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ideal of regional political hegemony and pursue of a Western model of moderniza-
tion (Takeuchi 2005 [1961]). Breaking a centennial tradition, it was merged with the
former Science and Technology Agency to become the “Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology” (MEXT) in 2001. This amalgamation
was rather fateful for education, in my view. Education that had always been seen as
a field in the domain of social sciences and humanities was now placed next to
national science and technology, which are, in turn, regarded as champions and
catalyzers of the ongoing globalization buzz.
The fast decline of Japanese HE humanities and social sciences was all a matter
of time. No sooner had the merge occurred than a new social and political paradigm
was imposed to Japanese HE. Now, it has to respond to market pressures by intro-
ducing the idea of rank-tabled excellence, competition (both sane and insane),
higher managerial autonomy, reduced costs, and, in short, organizational reform as
“agencification” (Yamamoto 2004 ). The move also includes reifying a financial
management focus of both publicly and privately funded Japanese HE with a profit-
oriented business model (Parker 2012 ).
In 2015, Takamitsu Sawa, the president of Shiga University, expressed concern
over the MEXT’s ad hoc policy on humanities and social sciences in HE (Sawa
2015 ):
On June 8, all presidents of national universities received a notice from the education min-
ister telling them to either abolish their undergraduate departments and graduate schools
devoted to the humanities and social sciences or shift their curricula to fields with greater
utilitarian values.Sawa had previously alerted the Japanese public that Japan’s national universities
are being “forced” to implement unprecedented reforms following a business model
(Sawa 2014 ). His stress call a year later was followed by media responses (Grove
2015 ; Nakata Steffensen 2015 ).
MEXT is unflinching in its power deployment as it justifies its hard hand on
Japanese education/normal universities and programs. In the majestic plural “We,”
MEXT underlines:
At teacher training universities and faculties, we are meanwhile working to raise teacher
quality while reducing student quotas, based on factors such as expected demographic
dynamics and teacher demand. To that end, we already have a policy to “abolish” courses
in the teacher training universities and faculties which do not focus on acquisition of a
teacher certificate. From now on emphasis will be placed on teacher training courses and
the issue is to raise teacher quality. ( 2015 , p. 3)Japan is not the only country where social sciences and humanities in HE continue
languishing. It is, indeed, a global phenomenon (Eagleton 2015 ). Humanities and
social sciences faculties are not shut down upfront, but their courses and programs
are eaten away from within like apple worms. When the actual closing down occurs,
the public will hardly notice it or have no interest in humanity to voice any concern.
Unlike many global cases of “all-administrative universities” (Ginsberg 2011 )
where social sciences and humanities have been subtly and gradually chocked over
the years, the Japanese case gets a distinction for its frontal attack à la swordsman.
J. Park