Divs-poole

JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION 

employed at EUC. This was a cost-cutting strategy, because our  subsidy from 

MEXT was to be less in a few years time, and “since EUC employs the third-

largest number of hijōkin  in Japan, we must reduce the number.” This is an 

interesting statement if compared with much of the literature in the U.S. that 

describes part-time faculty employment as clearly an exploitation of cheap labor. 

At EUC the board of trustees identified hijōkin  as expensive labor. Full-time 

faculty are on a salaried wage, of course, and not directly reimbursed for each class 

taught as are the part-time instructors. Rather than hiring part-time staff, it makes 

economic sense for management to simply ask full-time staff to teach more class 

hours for the same pay. 

Once a full-time position is procured by an academic at EUC, competition for 

academic status is not a great motivator for the professors I observed and spoke 

with. For one, there is no tenure system, a major factor in most accounts of 

competition, uncertainty and stress at universities in North America (Pescosolido & 

Aminzade 1999a; Tierney 1999; Tierney & Bensimon 1996). Once hired as full-

time at whatever the rank, job security is guaranteed. The great divide in the 

faculty at EUC is between full-time, permanent faculty members and contract 

academic staff, either employed on a two or three-year contract basis (ninkitsuki) 

or as part-time faculty to teach a certain number of classes on a year-to-year basis 

(hijōkin).  

Heirarchichal Structure 

The hierarchical structure of the university organization is more important in terms 

of ideology (tatemae) than actual practice (honne). Tatemae (the official or explicit 

rule, the “surface ideology”) and honne (unofficial or hidden rule, the “actual 

practice”) is a dichotomy critical to understanding the social world of Japan, used 

effectively as units for analysis in Japanese organizational life (Graham 2001, 2003, 

2004). For example, moving up the ladder, from sen’nin kōshi (assistant professor 

in the U.S.), jokyōju (associate professor), to kyōju (full professor) offers only 

incremental increases in pay, roughly ¥8,000 per month, or around ¥130,000 per 

year if  bonuses  are figured into the equation.  This pay increase is even less 

attractive if one considers that an equal increase in pay is awarded on a yearly 

basis, regardless of performance or rank, as part of the seniority system (nenkō 

joretsu seido). Furthermore, in terms of power as well, though the appearances 

(tatemae) of rank and seniority are extremely important, this organizational 

hierarchy is manipulated by the professorial actors resulting in a practice (honne) 

model that largely ignores overt organizational structures. Eades (personal 

communication) mentions that junior staff may avoid promotion at some 

institutions because of the added teaching load a full professorship often entails, 

though at EUC there is no such extra workload associated with a promotion (the 

younger, lower ranked faculty members do more of the teaching and committee 

work than the professors). 

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CHAPTER 1 

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At EUC, like at most smaller privates, there is no system of department chairs 

linked to professorships, as exists at many national universities. This means that 

there is no limit to the number of professorships awarded. The result is that nearly 

70 percent of the faculty has the rank of professor. This has resulted in a 

competition of sorts, if only because of the conspicuousness of not being a 

“professor.” When the university president (gakuchō) was an associate professor 

himself, he spearheaded a political move to accelerate the process of promotion, 

encouraging a more flexible reading of the bylaws concerning number of 

publications and years of service needed for the nomination of a promotion. As 

president he decided to further reduce the number of publications needed for 

promotion, rationalizing this with the explanation that a climate of extensive and 

time-consuming administrative work prohibits professors from publishing in a 

timely fashion. It is interesting that the university president apparently did not see 

the need to reduce the amount of administrative and committee work placed on the 

shoulders of the academic staff.  

Although a hidden organizational structure of EUC is overtly acknowledged, as 

Chino-sensei related to me in a candid discussion about promotions and 

professoriate ranks, the import of titles (katagaki, literally “shoulder writing”) in 

Japanese society should not be underrated. Within the EUC community itself, 

knowledge of the small pay difference and the noncompetitive “escalator” 

approach to promotion purports a rather egalitarian outlook with respect to job 

titles. This is not the case within larger society. There is no doubt that the title of 

“professor” on a name or business card demands much more attention than the 

rank of “assistant professor.” Granted, the name of the institution at where one 

holds this rank is not of small interest. While at Oxford, my wife and I observed 

the interest with which wives of visiting Japanese academics often compared their 

husband’s institutional rank. 

The cut-throat atmosphere of large research universities has been most famously 

stereotyped by the famous 1965 Yamazaki Toyoko novel, made into a TV series as 

recently as 2003. Shiroi Kyotō (“Ivory Tower”) dramatizes the promotional process 

at an elite university teaching hospital with a fictionalized account of the dirty 

politics involved in competing for the prize of professorship. Though the pressure 

to obtain the badge of professor is less severe than at such elite institutions, even 

EUC faculty members are conscious of their title when pressing palms at an 

academic conference, applying for a mortgage at a local bank, or generally 

presenting themselves to the world outside the university. During a debate in the 

faculty senate,  Umehara-sensei related to me that the importance of Amagawa-

sensei’s promotion had also to do with a grant application to MEXT that required 

at least an associate professor rank. 

On the surface, an observer of an EUC faculty senate would unwittingly surmise 

that the professors, or those with age seniority anyway, wield the most individual 

power within the university. The voices of younger members of faculty, especially 

relative newcomers and women, are conspicuously absent in the faculty senates 

unless called upon specifically for their opinions. After extended observation of the 

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