To globalise or not to globalise? ‘Inward-looking youth’ as scapegoats for Japan's failure to secure and cultivate ‘global human resources’

Abstract

In Japan in recent years, there has been much discussion of the need for global human resources alongside criticism of Japanese youth as having an ‘inward-looking’ (uchimuki) orientation. Drawing out the contradictions apparent in a youth apparently reluctant to leave Japan and companies, universitiesand government seemingly desperate to nurture and attract global talent, this paper frames the uchimuki discourse as a cover for an insular Japan and its failure to attract and foster ‘global human resources’.As such, the two discourses shed a great deal of light on Japan's complex relationship with globalisation.