On June 8, 2015, the presidents of all 86 national universities received a notice in the name of the education and science minister, instructing them to endeavor to abolish their schools' departments of humanities and social sciences on both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels or to shift them to fields that are in higher social demand.
As president of a minor national university at the time, the messages in the notice were not unexpected. Yet, I felt a strong sense of indignation as I thought the notice indicated that Japan's education policies still follow the old tradition of neglecting humanities and social sciences in favor of natural sciences.
Subsequently I wrote a counterargument to the ministry's position on the June 22, 2015, issue of the Nikkei newspaper, and discussed the issue with then education minister Hakubun Shimomura in the Oct. 6 edition of the Economist magazine. In the Aug. 23 issue of The Japan Times, I wrote another article, "Humanities under attack." This attracted much more attention than I had anticipated, with my opinion quoted in a large number of European and U.S. newspapers and magazines.