Last May, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe boldly declared that "within the next three years, eight national universities will hire 1,500 leading researchers from around the world."
Recruiting foreign faculty would be the "first step" in a prodigious push to place 10 Japanese universities among the world's top 100 over the next decade. By including university internationalization in his long awaited economic strategy speech, the prime minister signaled that "Abenomics" intended to be more than simply a macroeconomics melange. Instead, the vision was substantive change in the core institutions of Japanese society.
Hiring for the 2014-2015 academic year is now in full swing. Unfortunately the English-language university job listings look much the same: mostly basic English teaching jobs and a handful of science post-doctoral positions, garnished with just one or two serious academic posts.