Divs-poole

JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION 

is often contrasted with western management practices that are insensitive to input 

from factory workers (Dore 1973). Outside the business sense it also has the 

connotation in Japanese of simply continuous improvement and, although it is not 

always a conscious part of the working, social or home life, an emphasis on small, 

incremental change over time is certainly evident in Japan  (Imai 1997). Hori’s 

participant observation in a monastery bears out the ubiquitous nature of this 

concept in the culture of teaching and learning in Japan. “Kaizen, the constant step-

by-step analysis, standardization, and improvement of tasks in, for example, a 

Japanese automobile factory, nicely parallels the monk’s constant attempt to make 

his way of working more and more efficient … both are institutionalized ways of 

learning from failure” (Hori 1996, p. 47). 

Closely related to kaizen is hansei, another process that has proven important to 

my study of meetings at EUC because it is purported to be such a conscious part of 

the Japanese professional culture. Hansei (literally “reflection,” “introspection,” or 

“reconsideration”) is a self-reflective critical process that is taught during formal 

schooling in Japan, but is later utilized in a variety of situations: high school, 

university clubs, company training programs, etc. (Rohlen & LeTendre 1996b, p. 

7). This critical self-awareness and reflection is an important part of schooling in 

Japan. The process of hansei as the focus on errors as a useful data for reflection 

involves an inherent element of goal setting to improve (kaizen) on past 

performance. This nuance became evident to me when I misused the term in a 

faculty meeting and was subsequently warned by a colleague for not considering 

the long-term implication of actually following through on the self-criticism and 

demonstrating concrete plans for implementing self-reform measures. Nancy Sato 

(2004) also notes this complementary element of goal setting.  

Basic skills in cooperation are taught by teachers and “the primary means for 

learning to work with others was, I think, hansei (reflection). It’s hard to spend 

even a few hours in an elementary classroom without experiencing hansei. After 

group activities, group members often reflected on the quality of their cooperation” 

(Lewis 1995). In the professional world some argue that even among the most 

accomplished, “there is a continual search for improvement, a looking outside 

oneself (hansei) or one’s company for renewed dedication and insight. The 

increments of improvement are often miniscule, but they are real all the same. 

Perfectability [kaizen] builds on past accomplishments” (Rohlen & LeTendre 

1996a, p. 375). 

If not as often discussed directly in the literature on Japanese business as 

nemawashi or kaizen, hansei is mentioned frequently as an important concept by 

observers of education. “I think it’s an important puzzle piece in our understanding 

of Japanese education” says Lewis (1995, p. 122). She feels that hansei is a 

powerful process and “undergirds discipline, group formation, efforts to foster the 

‘whole child’s’ development, and academic learning as well” (Lewis 1995, p. 170). 

Is this also a key concept influencing the reform discourses at EUC? “Is it 

possible,” Lewis asks rhetorically, “to maintain a habit of self-criticism and yet 

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CHAPTER 1 

have the benefits of high self-esteem, such as willingness to undertake 

challenges?” In the classrooms she observed her answer was “yes.”  

There is a healthy self-criticism of academic practice at EUC. Lewis and others 

(Goodman, personal communication) have attributed to hansei the fact that 

“Japanese children and parents consistently rate children’s educational 

achievement less favorably than do American parents and children—an ironic fact, 

given the higher actual achievement of Japanese children” (Lewis 1995, p. 121). 

This same mechanism functions in the reform processes at the level of Japanese 

HE. Nemawashi, kaizen, and hansei prove to be useful constructs when analyzing 

the meeting discourses unfolding in the many social arenas at EUC, proceedings 

that appear to the outsider not to be very constructive. These professional processes 

of inclusion, improvement, and introspection both influence the professors’ role 

identity as “professor” as well as drive the institutional process of reform.  

Aisatsu genre 

Clammer (2000) has lamented the lack of just this kind of creative analysis of 

Japanese society. He feels Japanese society has been subjected to an 

overabundance of political economic, culturalist, and “classical” theories. These 

approaches are static in nature, that is, “they concentrate … on structural 

characteristics of the society and culture and on sets of classificatory principles, 

which are supposed somehow to “capture” the reality that actually constitutes 

Japan …” (Clammer 2000, p. 204). What may be missing is the important 

recognition of indigenous categories of thought and action in the language of 

Japanese society. For example, through ethnographic description of the Ilongots of 

the Philippines, Michelle Rosaldo (1982), the late linguistic anthropologist, 

demonstrates convincingly that the indigenous speech act theories of western 

linguists reflect more the “locally prevalent” and subjective, even biased, notions 

of academics than any sort of universal, objective reality. Her argument resonates 

with David Parkin’s reminder that the “etic rationality of the external observer…is 

assumed to be over and above these folk rationalities and to be based on universal 

rather than particular cultural rules, an assumption which ignores ethnocentric 

intellectual bias” (Parkin 1976, p. 166). In this book, though I do not make bold 

claims of convincingly demonstrating a salient failing of ethnocentrism in the 

anthropology of Japan, hopefully I am at least sensitive to the flexibility of 

indigenous categories, a diversity that necessitates close inspection by the 

anthropologist. 

In my observation of university meetings I found that it is the “small cultures” 

of activities within a social group rather than the nature of the community itself 

that influences the language use of its members. The performative focus of 

interaction exhibited by speakers contrasts with the social function of the event, 

resulting in a myriad of language possibilities beyond prediction through the 

application of simple permutation theories. In my ethnographic account, some 

social events or arenas, such as the faculty senate, contrast with others, such as 

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