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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 30, 2010

A foreigner-friendly field of dreams?

In the 1989 Oscar-nominated fantasy-drama film "Field of Dreams," the main character, a farmer played by Kevin Costner, heard a voice that kept whispering the phrase "If you build it, he will come." The Voice urged Costner's character to take a leap of faith and build a baseball diamond in the middle...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 25, 2009

Soft power beckons as time comes for academia to act sustainably

As I am for the most part an optimist, it seems only right to kick off 2009 with an upbeat column and, as an educator, one area I believe offers great promise is education.
COMMENTARY
Oct 18, 2010

Japan's stingy approach to schools has not paid off

According to the World University Rankings 2010-2011, published by the Times Higher Education on Sept. 16, the number of Japanese universities ranking among the world's top 200 dwindled to five from 11 the previous year.
Japan Times
LIFE
May 30, 2010

How can it get too late to learn?

Professor Ryusuke Yoneyama was in the middle of explaining to the members of his music-production class why Baroque-era violin bows, which resembled loosely strung archery bows, produced a weaker sound than their contemporary counterparts when he paused to ask a question.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 28, 2013

Online courses: Collegiate equalizer?

The latest trend in online education is taking the academic world by storm.
COMMENTARY
Nov 28, 2012

Japan's university education crisis

Education minister Makiko Tanaka has apologized for trying to cancel approvals given by her ministry bureaucrats for three institutions seeking to operate as fully fledged four-year universities providing undergraduate degrees. But should she have apologized?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2007

Japan's schools flunking at global level: symposium

In this age of globalization, firms and businesspeople must compete with their rivals on a worldwide scale. This is also spreading to academicians and educational institutions, universities in particular.
COMMENTARY
Mar 4, 2002

Research needs cutting edge

Since Japan has already decided to reorganize national universities into public corporations in fiscal 2004, it would be useless now to discuss the pros and cons of the plan. I happen to feel the plan will do neither harm nor good.
COMMENTARY / World
May 25, 2001

Racial quotas widen social gaps, not rectify them

SINGAPORE -- When some 600 ethnic Chinese students who passed a string of examinations with distinction failed to gain admission to public universities in Malaysia recently, a controversy erupted in the media over a major flaw in university entrance criteria.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2020

Schools lauded for COVID-19 response and support

The number of international students enrolled in Japanese universities and vocational schools is on the rise. In May 2019, this number stood at 312,214, up from 164,000 in 2011, and the number of students who chose to work in Japan after graduating has more than doubled since 2013.
Reader Mail
Jan 26, 2012

Academic standards not affected

Regarding the Jan. 22 letter "Interesting take on enrollment" (whose anonymous writer asked for a more detailed explanation of my earlier assertion that the number of students in Japan's universities has not declined as predicted by those who are influenced by demographic factors only): One wrong assumption...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 10, 2012

Student count, knowledge sliding

Education experts have for years been lamenting the academic decline of young Japanese.
COMMENTARY
Sep 20, 2011

End the grad student quotas

Starting in the 1991 academic year (April 1991 through March 1992), a number of leading national universities in Japan underwent major structural changes, led by the Law School at the University of Tokyo.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 28, 2011

University entrance fee system profits from unstable job market

Students are being held hostage by the convoluted nyugakkin (entrance fee) system. Parents either pay up now, or the kid doesn't get in later.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Tuning into the changing face of higher education

Japan's universities are at a crossroad. The notion has been voiced in some quarters for many years, but now -- by common consent -- the fact of the matter is impossible either to deny or to ignore.
Japan Times
JAPAN / 50 years of ASEAN
Aug 9, 2017

ASEAN students increase on high corporate demand

The recent boom in the number of students from ASEAN countries coming to Japan is expected to last until 2020, the target year set by the Japanese government for there to be 300,000 foreign students in the country, industry officials said.
EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2014

Kyoto University's bold hiring move

The recent news that Kyoto University will publicly seek candidates for its next president from abroad, as well as from Japan, may come as a shock to some in academia.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2012

Reform means the world for Todai

When Japan's leading university announced in January that it intends to shift undergraduate enrollment from spring to autumn in line with colleges worldwide, the plan created waves far beyond the academic world.
COMMENTARY
Sep 14, 2010

Higher education is worse since policy switch in 1991

For the past two decades, the education ministry has worked hard to reform Japan's university system. In fiscal 1991, the ministry adopted the policy of giving priority to postgraduate programs, leading a number of national universities to change gakubu — traditional undergraduate-level entities such...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 1, 2009

Susan Schmidt: Honored U.S. beacon for Japan

Susan Schmidt is a former editor at the University of Tokyo Press who spent 20 years living and raising a family in Japan up until the mid-1990s. She is now executive director of the U.S.-based, 1,500-member Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese — a role in which she has not only helped...
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2005

Perks elude foreign campuses in Japan

Sara Meshino goes to Temple University Japan Campus in Minato Ward, Tokyo, and takes classes in English, paying 472,500 yen for nine credits this semester from September to December.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Nov 6, 2021

Surveillance in the academy: Hong Kong's new compulsory national security courses

Last month, several thousand Hong Kong university students, some of them under the watch of a closed-circuit TV camera, were the first to take compulsory courses on the territory’s national security law.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Jul 27, 2016

What to expect when applying for college overseas

In a few weeks, my daughter, an American-Japanese dual national born, raised and mostly educated in Japanese in Japan, will begin her first year of higher learning at her dream school — Middlebury College, one of America's oldest liberal arts institutes.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 26, 2015

Abe government targets the liberal arts

Over the past several weeks I have received many emails from all over the world asking me if reports about government plans to pull the plug on humanities and social sciences departments at Japanese national universities are accurate or just a bad joke. At this point it's not clear exactly what the government...
Members of the Kokugakuin University ōendan cheer group perform during a competition between university cheerleading squads in Tokyo on June 3.
SPORTS
Jul 23, 2023

Japan's macho cheerleaders fight to save a tradition

Dressed in old-fashioned, school-style uniforms, cheering squads are a mass of black at college baseball games as they shout out chants and bang taiko drums.
What role should money from oil and gas — the very industry that’s the main contributor to global warming — have in funding the work of climate scientists?
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Mar 4, 2024

Two young climate scientists. Two visions of the solution.

The pair's biggest question: What role should money from oil and gas have in funding work like theirs?
High school student Soa Ono, 17, assists an elderly woman during a recreational activity at a nursing care facility in Nagoya in late February.
JAPAN / Society / Regional voices: Chubu
Apr 7, 2025

Caregiver apprenticeship for high school students expanding in Aichi

The program allows apprentices to earn an income while acquiring knowledge and skills through hands-on experience.
The Trump administration's escalating campaign against Harvard — cutting billions in funding, blocking foreign students, and threatening its independence — marks an unprecedented attack on U.S. higher education.
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2025

U.S. soft power is a casualty in Trump’s war on Harvard

The fight against Harvard will do extensive and potentially irreparable injury. It is an extraordinary act of self-harm.
Sohei Kamiya, founder of the Sanseito, which campaigned on a “Japanese first” message and tough immigration rhetoric, speaks at a rally in Gunma Prefecture on July 6.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 23, 2025

Ignore the election hype, foreign residents are here to stay

While the number of foreign residents reached a record high last year, it’s still barely over 3% of the total population, low by international standards.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past