Japanese Science

Samuel Coleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781136776168
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This ethnographic study of Japan's scientists looks firsthand at career structures and organizational issues that have hampered the advancement of scientists and scientific research in Japan. It provides analysis of the problem of career mobility in science, the status quo in university and government laboratories, relations between scientists and

1
INTRODUCTION

This is a book about the careers and aspirations of Japan’s scientists, with special attention to its bioscientists (the laboratory scientists who study the workings of the cell through biology, chemistry, and physics). At first glance, Japan would not be a particularly interesting country in which to study any of the sciences. As the twentieth century closes, Japan has yet to capture more than 1 per cent of the Nobel Prizes ever awarded in the sciences. And many commentators, Western and Japanese, have stated that good science, after all, requires original and innovative expression, which Japanese society seems to suppress in the name of consensus and group discipline. But what if there were Japanese scientists in an area of research that, despite a lackluster showing in the past, had the potential to attain world leadership, given a different organizational configuration? A closer look at the organization of those scientists’ efforts – in particular, the ways in which individual scientific careers are rewarded – would tell us something about the makings of an internationally competitive science community as well as the place of the individual in Japanese society.

The life sciences now account for some of the most profound and far-reaching developments in the sciences today, making them a good candidate for a closer examination of the organizational state of Japanese science as the century ends. Japan’s 128,000 bioscientists are part of an exciting and important worldwide quest. Thanks to techniques for replicating and connecting portions of DNA molecules in new combinations, it is now possible to analyze the properties of a wide range of genes and proteins and their relationships with each other, affording detailed insight into such grand processes in the evolution of life as speciation, growth, maturation, and death.

Although most of us will have little contact with these questions, the laboratory tools devised to investigate them are spawning new technologies. Among basic science fields the life sciences have a particularly close connection to applications. Some are still on various drawing boards, others are in widespread use already, and many will exert profound influences on the way we live. Human genes have been inserted into bacteria to generate proteins for medicinal purposes. Many genes controlling susceptibility to major diseases have been identified, aiding prediction and treatment of ailments. The potential applications from bioscience are wide-ranging and surprising, sometimes delightfully so. My own favorite examples involve the genes that generate light in fireflies or luminescent squid; they are now used in biochemical assays, and inserting such genes into the DNA of various shrub species may offer an energy-efficient form of illumination for airport runways and highway shoulders.

The industrial potential of these innovations represents several tens of billions of dollars in markets worldwide, but the new knowledge generated by the life sciences also offers applications in critical fields of public concern as diverse as epidemiology, energy conservation, and ecosystems management. This potential has been recognized among Japan’s science policy makers for some time. Official statements citing the importance of research in the life sciences have appeared with increasing frequency since the prestigious Council on Science and Technology (Kagaku Gijutsu Kaigi) submitted its 1971 recommendation (STA 1994: 409–10).

Upward trends and bright spots

Japan is making notable progress in the life sciences. International publications by Japanese authors show a clear increase in frequency that began in the early 1970s (Garfield 1987). Between 1988 and 1994, the absolute number of Japanese articles appearing in international journals covered by the Medline data base increased by over 60 per cent (Yamazaki 1996a: 18). Japan overtook the United Kingdom in the late 1980s as the world’s second largest producer of internationally published papers in the fields of biochemistry, genetics, cancer research, and neurology (Yamazaki 1996b: 396). In 1990, the American-based Institute for Scientific Information could report that Japanese biology had displayed “robust growth” in its share of articles in the world’s leading scientific journals (Science Watch 1990: 7).

The top medical schools in Japan are now producing, per researcher, as many international publications as their prestigious Western counterparts, according to a careful study examining international life science journals in the first half of 1993; indeed, Kyushu University’s figure of 0.94 publications per year per researcher, which approached the figure of 1.01 for Oxford, nearly trebled that of the Johns Hopkins University (Yamazaki 1994: 125). As Japanese bioscientists have turned more to the international scientific community, they have also devoted less effort to domestic publication activity. Between 1988 and 1994, the number of life science papers published in Japanese decreased by 23 per cent; in that same period, output of international papers rose from a rough parity with domestic publications to well over twice their number (Yamazaki 1996a: 18).

In this same period, several Japanese biomedical researchers have attained international prominence. The most cited scientific paper of the 1980s (with 3,074 “hits” – i.e. citations by other authors) was a 1984 publication in Nature by Kobe University’s Yasutomi Nishizuka on protein kinase C (an enzyme that plays a critical role in intracellular processes). Other well-known and well-cited scientists today include Osamu Hayaishi (the oxygenases and prostaglandins), Tasuku Honjo (molecular immunology), the late Shosaku Numa (sodium channels), and Tadatsugu Taniguchi (cellular responses to cytokines).

Individual Japanese biomedical researchers have been recognized internationally for well over a hundred years. Shibasaburo Kitasato produced the world’s first pure culture of the tetanus bacterium in 1889, and by the next year had also proved the existence of the bacterium’s antitoxin. These advances enabled Japan’s pioneer development of serological therapy for cholera and diphtheria as well as tetanus (Iinuma n.d.; Bartholomew 1989: 122). Kitasato’s student, Kiyoshi Shiga, had discovered the bacillus that causes dysentery. (Shiga was only 27 years old at the time.) Jokichi Takamine was the first to identify and isolate adrenalin, in 1900. Umetaro Suzuki discovered Vitamin B-1 and reported it in 1911, at the time that chemist Casimir Funk announced similar experimental results. At the time of World War I, Tokyo University pathologist Katsusaburo Yamagiwa devised a technique for inducing tumors in experimental animals that became an important building block for modern oncology (Bartholomew 1989: 55).

Persisting mediocrity

Despite bright spots throughout the sciences such as these, Japan’s scientists have yet to claim a prominent international position. One indication of the quality of internationally published research is its “impact,” or the extent to which other specialists make use of it and cite it in their own articles. Citations per published scientific paper by Japanese authors between 1981 and 1994 barely exceeded half the American rate (May 1997: 793). Citations for Japanese contributions in the life sciences were noticeably weak in proportion to their share of world papers. Figure 1.1, based on all of the articles published between 1989 and 1993 by Japanese authors, makes the point by comparing the percentage of all international scientific publications by Japanese authors and the extent to which they are cited by all authors in their fields worldwide. In most life science fields, the publications are not generating attention commensurate with their presence. This conclusion agrees with the results of previous investigations covering the late 1980s (reported in Garfield 1987: 344 and Swinbanks 1991). The figure also suggests that the most activity and recognition belongs to applied physics, an area – as its name indicates – that is oriented to industrial applications.

Figure 1.1 World publishing activity and impact 1989–93

(adapted from Barker 1996)

Comparing Japan’s performance in the life sciences with the United States’ has limited meaning because the United States is an unrivaled powerhouse of scientific activity, in a class by itself in resources and accomplishment. Postwar Nobel laureates in the natural sciences awarded to American scientists numbered 156 as of 1995, a figure almost four times the 41 won by the United Kingdom, its closest rival. In the mid-1990s, spending on research in the United States (calculated in terms of buying power) towered over other countries’, easily doubling the amount spent in Japan. The United States’ spending on research and development in 1995 nearly equaled the total of the next six largest spenders combined, a position the US has held for a decade (NSB 1998: 4–35).

We could leave the United States out of the comparison and still find room for dissatisfaction with Japan’s life sciences, however. Japan’s economy, second only to the United States’ in size, has a Gross Domestic Product twice as large as Germany’s and well over four times the size of the United Kingdom’s. Japan’s wealth and its high level of technoeconomic sophistication have led observers to expect more from its scientists. When Science magazine (1992a: 564) compared Japan’s output of academic papers in the previous decade with those of the United States, UK, Germany and France, it found that Japan’s total output was small overall, and output proved the lowest when controlled for Gross National Product (i.e., number of papers per billion dollars GNP). The previously mentioned 1981 to 1994 tally of citation impact placed Japan eighteenth in international rankings (May 1997: 793). A comparison with European nations in the number of Nobel Prizes in the sciences also reflects the relative paucity of great developments in any of the natural sciences. As of 1995, Japan could claim only five, all earned since the end of World War II; Germany, by contrast, had won a total of twenty-five in the same period. Only one of Japan’s was in Medicine or Physiology.

Japan’s scientists appraise their efforts in basic research similarly: Japan, they say, is behind the West, particularly in the life sciences. Japanese researchers surveyed by the Science and Technology Agency in 1996 evaluated basic research in the United States and Europe more highly than their own in the three fields of life science, materials, and marine and earth sciences, and placed the United States (but not Europe) ahead in information science and electronics, the fourth field surveyed (STA 1997b: 44). A 1987 nationwide survey of liaison members and organizations by the Japan Science Council typified their country’s life science research as plentiful in work that builds on subjects and methods from abroad, but has “little in the way of creative research in the true sense.” The report asserted that worldwide appraisal of Japanese life sciences was high “in general,” but regretfully acknowledged that “there is not much in original, creative research of the kind that leads the world” (JSC 1988: 171–2). That assessment remains the same among Japan’s life scientists (IHEP 1996), including the ones whom I interviewed and with whom I have worked throughout the 1990s as well.

Scientific versus technological success

The suggestion that the Japanese could be unsuccessful in their laboratories seems to contradict Japan’s record of exquisite successes over the past several decades over a broad range of technologies, from transistor radios to earthquake-resistant building design to low pollution automobile engines. The problem at hand, however, is basic research as opposed to research devoted to the development of various technologies. The growing intimacy of connections between basic and applied – or between “science” and “technology” – has brought many to conclude that the two activities are hopelessly blurred. For that reason, I must beg the reader’s patience as I pose a distinction between the two types of effort, for we can distinguish qualitatively different ends even when the means are identical procedures conducted in one laboratory with the same equipment.

Science is public knowledge building that formulates fundamental laws behind natural phenomena. Its practitioners make public statements about such lawful properties, in ways that allow fellow observers to test them. The more far-reaching (that is, systematically influential) the mechanism explained, the better the science. A classical (by now shopworn) example is work elucidating the structure of DNA. Technology is a product, an embodiment with a specific use, and it typically can be sold for profit. Whatever information that is provided with it is just enough knowledge to make the product work, as opposed to the exposition of a generalizable principle.

The science-technology distinction proves its viability by helping to explain the contrast between industry-based and academic researchers in their career aspirations and approaches to research, presented in Chapter 4. The evolving relationship between science and technology also helps in predicting the future strength of Japan’s science, ventured in Chapter 8. Even if we were to confine our discussion of Japan’s research and development track record to industrial applications, however, the pattern does not suggest a continuation of Japan’s past successes. The survey of Japan’s R&D specialists who placed the West ahead in basic research also compared capabilities in applied research and development. Respondents gave the United States superior marks in all six of the fields surveyed (energy and production processes and machinery were added to the four fields surveyed for basic research), and they placed the Europeans ahead of themselves in life sciences and marine and earth sciences. In every category, including those in which Japan was judged superior, the West had gained ground since the same question was posed in 1993 (STA 1997a: 39). A survey of major Japanese corporations by the Japan Economic Journal in 1998 also found industrial R&D specialists giving superior marks to the West in biotechnology and software, though claiming a much stronger position for Japanese industry in robotics and automobiles (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1998).

Funding priorities

One well-known reason for Japan’s less-than-expected showing in the sciences is the country’s budgetary emphasis on commercialization of technology. Although the absolute figure for Japan’s total research budget leads those of the Western European countries, over 70 per cent has come from industry, which targets applications for profit; some 20 per cent of the money spent on research and development in Japan has come from the government – about half to two thirds of the proportion that governments in other major industrialized countries spend (STA 1994: 315; NSB 1998: A–179). In the decade since 1984 about 72 per cent of Japan’s research money excluding social sciences and humanities has gone to development and another 22 per cent has gone to applied research, leaving to basic around 6 per cent of the research total (MCA 1996: 43). Universities in Japan spend about 13 per cent of the country’s natural science research money – lower than the United States and lower than the proportion for university research in Western European countries, though not far from their average of 16 per cent (calculated using STA 1996:104). The proportion is higher in the life sciences, but here as well companies have accounted for half of the spending (calculated using MCA 1996: 221).

One of the hallmarks of academic scientific research in Japan has been its material poverty. In the early 1990s, Japan’s spending on university research as a proportion of gross national product represented less than half the proportion spent in either the United States or former West Germany (Nagakura and Kikumoto 1994: 1189). Western visiting researchers must acclimate to a pervading dinginess. Exposed pipes and overloaded electrical sockets add to the developing country ambience. Medical school laboratories in old annex buildings of affiliated hospitals contrast starkly with the bright and well-kept main entrances for patients and visitors. Laboratory floor space per researcher is less than half that of Western countries’ universities (Yamamoto 1991), so cramp and clutter lend their own tint of squalor. Visitors should not assume that their hosts are satisfied with their narrow lot; almost three fourths of the biomedical researchers polled by the Japan Science Council in 1990 stated that lack of floor space undeniably hindered their research (JSC 1991: 40, 164).

Even the most prestigious national universities offer graphic examples of the handicaps to bioscience researchers. Kyoto University’s plant physiologists have used hallway space to culture seaweeds in containers salvaged from trash. One of the lecturers has become a connoisseur of vending machine sake, but his tastes focus on the size and shape of the container rather than the contents: the glass containers are used in place of beakers, which the researchers cannot afford. At Hiroshima University, a researcher who relocated from the National Cancer Center in Tokyo had to abandon using rats for his experiments because there was no space with the necessary atmospheric temperature and moisture controls (Endo and Imai 1991: 9, 11).

Scientists in Japan also lack support staff, from technicians who provide routine technical services to secretarial and janitorial helpers. The ratio of support staff per researcher in the 1990s has been less than 0.5 to 1, a figure less than half the ratio in the Western European countries of France, England, or Germany (STA 1996: 130; STA 1998: 157). In this regard, the life sciences in Japan are in worse shape than the natural sciences in general; support staff per researcher is, as of the mid-1990s, 0.23 assistants (calculated using MCA 1996: 220). The situation in the universities is the worst, with only 0.12 assistants per researcher (STA 1996: 131). The list of maintenance and support activities performed by researchers themselves runs from emptying trash and washing laboratory utensils to typing requisition forms.

As of the mid-1990s, the funding situation for science has begun to brighten considerably, if not dramatically. In the early 1990s the influential Council on Science and Technology proposed a doubling of government science spending by the year 2000, and by late 1995 their plans and negotiations bore fruit: the Japanese Diet enacted the Science and Technology Basic Law, which calls for increasing government spending on research to 1 per cent of the country’s gross national product in five years. An economic analyst typified government support for research in the mid-1990s as “a picture of solid, steady commitment” (Choy 1998a: 5). Official pronouncements concerning the importance of bioscience have been backed with increased resources in recent years also. Government spending on the life sciences in the seven fiscal years between 1990 and 1996 has increased each year over the previous total at an average rate of 8.9 per cent (calculated using MCA 1996: 221; 1998: 199).

The credit cycle and its significance

Substantial increases in money beyond current levels will not automatically raise Japanese bioscience to world leadership. There is a growing recognition that the already respectable sums no...