. The Price of Simulated Schooling and “Reform”
• Appendix A: Statistics of Japanese Education
• Appendix B: Other Types of Postsecondary Schools in Japan
• Appendix C: Modes of Institutional Operation and Simulation
• References
• Index