Here is the good news: Japan's national universities are not, in fact, getting rid of social sciences and humanities. Earlier last year, it looked as if Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology told public schools to cease education in these areas. When I spoke to ministry officials this past fall in Tokyo, they were eager to clarify that this wasn't what they had ordered. They blamed misinterpretation by the Japanese press and mistranslation by the Western press for the misunderstanding.
The ministry's explanation was full of tortured nuance and ambiguity. From our conversation and from a public statement released by the ministry, I think I'm starting to get a better picture of what is actually going on with Japanese higher education.
The main problem is that as Japan's population shrinks, there are fewer college kids. That means less tuition money for universities. At the same time, the Japanese government is tightening its belt to fight gaping budget deficits. This is threatening to starve Japanese public universities of their two main sources of funding.