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Japanese University Humanities and Social Sciences Programs Under Attack

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Jeff Kingston
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On June 8 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) sent a ten-page directive to all 86 national universities in Japan, apparently calling on them, inter alia, to abolish or reorganize their humanities and social sciences (HSS) departments. I use the word “apparently” because the wording of the letter is ambiguous. A former Ministry of Education official's Facebook posting in September is quoted on the European Association of Japanese Studies online forum asserting that the directive has been misinterpreted. The post refers to an article in Japanese by Kan Suzuki, Special Advisor to Japan's education minister. Kan acknowledges that MEXT failed to consult various stakeholders and that the new policy was not properly presented, but insists that the ministry is not moving to abolish HSS. Rather, he says, MEXT wants the national universities to concentrate on what they do best and develop survival strategies based on demographic trends.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 39 , September 2015, e1
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

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