124
Moreover, publications on foreign higher education written in Japanese are cur-
rently growing, and the targeted countries and topics of these publications are
becoming more diversified. In particular, research on Asian higher education has
significantly increased in quantity and scope. On the other hand, research on some
geographical regions, such as Africa, is still very limited in the Japanese literature.
These articles in Japanese on Asian higher education are mainly written by Japanese
researchers and Asian researchers who have had study experiences in Japan. Especially
in the case of the literature on non-English-speaking countries, research has typically
been implemented through direct translations between Japanese and the languages
used in those countries—for example, German, French, Chinese, Korean, Thai,
Vietnamese, and Indonesian, without relying on English as today’s lingua franca. In
this process, researchers in Japan tend to focus more on research as area studies (e.g.,
studies of Taiwan’s society and higher education written in Japanese language) and are
thus less likely to connect their work to global or regional perspectives.
Experts and researchers in educational development have started to implement
and publish their research within the field of higher education. The researchers of
development studies have been more involved in the international research com-
munity, but not necessarily within the higher education research community.
However, these boundaries are now becoming unclear, at least among Japanese and
East Asian researchers (Yonezawa et al. 2014 ). Among the researchers in educa-
tional development and also among the researchers who have specific expertise
interests, such as financial assistance, student exchange, and learning engagement,
English is more likely to be used as the communication medium. Here, a closer con-
nection to the global and regional perspective is likely to appear even in the litera-
ture in Japanese. For example, Kobayashi ( 2008 ) developed a worldwide comparative
framework on financial assistance policies from the viewpoint of Japanese higher
education reform.
Future Challenges
As has been described in this article, in Japan, the higher education research com-
munity is rather independent from the international network, even in the field of
comparative research. It is true that some international actors, such as international
organizations and researchers, have paid attentions to Japan’s higher education, and
Japanese researchers and practitioners have sought to borrow models on an interna-
tional basis. Although international perspectives are shared somewhat through
active efforts to search out and translate the literature on and practices of higher
education outside Japan, it is clear that Japanese higher education research has his-
torically been invisible to the international research community. Concurrently, the
rapid growth of science, technology, and highly skilled human resources in neigh-
boring countries in Asia is changing the perspectives toward Japan by an interna-
tional audience from a distinguished case to one of the leading cases in Asia. In
short, Japan is no longer a key attractive model in Asia for many higher education
researchers in the world.
A. Yonezawa