Divs-poole

INTRODUCTION 

By demonstrating how the actors construct their social worlds in a way that 

makes sense to them in the context of their own cultural traditions, histories, and 

understandings, that organizations and institutions appearing remarkably similar on 

the surface function with quite different understandings is demonstrated. Western 

criticism of the university in Japan can be traced to different cultural meanings. 

The “daigaku” is not necessarily equivalent to the “university.”

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 When reform and 

changes are introduced into the HE system in Japan, they are coming through the 

introduction of new cultural discourses that originate from the neoliberal world of 

North America or Britain. These discourses are unfamiliar in Japan and do not fit 

with Japanese assumptions of daigaku or “higher education.” The result is a series 

of internal cultural debates (Parkin 1978) located between discourses of western 

reform and Japanese tradition. 

These debates are acted out at numerous social arenas within the university 

community. As a full-fledged, card-carrying “member” of the Edo University of 

Commerce (EUC),

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 I exploited my full participatory status for ethnographic 

observation in both the formal arenas―committee meetings, ceremonies, 

classrooms, and the general faculty senate (kyōjukai)―as well as the informal 

ones―the faculty lounge, administrative offices, professors’ offices (kenkyūshitsu), 

and off-campus pubs―of this university in Tokyo. Participant observation, 

informal interviews, and analysis of both spoken and written texts provide 

ethnographic data that helps to better identify the local knowledge of the Japanese 

university. Through the “thick description” of one institution, I wish to paint a 

picture that shows a different understanding of educational organizational 

dynamics than is often presupposed and assumed by observers and critics, 

beginning the process of culturally translating the indigenous categories and 

understandings of “university” (daigaku) and “professor” (kyōju). This effort will, I 

hope, show the internal cultural debate inherent in the HE reform drama in Japan.

  Specifically, some key concepts need explanation, especially in light of the 

recent rhetoric of reform. Because of multivocality (the different meanings and 

narratives associated with a concept depending on the context), these cultural 

categories cannot be directly equated with “equivalents” in western universities. 

Kyōju appear to spend most of their time in meetings, administrative tasks, and 

politicking and little time in “educational” activities: teaching academic subjects to 

students. Likewise, time and energy spent on “research” seems limited, and the 

publication of the results in unrefereed, in-house journals is often considered 

“subpar,” not only by outsiders.

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 However, the following are among many 

questions about professoriate work in Japan that remain unanswered: 1) What is 

the understanding of “education” and is it equivalent to a “western” notion? Is 

much energy expended in educationally related activities, and what is the quality of 

this work? 2) What qualities define a “good” professor? Is there a hierarchy of 

work activities and, if so, what role is considered most “important”? 3) What 

formal and informal bureaucratic and organizational processes pattern professoriate 

work and the university? How do professoriate actors negotiate and construct the 

organizational structure? 4) And most important, what do the answers to 1), 2), and 

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INTRODUCTION 

3) above communicate about the multivocality of indigenous understanding of 

such concepts as “education,” “professor,” “scholarship,” “organization,” and 

“reform” in Japanese HE?  

The story of the Edo University of Commerce serves to address these questions. 

In this story, the focus is on a traditionally oriented, indigenous ideology—kazoku 

kyōiku (family education)

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— through which actors invoke an ie (household) model 

of Japanese kinship organization. In both ideology and practice, as an institutional 

organizing principle kazoku  kyōiku links six different concepts that I believe are 

key to understanding Japanese higher education. These key concepts are: kyōiku 

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

(organization), and kaikaku (reform).  By referring to these and a few other select 

concepts in their romanized vernacular,

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 I wish to emphasize that anthropologists 

and observers of Japan may do well to unpack and examine them in their cultural 

context before making broad comparisons and assumptions on the basis of “family 

resemblances” (Wittgenstein 1953). If their cultural context is ignored, there is a 

danger of lumping concepts without discipline, missing the fact that institutions 

that appear remarkably similar in fact function with different internal cultural logic. 

EDO UNIVERSITY OF COMMERCE 

The field site for this ethnography, EUC, is a part of Edo Gakuen, a private 

educational “corporation” (gakkō  hōjin),

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 and founded one hundred years ago. 

“Gakuen” signifies that it is an academic campus as well as both its private and 

comprehensive nature. The gakuen is a common institutional model in Japan, best 

described as an educational entity that include many different schools under one 

umbrella—a comprehensive academy, of sorts, where school-age children can be 

seen walking to school together with their seniors (senpai) in high school or 

university. Over its one hundred years of existence, Edo Gakuen has undergone 

various amalgamations. Originally the Gakuen included a kindergarten, primary, 

and secondary school (later becoming a tertiary institution during the era of 

postwar reforms). Presently it consists only of a highly acclaimed kindergarten 

(gaining prestige largely from its location in a fairly affluent and desirable location 

in Tokyo but also because of the long history and excellent reputation), and the 

university (which, despite its history, is not very highly ranked in the strict 

hierarchy of the postwar Japanese university system).  

The urban campus is on a few acres of prime real estate in a rather affluent area 

of west Tokyo, 15 minutes from both Shinjuku and Shibuya stations, two of the 

busiest train terminals in the world. EUC admits around 500–600 new students a 

year, and there are about 2,500 students enrolled in the four-year undergraduate 

program. There are more men than women (80/20); the school was originally not 

coeducational and the subject matter—commerce—does not fit with the “finishing 

school” mindset of a traditional college education for women (McVeigh 1997). 

There are two schools, the Faculty of Commerce and the Faculty of Management, 

and students choose from a number of different programs of study. A third division, 

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