Divs-poole

INTRODUCTION 

Admittedly cultural translation is a contested concept (Asad 1986; Ingold 1993), 

not least because much of the work in this area is conveyed into powerful western 

languages and hegemonic academic discourse. Nonetheless, we do not necessarily 

have to adhere to a discontinuous, bounded, functionalist world view in order to 

admit the value of interpretation and the fact that “social anthropologists are 

engaged in establishing a methodology for the translation of cultural language” 

(Leach 1973, p. 772). This translation does not need to be of an artificial sort that 

arbitrarily divides the world through an alienating discourse (Ingold 1993, p. 230), 

but can be rather an exploration into the interpretation of the complex cultural 

meanings in situ of identities and subjectivities (Hall 2002, p. 2). 

 

The increasingly global world of higher education is a domain in which the 

actors, in this case my kyōju informants/colleagues and me,

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 are moving between 

two cultures—one familiar and one less familiar—and thus are struggling to 

translate the cultural meanings of terms such as “syllabus,” “faculty development,” 

“accountability,” “admissions office,” and, not least, “professor” and “university.” 

Those outside the field but with keen interest in language have made the 

observation that anthropologists may evade the obvious engagement with linguistic 

terrain when discussing or practicing the translation of culture (Jordan 2002, p. 

100). This is not entirely the case, however, as using the idea of “key verbal 

concepts” (Parkin 1978) or “rich points” (Agar 1991, 1993) anthropologists have 

often undergone ethnographic work that is sensitive to translating the way in which 

informants speak their worlds and perform their identities, a method of cultural 

interpretation that has been labeled “ethnosemantics” or “semantic anthropology” 

(Parkin 1982). This is one approach I use in this ethnography. Exploring the 

cultural categories of daigaku, I find it fruitful to examine within the discourse of 

the professoriate the contested meanings (or multivocality) of certain “keywords” 

(Moeran 1984; Wierzbicka 1997; Williams 1976), six of which I summarize in the 

concluding chapter. 

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CHAPTER 1 

JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION 

Japanese education has been a focus of numerous comparative studies for the past 

30 years. Many scholars have attributed the economic success of this industrialized 

society to a highly literate and well-educated “human capital.” However, over the 

past few years, some scholars (Horio 1988; McVeigh 2002b; Schoppa 1988; 1991; 

Yoneyama 1999) have tended to be more critical of the Japanese educational 

machinery, often concluding that without major reform the system of schooling in 

Japan may not adequately service societal needs in the 21st century.

 

 

Although arguably the least regulated and therefore a potential starting place for 

change, tertiary education in Japan has been targeted by observers as lagging far 

behind that of Western societies, an embarrassment to one of the world’s largest 

economies and a potential Achilles heel in the fine-tuned engine that is the 

Japanese state and economy (McVeigh 2002b). In a polemic against putative trade 

barriers toward foreign professors working in Japan, one critic (Hall 1995, 1998) 

has even charged Japanese universities with “academic apartheid.” Over the years, 

others have suggested that this accusation of cultural and national parochialism 

might apply to segments of the hegemonic Euro-American academy as well. 

Indeed, I would like to emphasize here that unfortunately much of the comparative 

educational debate on Japanese education in the U.S. and Europe is sometimes 

fueled by journalistic, and occasionally overblown, polemic reports on Japanese 

education that are often not substantiated with qualitative data. 

Many universities in Japan are acutely aware of the need for change, and a 

considerable effort at institutional change has been sweeping the nation (Amano 

2004), a somewhat global trend, since colleges and universities in Europe and Asia 

are also undergoing a period of upheaval (Altbach 1997, 1999). This change, or 

“reform” as it is often called, is especially noteworthy if the intrinsic conservative 

nature of such institutions is considered. Furthermore, discourses of reform are 

unique in the academic world of debate if only because the subject being discussed 

directly affects the careers of the discussants. Whether an academic is an expert in 

the field of education or not, all professors at universities seem to have an opinion 

on this subject. A parallel, but different, example can be found in the world of 

English Language Teaching (ELT) in the field of teaching English as a Foreign 

Language (EFL). In countries such as Japan where English is widely taught as a 

foreign or second language, most teachers (and even the average man or woman on 

the street, for that matter), no matter what their subject area, have an opinion on 

how English should or should not be taught simply because of their own 

experience in learning the language. 

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CHAPTER 1 

As Roger Goodman (2001b) pointed out in the introduction to a workshop on 

East Asian HE at the University of Oxford, “lay” opinions are not often taken 

seriously, or even considered, by those implementing the reforms, a point that 

others have made as well (Wisniewski 2000). Indeed, educational experts 

themselves are not all of the same mind, and some have questioned the need for 

HE reform, as the title of a lecture at the Nissan Institute suggests: “Why Reform 

Japanese Education?” (Cummings 2003). 

Despite the recent interest in university reform, years ago Nakano lamented how 

“Despite the increasing popular demand for understanding ‘universities’ 

(professors, students and what is going on in campus) … little has been done by 

sociologists to clarify the facts about this part of the social phenomena” (Nakano 

1974, p. 47). Twenty years later, another researcher echoes this same point, noting 

that it is especially the case that “Relatively little research on academic staff has 

been done. Even studies done in the United States—which are the most important 

ones in this field—are only a small part of Higher Education research” (Karpen 

1993, p. 142).  

Much of the literature speaks in generalities, usually about the problems with 

the Japanese tertiary system, namely: 1) no quality control (e.g., private accrediting 

associations, university assessments, course evaluations, departmental reviews, 

interuniversity evaluations, inspection committees, peer review, etc.); 2) 

bureaucratization (HE is centrally monitored by the Ministry of Education, which 

discourages innovation); 3) lack of competition (no probationary period in the 

tenure system); and 4) superficial schooling (no semester system means students 

are enrolled in fifteen classes per week, and since the lectures are uninspiring, 

attendance is poor) (McVeigh 2001). These criticisms notwithstanding, obviously 

“there are no stereotypical generalizations that explain all of Japanese education” 

(Shields 1998, p. 133).  

DAIGAKU: THE UNIVERSITY IN JAPAN 

The development of tertiary education in Japan, as with education in general, can 

be divided into two if not three historical stages or periods of reforms (Hada 

1999)—the internal period of reform after the Meiji Restoration (1868), the stage 

during the Occupation (after World War II) that was motivated by “external 

guidance” (largely American), and a third wave of “internally motivated” changes, 

which are taking place at the moment. Of course “internal” and “external” must be 

considered in a relative sense, since a modern nation like Japan is certainly not 

immune to global trends—indeed, one may argue that gaiatsu (external, 

international pressure) in some cases defines Japanese internal policymaking. 

The University of Tokyo was established in 1877 by the Meiji government as 

the first public daigaku in modern Japan and in both university rankings and 

national psyche is commonly recognized as the most prestigious institution of its 

kind in the country. Rankings of educational institutions in Japan are closely 

scrutinized by the public. In terms of international rankings, even though the 

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