CREDITS: (GRAPHIC K. FRANKLIN/SCIENCE; (DATA NATIONAL904 27 MAY 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6596 science.org SCIENCE
NEWS | IN DEPTH
Concerns over Japan’s fading scientific
clout have been growing for years. The na-
tion’s $167 billion in spending on R&D in
2020 was topped only by the United States
and China, according to the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment (OECD). But research productivity
“is markedly below [Group of 20 countries]
average and citation impact is low,” Clari-
vate’s Institute for Scientific Information
concluded in its 2021 annual report on G-20
research activities. An August 2021 analysis
by Japan’s National Institute of Science and
Technology Policy (NISTEP) showed that
Japan ranked fourth in its share of papers
in the top 10% by number of citations from
1997 through 1999, then dropped to fifth be-
tween 2007 and 2009 and to 10th in 2017 to
2019 (see graphic, left). The drop is partly
the result of the spectacular rise
of China, which was not even in
the top 10 in the 1990s and is
now at first place. But Canada,
France, Italy Australia, and India
surpassed Japan as well.
What really got the attention
of politicians, however, is Ja-
pan’s lackluster performance in
university rankings, says Yuko
Harayama, a science policy ex-
pert who advises Tohoku Uni-
versity. The University of Tokyo
is the only Japanese school in
the Times Higher Education
world university rankings, for
example, and it dropped from
23rd place in 2015 to a tie for
35th place this year.
Now the government is pur-
suing a costly fix: a University
of International Excellence
program, funded by an endow-
ment of up to 10 trillion yen
($78 billion). The fund could
generate $2.3 billion annually
to be shared among five to seven
elite schools. Starting at the end
of this year, universities will vie for inclu-
sion in the program by presenting plans
for institutional reforms and stronger re-
search efforts. Money could start flowing
in 2024. (Some of the funds will cover liv-
ing and research expenses of doctoral stu-
dents, not just at the selected schools but
at all universities.)
The program is the latest of several at-
tempts by the government to rejuvenate
Japan’s research efforts. In 2007, the Min-
istry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science
and Technology (MEXT) launched a World
Premier International Research Center Ini-
tiative (WPI) “to attract outstanding scien-
tists to Japan” and spur other reforms. The
idea was to create “something like an is-
land within a university with a completely
different way of managing research activi-
ties,” says Harayama, a member of the fore-
runner of CSTI when the WPI was planned.
The 14 WPI institutes that resulted have
higher proportions of internationally re-
cruited scientists than the universities they
are attached to, and two WPI directors are
non-Japanese. But they have not had the
reforming influence on their host universi-
ties that MEXT hoped for, Harayama says.
In 2015, Japan formed the Agency for
Medical Research and Development to
jump-start biomedical research, with an
annual budget of $980 million. And a
Moonshot Research and Development
Program, launched in 2019, is disbursing
$780 million over 5 years to support “high-
risk, high-impact R&D” focused on sevenbroad goals, including “ultra-early disease
prediction and intervention,” and “a sus-
tainable global food supply.”
The size and sprawling agendas of these
top-down programs blur lines of respon-
sibility and make performances difficult
to evaluate, says Toshio Suda, a Japanese
stem cell scientist at the National Univer-
sity of Singapore. They also emphasize
applications more than basic research,
he says.
Meanwhile, money available through
MEXT’s competitively reviewed Grants-
in-Aid for Scientific Research, which Suda
says is particularly important for younger
researchers, has stagnated, hovering just
below $2 billion a year for the past decade.What’s worse, Japanese universities, work-
ing with fixed block funding, “stopped
giving [permanent] positions to young
scientists,” says Hitoshi Murayama, a theo-
retical physicist at the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley. And those lucky enough
to find appointments rarely get start-up
funding, leaving them “at the mercy of se-
nior professors in terms of resources,” he
adds. “The lack of independence makes it
difficult for them to really kick-start their
own research,” says Murayama, who was
the founding director of the University of
Tokyo’s Kavli Institute for the Physics and
Mathematics of the Universe, one of the
WPI institutes.
Such dismal career prospects are driving
people away from academia. The number of
students going for doctorates immediately
after earning a master’s degree
has dropped 25% in 20 years,
according to MEXT data. And
some who do earn Ph.D.s are
looking abroad for careers. De-
velopmental biologist Kinya Ota,
for example, found a position at
Academia Sinica in Taiwan when
nearing the end of a fixed-term
appointment at a lab affiliated
with RIKEN, Japan’s network of
national laboratories. In Taiwan,
Ota got support to set up his lab
from the start and, most impor-
tant, “I could decide my own
research direction.” Ten years
on, he has a permanent position
and leads a small team. Tellingly,
Ota says he is getting increasing
numbers of queries about work-
ing overseas from younger Japa-
nese scientists.
Rather than setting up top-
down megaprograms, Sheng
thinks Japan should encourage
bottom-up initiatives from indi-
vidual universities and institutes
that might make better use of
the resources. He also says greater diversity
in labs, in nationality and gender, would
help generate new research ideas. Women
make up only 17% of Japan’s research work-
force, far below the OECD average of 40%.
Indeed, MEXT is studying proposals
to scale up support for regional universi-
ties, provide richer stipends for graduate
students, and expand opportunities for
women, says Takuya Saito, director of hu-
man resources policy for the ministry. The
government is aware the new plan won’t
fix all problems in Japanese research, Saito
says: “The improvement of research capa-
bilities in Japan as a whole is based on the
recognition that support for several uni-
versities alone will not be enough.” j1997−99 2007−09 2017−19010203040Share of research papers (%)10.Japan9.India8.France7.Canada6.Australia5.Italy4.Germany3.United Kingdom2.United States1.China10.Spain9.Australia8.Italy7.Canada6.France5.Japan4.Germany3.United Kingdom2.China1.United States10.Spain9.Australia8.Netherlands7.Italy6.Canada5.France4.Japan3.Germany2.United Kingdom1.United StatesDeclining influence
In the late 1990s, Japan ranked fourth in terms of its share of the 10% most-
cited research papers. It dropped to 10th place by the end of the 2010s. The
United States’s share dropped as well, while China’s scientific clout soared.
(Credit for papers by multinational teams was split between countries.)