Universities Defending Themselves in Japan

Abstract

The accurate report on “Science in Japan” ([4 Oct., p. 43][1]) lacked local color. The practice in Japan of employing one's own graduate students is a defense against Tokyo, Kyoto, Waseda, and other big universities entirely populating the faculty at all Japanese universities, a fate just as unattractive as the present one. And rather than all things “flowing” to the University of Tokyo (D. Normile, [4 Oct., p. 44][2]), it seems to me that Tokyo, Kyoto, and the other powerful central universities exercise financial, political, and academic influence to co-opt promising local research. The flip side of this is that in a field such as environmental science, a great deal of really meaningful research gets done at the local, so-called ekiben daigaku by researchers with much less to lose. Ekiben daigaku , or “train-station box-lunch university,” is a lovingly denigrating term for those universities appearing at every train stop; whether delicious or not, the hungry must eat them. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.274.5284.43 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.274.5284.44