Divs-poole

FOREWORD 

ix 

Japanese society more generally over the past decade, but also in higher education 

globally as the professoriate in many higher education systems confront the 

problems faced by those in Japan today. 

 

Roger Goodman  

November 2009 

Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies 

Head of the Social Sciences Division

 

University of Oxford 

 

---

---

PREFACE 

 

xi 

 

Anthropologists’ interest in the social institutions—the university—that reproduce 

their own discipline, is assumed to be an inherent one, hence the discussions of 

bureaucratic policy, accountability, and “audit cultures” as manifestations of a 

global phenomenon (Shore and Wright 1999). Although this interest has generated 

discussions of students (Holland & Eisenhart 1990; Lee-Cunin 2004; Moffatt 

1989; Nathan 2005) and the state (Altbach & Peterson 1999; Eades et al. 2005; 

McVeigh 2005) as key actors in this social institution of the university, perhaps 

because academics feel uncomfortable exploring a subject too close to home, the 

anthropological literature is nearly devoid of close analysis of the professors 

themselves. Yet on the stage of higher education, the professoriate is a diverse set 

of actors that is in some ways the most influential.  

Notwithstanding famous calls to “study-up” (Nader 1972), much educational 

anthropology remains more focused on “the culture of the powerless,” that of 

students, than “the culture of power,” that of teachers. In this book my intent, then, 

is much like that of other anthropologists conducting similar studies of the 

powerful—“to place a human face on the elite” (Moore 2005). In doing so I 

demonstrate how at a private university in Japan “the culture of power” is more 

effective at maintaining traditions than implementing change. 

To begin to address this gap in the educational literature—this “averted 

anthropological gaze” (Wisniewski 2000)—in this research project the focus is on 

the social world of the Japanese professoriate. Modestly, one basic problem is 

addressed—how do Japanese professors configure their working world? Is this 

concept of daigaku (university) being affected by the cultural change of the present 

atmosphere of globalization and university reform in Japan, and if not, why?  

In answering this research question, two anthropological projects were required. 

The first is the obvious challenge of culturally translating the modes of thought of 

the Japanese professoriate—a crucial problem of interpretation that is arguably a 

defining activity of the anthropology profession. What are the “key verbal 

concepts” (Parkin 1978), the “keywords” (Williams 1976), the lexical categories of 

cultural thought surrounding the Japanese daigaku (university), as described by 

professoriate actors through their discourse and action? I identify six such 

concepts, which can be grouped under the rubric of educational anthropology—

kyōiku (education), kenkyū  (research), kyōju  (professor),  daigaku  (university), 

soshiki  (organization), and kaikaku (reform). Since the globalizing discourses of 

university reform are slowly impacting the Japanese higher education system, these 

six verbal concepts of daigaku are being contested in a cultural debate among 

members of the professoriate at a private university.  

---

PREFACE 

 

xii 

Since the focus of inquiry in this book is the “indigenous intellectual” (James 

2000), the professoriate at a private Japanese university, one could argue that the 

actors themselves are in fact as acutely concerned with these processes of cultural 

translation as is the anthropologist. They struggle to attempt first to interpret the 

key concepts of both the Euro-American concept of the modern, postindustrial 

“university” as well as the concomitant “audit culture” and then to reinvent, or at 

least contest, their own categories of thought as they mostly resist, or occasionally 

adapt to, this unfamiliar culture of reform.  

A second project is to show the extent to which, in times of change especially, 

cultural translation into etic categories might not only be performed by the 

“translator,” but understood by the “actors” themselves. As much as the 

anthropologist struggles to mediate between two habits of thought, “theirs” and our 

“own” (Lienhardt 1954), in this case so does the informant. The Japanese 

professoriate is struggling to maintain a traditional culture of daigaku amidst a 

larger trend in Japan toward models along the lines of the western university. In 

doing so they can be seen to be divided into two contrasting categories, Weberian 

“ideal types,” oriented either centripetally or centrifugally vis-à-vis the social 

world of the institution as they struggle either to maintain tradition or attempt 

change. 

In order to answer the aforementioned research question of “the professoriate 

world” and then attend to the ensuing cultural translation “projects,” I conducted 

an anthropological case study of a private university in urban Tokyo. As a full-

fledged, card-carrying member of the professoriate at this less-famous university in 

Tokyo enrolling 2,500 students, I exploited my full participatory status for 

ethnographic “fly-on-the-wall” observation (cf. Whyte 1993 [1943]) in both the 

formal arenas―committee meetings, ceremonies, classrooms, and the faculty 

senate (kyōjukai)―as well as the informal ones―the faculty lounge, administrative 

offices, professors’ offices, and off-campus pubs. Through participant observation, 

informal interviews, and analysis of both spoken and written texts, this case study 

provides ethnographic data that helps to better identify the cultural traditions of the 

Japanese university.  

Analysis of the ethnographic data has been framed along three lines of inquiry: 

the multivocal nature of daigaku, the Japanese university (Chapter 3), social and 

cultural capital (Chapter 4), and role performativity (or “performative 

competence,” as I refer to it, drawing on Hymes’ (1972) sociolinguistic concept of 

“communicative competence”). I describe the competing social worlds of this 

university faculty. The value of such an ethnography of one powerful group in a 

complex institution of a modern society, in this case “the Japanese professoriate,” 

was first demonstrated thirty years ago in a landmark monograph in the 

anthropology of education. Wolcott’s (1973) exhaustive case study analysis of “the 

American school principal” is an approach that is certainly of no less utility today 

and fills a gap in the literature on educational anthropology. 

I attempt to take the analysis to the next step. Though the general climate of the 

discipline has to a certain degree been addressed reflexively in recent work 

---