The University of Tokyo Integrated Human Sciences Program for Cultural Diversity (IHS)
in collaboration with the Toyota Foundation International Grant Program

Intensive Lectures and Discussion

Ethics and Logics ofInternational Collaborative Projects

ReportJune 2022

Introduction

Collaboration across national borders as well as a variety of stakeholders including industry, government, andacademia is essential to realize the philosophy of cultural diversity. However, when trying to collaborate, there
are many ethics and logics to be aware of, such as time span diﬀerences, scope of coverage, and mental
preparedness. This program, held in February 2022 as intensive lectures jointly organized by the University ofTokyo Integrated Human Sciences Program for Cultural Diversity (IHS) and the Toyota Foundation, took up
various projects ﬁnancially supported by the Toyota Foundationʼs International Grant Program. The goal was toshare the experiences of those supporting the projects and those who are implementing it, and to understandthe ethics and logics necessary for international collaborations by planning mock international collaborative
projects through the participation in the lectures. The purpose of the intensive lectures is to allow students in
the IHS masterʼs and doctoral programs, who are expected to go beyond their ﬁelds of expertise and sectors andcontribute what they learn back to the real world, to learn from those who have actually supported andmanaged a variety of collaboration.
Six students, three in masterʼs and three in doctoral programs, attended the lectures. Their aﬃliations spanned
a wide range of disciplines: they include Department of International Studies in Graduate School of Frontier
Sciences and Department of Area Studies, Department of Language and Information Sciences, Department ofInterdisciplinary Cultural Studies, and Department of Multidisciplinary Sciences in Graduate School of Arts andSciences. A variety of students from Japan, China, and Myanmar gathered to plan and discuss the project, bringing together their diﬀerent expertise and cultural / academic backgrounds.
On the ﬁrst day of the three-day lectures, four Toyota Foundationʼs Program Oﬃcers (POs), including an alumnus, shared their experiences and perspectives on international collaborative projects with the students. Discussions were also held on how to divide students into teams for mock project planning and what to keep in mind
when writing the application.
On the second day, case reports were provided by four grant recipients who actually implemented projects,
describing how they applied for and implemented them. In the following discussions, participants discussed
what they have to consider if they were to actually prepare the application and implement the project.
On the third day, presentations were made by students who had planned mock projects in accordance with theapplication format of the Toyota Foundation International Grant Program, followed by feedback from the
Toyota Foundation POs and grant recipients, and a discussion to review the whole process.
This report presents part of the lectures given over the three days. We hope that this report will be of help topractitioners who are currently tackling social issues across countries, ﬁelds of expertise, and sectors; to those
who support them in various ways, and, above all, to those who are planning to step into the ﬁeld of international collaboration.

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Contents
I nt rod uc t i o n２

O ve rvi e w

4

A b out I H S P r o g r a m & I n t e n s i v e L e c t u r e Co o r d in at o r
A b out t he T o y o t a F o u n d a t i o n

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F e b ruary 4 ( F r i ) S e s s i o n 1 : S u p p o r t i n g In t er n at io n al Co llabo r at ive Pr o j ect s
W hat i s a P r o g r a m Oﬃ c e r ( P O) ? T he Ro le an d Per s pect ives

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Di sc ussio n : T h e E t h i c s a n d L o g i c s o f t h e Suppo r t er s (G r an t -maker s )107

F e b ruary 7 ( Mo n ) S e s s i o n 2 : I mp l e m en t in g In t er n at io n al Co llabo r at ive Pr o j ect s
P roje c t I n t r o d u c t i o n & D i s c u s s i o n 1: Ay aka Yamas h it a / Ed gar B an as an

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P roje c t I n t r o d u c t i o n & D i s c u s s i o n 2: To kih iko F uj imo t o14

P roje c t I n t r o d u c t i o n & D i s c u s s i o n 3 : Kiy o ko Kan ki / Elis a Sut an ud j aj a

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P roje c t I n t r o d u c t i o n & D i s c u s s i o n 4: Reiko Har ima

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F e b ruary 8 ( T u e ) S e s s i o n 3 : P l a n n n i n g In t er n at io n al Co llabo r at ive Pr o j ect s
P re p ari n g t h e A p p l i c a t i o n F o r m f o r a Mo ck Pr o j ect
P roje c t P r e s e n t a t i o n A b y S t u d e n ts

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P roje c t P r e s e n t a t i o n B b y S t u d e n t s

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P roje c t P r e s e n t a t i o n C b y S t u d e n ts

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C om m e nt s f r o m S t u d e n t s

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T hre e S umma r i e s f r o m t h e C o o d i n a t o r
A ft e rword

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Overview
Dates February 4 (Fri), 7 (Mon), 8 (Tue), 2022
Venue The University of Tokyo Komaba Campus, Building 1, Classroom 108, and online
Participants 6 (3 master's course students, 3 doctoral course students)
Recorded by Yuria Muraoka

Timetable
Feb. 4（Fri）

Session 1: Supporting International Collaborative Projects (in person)
10:25

Orientation, Self-introductions, About the Toyota Foundation

13:00

What is PO? International Collaborative Projects in terms of POs andIndividual Careers

16:50

Feb. 7

Forming the Planning Team and Preparing Application Forms

Session 2: Implementing International Collaborative Projects (online)（Mon） 10:25 Ayaka Yamashita & Edgar Banasan (EDAYA)“Network-building and Bamboo Workshop manual making towards redeﬁning the value of
traditional lifestyle in rural Japan, Philippines and Myanmar” “Bamboo Workshop Manual Making
Towards Redeﬁning the Value of Traditional Lifestyle in Rural Japan and the Philippines”

13:00 Tokihiko Fujimoto (Meiji University)“Sustainable Agriculture of Rural Area in Mekong Delta, Vietnam and Mountainous Area, Japan by
Community-based Action for Eﬀective Utilization of Bio-wastes Resources” “Socio-Technologicalapproach for building sustainable community through the corporative action installng
Small-Scale-Hydropower in Japanese and Indonesian rural area.“

14:55 Kiyoko Kanki (Kyoto University)
Elisa Sutanudjaja (Rujak Center for Urban Studies)“Designing the future of unoﬃcial urban villages in mega cities of Asia: Sharing the experience of
Xizhou Tribe at the Kampung Aquarium reconstruction”

16:50 Reiko Harima (Mekong Migration Network)“Enhancing the Capacity of Countries of Origin in Facilitating Equitable Migration to Japan”

Feb. 8(Tue)

Session 3: Planning International Collaborative Projects (online)
10:25

Project Presentation A by Students“Toward Civic Understanding and International Collaboration on ʻDiverse National Languagesʼ inImmigrant Communities: Research and Practice in Indonesian Immigrant Communities in Taiwan
and Japan”

11:25

Project Presentation B by Students“Entomophagy Education through Insect Meals at School and Passing Down of Diverse Entomophagy
Culture - What bugs did you eat yesterday? -”13:00

Project Presentation C by Students“Promoting Mutual Understanding among Multicultural Communities in Japanese Society: Creating
Sustainable Teaching Materials Using Myanmarese Residents in Japan as a Case Study”

14:00

Review and Wrap-up Discussion04

About The University of Tokyo Program for Leading Graduate Schools
Integrated Human Sciences Program for Cultural Diversity (IHS Program)
Launched in 2014, this program, subsidized by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2014 to 2020,
aims to demonstrate a new direction for education at graduate schools. It enrolls around 40 students as of 2021,
some of whom major in this program and others take this program as their minor.
“Integration” stands as a key part of the concept behind this program. It suggests that the program is promoting
studies that transcend the boundaries of fractionalized academic disciplines. In the program, students learn methodologies and acquire mindsets through lectures and seminars. It aims to help them get multi-disciplinary literacy andto understand the signiﬁcance and rich potential of the latest research in relevant areas other than their specialty.
Another key element is “coexistence”. The name of program in Japanese uses the term of coexistence instead ofcultural diversity to emphasize not only importance of the state in which various individuals live in comfort but also
the state in which they are mutually respected and valued.
Students in the program are encouraged to acquire skills to overcome the boundaries between academia andsociety through a variety of training sessions outside the university.
The IHS program will address the future challenge by applying multi-disciplinary exploration to the real world. For
this purpose, students in this program have organized riddle-solving events and research in sparsely populated
regions as well as other events outside the university aimed at promoting outreach beyond academic studies andhands-on research activities based on communities. To tackle questions such as what results can be expected frommulti-cultural coexistence, whether the quality of the project outcome including the better understanding among
the members of the community can be visualized as achievements, which results should (not) be presented in theform of numerical ﬁgures, and what actions are needed to maintain sustainability of the events, students are encouraged to do their own research independently in the IHS program.

Introduction of the Intensive Lecture Coordinator
Shigeto Sonoda
Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (IASA),The University of Tokyo
Selection Committee Chair, International Grant Program, The Toyota Foundation

He specializes in contemporary China studies, comparative sociology, and analysis of cultural transformation in Asiansocieties. From the perspective of how Asian societies are changing under the impact of globalization, he has
conducted comparative sociological researches on Japanese FDI in Asia, changing social stratiﬁcation in China, anda variety of views of China within Asia. His major publications include Japan in the Eyes of Asians (1995), Testimony:
The Japan-China Joint Venture(1998), How to Cope with ʻChina Risksʼ(2016), China Impact (2018), and National
Sentiment in Asia (2020).

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About the Toyota Foundation

The Toyota Foundation
The Toyota Foundation is a grant-making foundation established in 1974 by the Toyota Motor Corporation. It
views events from a global perspective as it works to support activities that bring broad, long-term beneﬁts tosociety. The Toyota Foundation identiﬁes issues in a wide range of areas in line with current needs, including
human and natural environments, social welfare, and education and culture, and provides grants for research andprojects that address these issues.

International Grant Program
The grant program focuses on deepening mutual understanding and knowledge-sharing among people on the
ground in East, Southeast and South Asia who are ﬁnding solutions to shared issues. Through promoting directinteraction among key players, the grant program aims to survey and analyze situations in target countries,
obtain new perspectives, and expand the potential of future generations. With multinational teams comprised ofparticipants from diverse backgrounds, projects can avoid conventional linear relationships, such as “supporterand supported” or “instructor and trainee,” and instead form cooperative and creative alliances that consider, act
on, and construct solutions to shared issues. The grant program anticipates that these partnerships, which extend
beyond such factors as nationality, age, and organizational aﬃliation, will produce signiﬁcant social change
through fostering a process of mutual learning.
Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 had a signiﬁcant impact on the objectives of the international grant program, not to mention ongoing grant projects. Although restrictions on international travel continue, in addition to aiming for new online exchanges and collaboration, we will look once again for opportunities
to meet in person to question the signiﬁcance of sharing of time and places. We are thus implementing a
program in which grant recipients can share their current situation and disseminate their eﬀorts widely.
Current and future global challenges are complex and intertwined, and ﬁnding clues to solutions will require
sustained collaboration and co-creation by a variety of actors, both online and oﬄine. We hope that this grant
program will continue to organically bring together leaders from neighboring East, Southeast and South Asia toachieve its intended goals.

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February 4 (Fri) Session 1:
Supporting International Collaborative Projects
A PO is a staﬀ member who is responsible for planning and managing the grant
program and has the unique role of a “companion” to the project, so to speak.
The Toyota Foundationʼs POs are there to support and advise projects over thelong term, before, during, and after project implementation as well as to return
the knowledge gained through their involvement with a variety of projects tothe larger grant program framework.
Three POs who are currently in charge of the international grant program andan alumnus who used to be in charge of several grant programs at the Toyota
Foundation and now teaches at a university provided their own views andwhat they consider important when looking at international collaborative projects.

What is a Program Ofﬁcer (PO)? The Role and Perspectives
Kenta Kusuda

Former Program Ofﬁcer, The Toyota Foundation
Associate Professor, Performing Arts Center, Tokyo University of the Arts

Born in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture. Graduated from Waseda University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences I,
Department of Art History, and completed Ph.D program without a Ph.D. degree at Kyoto University, Graduate School of
Asian and African Area Studies.
From 2006 to 2019, he served as a PO for the Toyota Foundation, where he was in charge of research grants, domestic
grants, the Great East Japan Earthquake Special Subject Program, and international grants. From 2013 to 2015, he wasdispatched by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to teach Japanese in the interior of the Amazon in Brazil.

What is a PO?
It is a job that takes a birdʼs eye view of time and space, and freely combines regions and areas ofexpertise. We have a holistic outlook on what can be done and a perspective of trying to do something interesting with the program as a whole. It also overlaps with my current position as the
person in charge of the front lines, overseeing the entire production.

Perspectives
There are four perspectives: “Transnational”, “cross sector”, “mutual learning”, and “foresight”. It
is also important to be prepared and have a sense that what we think is important can itself

change. It is also vital not to be blinded by short-term results, but to be aware that “it may sprout
in 20 to 30 years.”Hideo Tone

Group Leader, Program Ofﬁcer, The Toyota Foundation

From 2007 to 2010, he worked at a PR ﬁrm providing public relations support to foreign IT companies, before joining theJapan Center for International Exchange (JCIE). In addition to managing bilateral dialogue programs between Japan and
Korea and Germany, he has coordinated with international organizations, development assistance agencies, ministries,
think tanks, and NGOs in Japan and overseas on the three major infectious diseases of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, andinternational health; built relationships with stakeholders, including legislators and corporate executives; and planned andconducted ﬁeld trip programs in Japan and abroad. In 2014, he moved to the Toyota Foundation, where he is in charge ofthe international grant program. He supports cross-sector and cross-border mutual exchange projects among researchers,
NPO stakeholders, social entrepreneurs, etc., with a focus on Asia. He graduated from Kanda University of International
Studies.

What is a PO?
POs are stage-setters. Just as the applicants search for suitable grants, POs create programs bycollecting data, conducting research, and thinking of program designs that can be incorporated
into reality.

Perspectives

I try to take a step back and look. When I look at the program as a whole, I think about what the

20-30 projects receiving funding can produce together. Some projects are high-risk from thefunderʼs view, but would be interesting if they were to be a hit, while others are more certain but
might be successful with other grants, so we will look for a balance. Making it fun is also important. A project that is driven by fun does not end there, even if it fails at ﬁrst.

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Naomi Okiyama

Program Ofﬁcer, The Toyota Foundation

Graduated from the University of the Philippines, Graduate School of Social Work and Community Development (M.A.). She wasin charge of various training/exchange programs in the ﬁeld of international cooperation, a lecturer of Project Cycle Management (PCM) training, a project manager of a local revitalization project for minority ethnic groups in the mountainous areas ofVietnam (regional revitalization using local resources, etc.), and was dispatched to an international organization in Southern
Africa as a JICA expert (development of tourism development guidelines contributing to regional revitalization), etc. She lives inFujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, with her husband and 5 year-old daughter. She has been in her current position since 2019.

What is a PO?
Since we inﬂuence society through the framework of our grant programs, it is our job to keep learning, rethinking, and constantly creating schemes to keep up with a changing society.

Perspectives
I think what is important is the four elements of “synergy,” “ownership,” “queries,” and “futureorientation,” as well as the purpose of the grant program̶“the program expects that people work-

ing to solve common problems will gain new perspectives through mutual exchange and learningfrom each other to expand future possibilities for the next generation, and that in the process ofinteractive learning that transcends boundaries, it will develop into a partnership that leads tosocial change,” as stated in the application guidelines.

Michiru Sasagawa

Program Ofﬁcer, The Toyota Foundation

Born in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Tokyo College ofArts and Sciences and an M.A. in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. She has been with
the Toyota Foundation since the fall of 2012 and is currently in charge of the international grant program as a part-time Program
Oﬃcer. She is also a Director of NPO People for Rainwater, a Director of NPO Rain City Support, and a part-time research fellow
at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research. She has been engaged in awareness and education activities on the themes ofrainwater utilization, water cycle, and green infrastructure and has also participated in overseas rainwater utilization promotion
and case studies.

What is a PO?
The PO is the person who reacts to the grant recipient as the closest and most supportive other andthe ﬁrst person to whom the grant recipient is exposed when the project is introduced to the world.
I am conscious of enjoying myself with presence of mind.

Perspectives
First of all, I think it is very important to have a dedication to dialogue in order to communicate. I

also place importance on recording and disseminating information because it is the foundation for

relativizing their own activities and creating and accumulating a continuous cycle. It is also important to have a vision and to feel the desire to share it and collaborate.

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Discussion: The Ethics and Logics of the Supporters (Grant-makers)
Stance on expertise:
How do you scrutinize a project in a ﬁeld you are completely unfamiliar with?
Since not all of us are familiar with the grant subject matter, we do not question or evaluate the local sensitivi-

ties, experiences, or knowledge that the applicant describes. On the other hand, there is also a bias due toexpertise, so we look closely at the applicantʼs experience, track record, relevant papers, and participating
members of the project from a birdʼs-eye viewpoint to see if the project can really be actually implemented.

Differences in applicant/PO thinking on adoption criteria:
Drawing up a portfolio for the entire programBecause of budget constraints, even the most well-written proposals may have to be dropped. In addition, thestandard of “goodness” itself changes to reﬂect the individuality of the person and the circumstances of thetime. The applicantʼs vision and the grant-makerʼs evaluation may originally diﬀer in design and approach.
Another criterion is the ripple eﬀect and sustainability of the grant results. The Toyota Foundationʼs grant may
become seed money, which may be followed by a grant from another larger framework.

Aiming for effective use of funds based on recognition of position
Communication is about how the other person perceives your words. We need to keep in mind that our(potential) grantees are looking at the Toyota Foundation money, not individual POs. We try to be aware of
the power relationship between the funder and grantee and speak with that in mind.

Simply put, the product of a grant-making foundation is money. Since it is being given away, we want to meet

people who can “make good use” of our products, so we are willing to do the legwork and look for niche but
interesting actors.

The Toyota Foundationʼs approach:Why do we need to “solve problems” in the ﬁrst place?
If we had to answer in one word, it would be because the Toyota Foundation is a public interest incorporated
foundation. However, we feel that it is uncomfortable to think of everything in terms of problem-solving, evenfor the sake of public interest, and we believe that projects can be evaluated from the perspective of “fun,”which is diﬀerent from “problem-solving.” The Toyota Foundation has a culture of “freely making grants forwhat is needed now,” and POs are in a position to be entrusted with a vision of the world in the future, so to
speak. For example, if there is a project that has a meaning or role for someone but is not relevant to many

people, the question is whether the organization would judge it as “good” or not. The PO is asked to keep

thinking about the unanswerable question of how to express the Toyota Foundationʼs inherent desire to serve
the public interest. At the same time, we value the attitude of avoiding individual project evaluation as muchas possible to prevent running into only issues that are easy to solve, so it is diﬃcult to clearly show the resultsof easy-to-understand problem-solving. The question is whether you can stay determined then. Although it isdiﬃcult to quantify and takes many diﬀerent forms, we aim to maintain our commitment to the “greater

happiness of people,” as stated in our founding philosophy, and to work toward a methodology that brings
together people who are better than ourselves and have a wealth of knowledge and experience.

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February 7 (Mon) Session 2:
Implementing International Collaborative Projects
The representatives or core members of the team, who planned and led collaborative projects that transcended national, cultural, and sectoral boundaries,
spoke about their experiences from grant applications, during implementation,
and after the projects were completed. The second half of the program was afree discussion format, with participants discussing what was important anddiﬃcult in each process, as well as the results that emerged from the mutual
learning.

1Ayaka Yamashita / Edgar Banasan

Project Introduction & Discussion
Project

Network-building and Bamboo Workshop manual making towards redeﬁning
the value of traditional lifestyle in rural Japan, Philippines and Myanmar（FY2017）
This project was conducted in Kalinga State in the northern mountainous region of Luzon Islandin the Philippines, Tosa Mountain in Kochi Prefecture, Japan, and Chin State in the northwestern

mountainous region of Myanmar. The project aimed to raise the interest of people, especially theyounger generations, in the value of mountainous life and traditional culture, which are vanishingin the context of each region, and to solve the problems faced by local communities, through thespeciﬁc experience and rediscovery of bamboo, which is a familiar element in each region.

Through the process of learning and rediscovering, the project was designed to propose thepossibility of a new lifestyle culture that combines tradition and present needs in each region.

Bamboo Workshop Manual Making Towards Redeﬁning
the Value of Traditional Lifestyle in Rural Japan and the Philippines（FY2016）
The aim of the project was to design workshop that redeﬁnes the value of vanishing traditional

mountainous cultures in Tosayama, Kochi Japan and Northern Luzon Philippines, through the useof Bamboo as a common material. The learning process led us to discovering and creating solu-

tions to some of the problems shared by rural communities in Asia and thereafter creating a new
culture that harmonized traditional and modern values. This project consisted of three phases.

First was the research and analysis of each bamboo culture and usages of bamboo. The next step
was designing the workshop module for the Bamboo Glocal Village. Part of that, we conducted

prototype workshops in rural village in the Philippines (Magsilay, Kalinga) and during the Cordillera Bamboo Day Festival in Baguio City. Finally, we released the module idea, website and thevideo.

Ayaka Yamashita Co-founder of EDAYA
Transdisciplinary Designer/Facilitator. M.F.A. in Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2021). She wasa Fulbright Scholar. Co-founder of EDAYA, a project that integrates design/art, education, and community development using bamboo as a medium. She holds a Masterʼs degree in International Development Agriculture from the
University of Tokyo Faculty of Agriculture (2010) and a Masterʼs degree in International Health from the University ofTokyo Graduate School of Medicine (2012).

Edgar B. Banasan Co-founder of EDAYAHe is a home-grown artist, specializing in bamboo musical instrument making and playing. He has an impeccable
track record when it comes to performing Indigenous crafts and music, and executing Indigenous talents. He is
recognized as one of the only three remaining Kalinga (a land-lock province in the Cordillera region, north ofPhilippines, and is the home of diverse Indigenous cultures and people called the Kalingas) Bamboo musicalinstruments maker and player. His jewʼs harp is exhibited at Museum and Centre of Khomus of the Worldʼs Peoples in
the Sakha Republic.

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Q&A Session with the Students
Building trust to enter a community
Q. How did you reach out to the people who were diﬃcult to be involved in the project, such as
elderly villagers?

A. We put a lot of emphasis on selecting project leaders for each region. I took a step back and letthem do their thing, trusting that they were in good hands. Also, it is very diﬃcult to get peopleinterested, much less involved in a project, if you go in with the face of a researcher, so I emphasized the importance of heart-to-heart human communication. It is important to weave in both thelogical and emotional aspects.

Incorporating a balance of arts and sciences and maintain consistency
Q. How can you depict the results when you donʼt know the situation in the ﬁeld at the
proposal-writing stage?

A. In the proposal, we communicated our intent that this project would respect what arises in theﬁeld. In actuality, it was diﬃcult to achieve speciﬁc goals, but we were consistent in our policy ofinterweaving the arts and sciences. I used to work for an international cooperation consultant andhave experience with extremely goal-oriented project management, so I was aware of making a
proposal that could incorporate and bridge arts (design) and science (logic and policy) in abalanced manner while knowing both ﬁelds.

Creating communication to respect culture
Q. Social meaning and traditions of using bamboo might vary from region to region. How
did you avoid the cultural problems that arise?

A. Since the project focused on communication, I tried to communicate openly about how torespect cultures. Culture is alive and cannot be deﬁned in a ﬁxed way. That is why we ﬁrst had toreconcile our perceptions of what is traditional and what is cultural. This project could create communication within the community to learn from each other as strangers bring in, share, andexchange outside culture, and can connect generations through the platform of workshops andmodules. We wanted to create opportunities for young people to learn about the value of traditionand culture, and to think about how important culture is to them.

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Project Introduction & Discussion

2Tokihiko Fujimoto

Project
Sustainable Agriculture of Rural Area in Mekong Delta, Vietnam and Mountainous Area,
Japan by Community-based Action for Effective Utilization of Bio-wastes Resources（FY2019）
Under the theme of "Recycling of Bio-waste Resources and Regional Circular Agriculture," participants will learn how to recycle waste biomass resources as thermal energy and manure, based on
the lifestyles that have developed in accordance with the topography of tropical Vietnam andtemperate Japan. Participants in Thanh Tay village in Hau Giang province in the Mekong Delta,
Vietnam work on community biogas and food waste composting while those in Gokase town inMiyazaki prefecture work on manure creation and biogas heat utilization. The main subjects
taking on this challenge are the women of Japan and Vietnam who have supported daily life practices and shaped the local food culture. These cross-border key persons are now practicing tolead social change by connecting food and agriculture locally while cherishing their daily lives
and creating beautiful farming villages.

Socio-Technological approach for building sustainable community through the corporative
action installing Small-Scale-Hydropower in Japanese and Indonesian rural area（FY2014）
The issue in rural Indonesia is "community development" in terms of poverty, unlighted areas, medical care,education, etc., while in Japan, it is "community support" due to the decline of the local regions caused by the
rapid aging of the population. In the ﬁeld of small-scale hydropower generation, Gokase Town in Miyazaki

prefecture has experienced delays in technology and high prices, while in West Java Province, the introductionof such generation has not progressed due to the lack of functioning maintenance and management by the

local community. We sought solutions by mutually utilizing the technologies and knowledge of both countries.
We discovered the potential of “Kincir” (handmade micro hydroelectric generator in Indonesia), which has
been handed down in unelectriﬁed villages in Indonesia, as a tool for resident participation and consensus

building, and held a workshop on technology transfer to Gokase Town. Involvement in the production of thetechnology provided inspiration to think about the use of the "good electricity" generated by the local natureand formed a learning opportunity and subject for thinking about sustainable local survival strategies.

Tokihiko Fujimoto

Associate Professor, School of Political Science and Economics,
Meiji University

He was born in Kumamoto City in 1984. In March 2009, he completed the ﬁrst half of the doctoral program insociology at Doshisha University. After completing his graduate studies, he worked at the Shimane Prefectural
Mountainous Regions Research Center, the JST Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society, theGraduate School of Engineering at Kyushu University, and the Faculty of Agriculture at Shizuoka University before
assuming his current position in April 2020. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering (Kyushu University, 2013) for his
dissertation, "A Study on Local Entity Formation for Renewable Energy Social Capital Development". He is also theauthor of "The Power of Thinking About Community Planning" (Mishosha, 2022).

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Q&A Session with the Students
Hang the hook far away
Q. What do you keep in mind when planning a project?

A. I am conscious of hanging the hook far away. This is because if you only look at what is nearby,
you will only be able to realize what you thought was possible, but if you put the hook andconnect far away, what is in between will naturally ﬁll in the blanks. For example, I was trained insociology in college, but when I wanted to have a palpable taste of the gap between the national
and local levels, the question of skill arose, and I began to accumulate engineering and agronomic
knowledge. Since there is such a thing as knowing a townʼs development only after youʼve doneit, we will always do our own handcrafting and scale up our skills as we do it. Then, a town can bebuilt as an extension of this.

Create an environment that fosters interactive communication
Q. You mentioned that the small hydroelectric power project did not generate any direct
beneﬁts for ﬁve years. With no visible results, was there impatience or discord in communication among the project participants?

A. We had the concept of “fun and slow” to create a place for dialogue. Although small hydroelectric generators require a minimum lead time of ﬁve years to start with, they are designed so thatonce they are built, they will not break down for about 100 years, and we were careful to match
this sense of time from the beginning of the project. The power of words is important because
when we set up a big vision, a philosophy supported by doing the right thing, good things attract
good money and communication is stable.

Protect the meaning for the community that is in the process
Q. Some of the needs from the citizen may be picked up, but how do you follow up on this?

A. It is important to be aware of the importance of the process, not the result, whether the need isresolved or not. We are venturing on the premise that problems are no longer easily solved. Also,
I go around the community interviewing various people, but it is not me but the people of thecommunity who actually work for the community. Time in life is short for what I want to do, so I
am conscious of doing what I can do to the best of my ability and leaving the rest to them. Yet, it
is also true that there are other things required by the grant-making organizations. For those whohave provided grants, we need to write papers, publish impact factors, and give back the resultsof our work as a promise.

15

Project Introduction & Discussion

3 Kiyoko Kanki / Elisa Sutanudjaja

Project
Designing the future of unofﬁcial urban villages in mega cities of Asia:

Sharing the experience of Xizhou Tribe at the Kampung Aquarium reconstruction (FY2018)

Inhabitants of Kampung Aquarium, a high-density settlement including informal settlements,
located on the inner coast of a bay in North Jakarta, were forcibly evicted in 2016 to make way
for a provincial tourist attraction. About 700 inhabitants were evicted and the area was cleared,

but the new governor who took oﬃce in 2017 allowed them to return, and the settlement was

rebuilt. To achieve a community-led reconstruction plan here, we collaborated with local urban

planners who are working on urban planning and reconstruction design with the participation of
inhabitants. We connected the experience of the self-reliant and participatory settlement designin the Xizhou Tribe of Taiwan, which was supported by the Toyota Foundation from 2009 to 2011,

with the experience of reconstruction activities nearing completion. The goal of this project wasto contribute to the process of recognition of unrecognized urban settlements throughout Asia
through the evaluation of the culture of self-reliance and coexistence through exchanges
between Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan.

Kiyoko Kanki

Prof.Dr.Eng., Dept. of Architecture and Architectural Eng.
Graduate School of Eng., Kyoto Univ.

A researcher and planner, specially focusing on rural and urban planning with community initiatives and evolutionary
conservation of cultural landscapes. Advocating the idea "dynamic authenticity" from the activities of international ﬁeld
schools in Borobudur, Indonesia as well as Bali and Jakarta. In Japan, she is engaged in the preservation and design oflocal entities in Kyoto, Izumisano, Yuasa and the Kii Mountain Range (World Heritage Site).

Elisa Sutanudjaja

Executive Director, Rujak Center for Urban Studies

Developing and Managing Program with expertise in urban issues, such as planning, development, and design.
Currently focus on Community Action Planning in kampungs in Jakarta and developing a right-based housing strategy
in Jakarta.
Ongoing project including Citizen Urbanism in 9 Indonesian Cities (Tangerang Selatan, Bogor, Bandung, Banda Aceh
Pontianak, Solo, Surabaya, Banjarmasin and Semarang), Community Action Planning in urban kampungs and formulating right-based housing strategy in Jakarta.

16

Q&A Session with the Students
Learning from projects that cross time and space
Q. What is the signiﬁcance of connecting your project with the past Toyota Foundation grant projects?

A. It has been wonderful to see the “historical legacy” of a project being used as a resource and to see the futurethat we as a foundation supported 10 years ago in a project that was designed then become a reality. The endof the grant period does not at all mean the end of the project or the eﬀorts of the local people. It will beinteresting to see how their learning, experience, and expertise, which may have been gained in multiple layers
and from multiple angles through the connections made through this project, will spill over to other countries
and regions in the near future.

Differences between the two regions of Taiwan and Indonesia
Q. What role do you think the Taiwan case played in understanding kampung in Indonesia?

A. Although the Amis were an ethnic minority in Taiwan, urban planning and architecture experts have been
discussing their lifestyle in a mega city like Taipei, and they have come up with new models for urban living,such as maintaining community functions while keeping traditions such as agriculture alive in a high-density

urban environment lifestyle. Due to diﬀerences in the timeline, the Indonesian side shared Taiwanʼs experience,but there are community revitalization eﬀorts led by residents in two or more disparate regions, and mutual

exchange is very meaningful. In addition to experts on kampungs, Indonesian local residents also participatedas experts in mutual exchanges that generated new knowledge for the project.

“Liking it” is important
Q. What is the secret of staying involved in communities over the long term?

A. I personally ﬁnd Southeast Asiaʼs dynamic, sustainable, high-density cities and the living conditions of ethnic
minorities very attractive, and this attractiveness is one of my most important research motivations. The more

fun you have doing something, the longer you can keep going. And in urban planning, such a sense of motiva-tion and aﬀection is very important, especially since the places you are dealing with are living spaces. This is myattitude and philosophy as a person.

Commonalities that connect communities, and communities are ever-changing
Q. What do you think make a community viable?

A . There is an aspect of Indonesia as an “imagined community” (B. Anderson) that brings together people fromdiverse regions. Although individual communities within the kampung also have various backgrounds, a system
similar to the former Japanese neighborhood associations is functioning. About 20 years ago, when slums

expanded rapidly as the Asian population expanded rapidly by several million people, it was said that people

would not be left on the street because of the kampung. Today, we are connected not only by geographic andeconomic commonalities, but also by shared diﬃculties, goals, and dreams. The modern kampung is a place ofcollaboration and full of potential, and this commonality is what drives and connects communities. However,communities, including Japanʼs, are not always stable and are constantly changing. For example, in Kobe after

the great earthquake, the importance of community-oriented urban planning was reevaluated during theunintentional reconstruction process, and the city actually became a better place. Even in municipalities such asneighborhood associations, there are both places where the ﬁre is dying out and places where it is rather
energized. Discussions of dynamic communities are generally diﬃcult, but necessary for the future.

17

Project Introduction & Discussion

4 Reiko Harima

Project
Enhancing the Capacity of Countries of Origin
in Facilitating Equitable Migration to Japan (FY2019)
The proposed project aims to contribute towards a more inclusive society by making migration amore equitable experience. It will focus on migration from Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam to

Japan, in light of the growing trends of migration from these countries and given the limited experience and capacity of these countries of origin in facilitating migration. Country visits will be organised to Myanmar, Cambodia and Japan to facilitate mutual learning on responses to migration,collectively identify good practice and lessons learnt, and develop recommendations. The projectwill produce a short ﬁlm on migration from these countries of origin to Japan to raise awareness,

publish an advocacy paper presenting good practice and recommendations and develop a handbook for civil society organisations (CSOs) in Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam who will provide

support to migrants going to Japan. The proposal is based on the needs collectively identiﬁed by

CSOs in the region, given the limited knowledge, experiences and capacity of CSOs in responding to
the rapidly growing trends of migration to Japan. The outputs are expected to have ripple eﬀects

and enhance the capacity of the relevant countries of origin to adequately facilitate migration to
Japan.

Reiko Harima

Regional Coordinator, Mekong Migration Network

Reiko is a founding member of the Mekong Migration Network (MMN) and presently manages the network as its
regional coordinator. Her area of expertise is migration in the Mekong subregion. In 1999, following an internship with
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) she joined the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) as a research coordinator. Subsequently when the MMN was formally launched in 2003, Reiko was appointed as the Regional Coordinator,and has been coordinating the MMN joint activities in the areas of research, advocacy, capacity building and networking to date. Reiko Harima holds M. A. in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

18

Q&A Session with the Students
Diversiﬁcation of values and clariﬁcation of advocacy brought about by collaboration
Q. What changes have been brought about by connecting various public and private organizations?
A. Diversiﬁcation of values. Even if you have experience working on the same theme, the values
and customs are totally diﬀerent depending on which country and which sector you were working
with. The good thing is that advocacy as an organization becomes clearer in a dialogue that tries
to move toward the positive without breaking up the diversity. Although our agenda must change
in response to political, economic, and other conditions, we remain loosely connected to the organizations we are connected to and do what we can now to prepare for the future and wait for theright opportunity.

Communication in advocacy is persistent and strategic
Q. In your role as a bridge-builder, can you gain something from the government side?

A. Many times we get a good response from the government side on the spot, but nothing really
happens. We will persist in a way that neither we nor they will lose face, and we will use our
networks to continue to advocate for the next 20 years.

Rethinking media and creating opportunities for exchange can be appliedin Japan as well
Q. Do you think you can apply your cases to Japanese society?

A. Both the Mekong and Japan have their own characteristics and cannot necessarily be applied asis. If I had to name one on top of that, I would suggest that the media community, where immigration is scandalously covered, could propose the formulation of banned terms. Terms such as “illegal migrant,” for example, have already been discussed in The Guardian newspaper in the
United Kingdom, which has a clear policy of non-use of that and other terms. We can address thelanguage issues that instill these fears, as well as provide opportunities for people to interact withimmigrants who are naturally human and person to person.

Support for foreign nationals in Japan:
Providing information as something that can be done within limitations
Q. How do you deal with problems in Japan side?

A. The projectʼs focus on Cambodia and Vietnam remains unchanged, but we are currently working
to promote the provision of proper information at sending agencies prior to travel and at embassies after arrival in Japan. Currently, there is a need to clarify points that travel brokers do notunderstand well or are misleading.

19February 8 (Tue) Session 3:
Planning International Collaborative Projects
The six students were grouped into three teams to plan and draft an international
collaborative project by using

the Toyota Foundation International Grant

Programʼs application format. On the ﬁnal day, each team gave a presentation andreceived feedback from Toyota Foundation POs and grant recipients who attended the presentation session.
The intensive lectures were concluded with comments from the students as wellas wrap-up discussion.

Preparing the Application Form for a Mock Project
Key elements of a project application form
-Project members-Project outline of about 400 characters (in Japanese)-Project schematic: Social signiﬁcance, previous project reviews, showing context-Activities: Originality, what kind of future do you envision?
-Implementation schedule-Budget: Conference costs, travel expenses, etc.
-Outcomes: Explanation of the mutuality that is “mutual learning” and the expected ripple eﬀect

Preparing the application form
When writing an application form, it is important to meet with the guideline oﬀered by theFoundation. In other words, it is necessary to read the application form carefully and understandwhat is required. It must demonstrate conformity and novelty to the program in a straightforward response to the grant-makerʼs proposed wording. It is also important to be aware of how
to write in a way in which people who are not in your ﬁeld of expertise will be able to understand, since what you think is obvious in your ﬁeld of expertise may not necessarily be easily
understood. And it is important that, when read by others or read aloud, the story ﬂows properly
to the conclusion that this is why you are requesting funding.
Grants usually seek to reproduce the foreseen results. However, the “right” process does notdictate what the outcome will be. That is why it is important to have the momentum and creativity of a social experiment and to thoroughly develop a theory that allows us to believe that thisfuture will indeed happen. For example, if you can envision speciﬁc activities, you will be able
to write a budget with a reasonable basis.
“Exchange” is diﬀerent from the keyword of “mutual learning.” It is not a simple matter of complementing each other in what each is lacking, but is born out of the passage of time and emotional empathy. Mutual learning occurs not only during the project implementation period, butalso in the communication that extends before and after the project, and in the communicationthat searches for the optimal solution from the “correctness” that clashes with each other. The
selection process does not ask whether or not mutual learning occurs, but rather evaluates theoverall content of the project with a higher degree of congruence.

21

Project Presentation

A by Students

Toward Civic Understanding and International Collaboration
on 'Diverse Languages' in Immigrant Communities:

Research and Practice in Indonesian Immigrant Communities in Taiwan and Japan■Project Target Areas Immigration, multilingualism, citizenship, stigmas, local government,
education, national language norms, international cooperation■Overview As non-native speakers, immigrants face not only practical challenges such as diﬃculties in accessing
education, medical care, labor market, etc., but also psychological challenges such as being labeled as strangers by ahost society, feeling isolation due to the feelings of avoidance and inferiority. This project aims to cultivate a “diverseview of the national language” for the next generation by working on the “national language” norms and communication perspectives of the immigrant communities in host societies in Taiwan and Japan. In addition, the project will
document and analyze the linguistic and communication diﬃculties that immigrants are often facing in schools,
workplaces, and hospitals, and compile language books and other materials to promote social awareness of the local
people. At the same time, we will create a more inclusive and sustainable multicultural society by building a platformthat enables immigrants to connect with each other and with support groups on a broad scale, in addition to providing a place for exchange and mutual learning where immigrants and local community members can participate
together.

Feedback
The more concretely you try to draw the picture of the state you are aiming,the more clearly you will be aware of the targets and bottlenecks of the project
It is important to have a concrete picture or a story of “what will happen if this project is implemented.” The ﬁrst step in planning a project is to narrow down your focus so that you can imagine
concrete individuals whom you are addressing to. First, it would be better to clarify who is a “citizen” and who is an “immigrant”. If, for example, “immigrants” are assumed to be people who canstay in Japan for a long period of time. Those who are married to Japanese nationals can be thecase, but the challenge here is not to integrate them to communities but to get them out of thefamily where, for example, husband is trying to keep his wife at home. It was also easy to understand when the words empathy and mutual understanding were deﬁned in the projectʼs own way.
The goal of “updating awareness on the part of citizens” is also very abstract, so setting an
endpoint somewhere and specifying the areas where funds are needed would be better.

Creating entry points and triggers for involvement
I had an impression that they were doing the right thing in the right way. Conversely, however,there is a reliance on the great righteousness of “this is the way society should be”. The reality isthat even if the project implementer thinks this should be done, it does not necessarily mean thatthe public will be on board. Interesting entry points, creativity, and triggers that make even previously uninterested people participate unintentionally will increase the power of involvement.

22

Developmental potential that emerges when the rationale for the objectives is reﬁned
It was interesting to see the perspective of applying the idea that in the English-speaking world,even non-native Anglo-American English does not lead to discrimination if it is perceived as a new
language to Japanese.
I felt that explanations such as, “the term ʻnational languageʼ is intended to be read by people ina variety of ﬁelds,” were necessary. The Indonesian view of the national language is particularly
diﬃcult to visualize. It will also be interesting to see how Indonesians perceive the national
language in Japan and Taiwan based on taking an approach to the Indonesian view of the national
language, while ﬁrmly establishing the reasons for choosing Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia as theﬁeld of study on the grounds of previous studies. In addition, direct exchanges between the general public in Japan and Taiwan, such as talking together and learning from each other about theirown national language awareness, would lead to more tangible results.

Project Presentation

B by Students

Entomophagy Education through Insect Meals at School
and Passing Down of Diverse Entomophagy Culture: What bugs did you eat yesterday?
■Project Target Areas Education, environment, culture, industry■Overview Entomophagy (eating insects for food) is getting popular as a solution to the food crisis caused byworld population growth and environmental change. On the other hand, there are issues of production eﬃciency
and cultural preservation. Therefore, this project will serve indigenous insect meals at school lunches to promoteentomophagy and cultural preservation at the same time. When this project is completed, it will establish a diﬀerent
approach to the promotion of entomophagy and the preservation of food culture, and will provide a clue toaverting a food crisis, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Feedback
Establish a balance between the task setting - activities - deliverables, and follow the logic
I think it is good that the theme is impactful and the conceptual aspects are solidiﬁed. On the other hand, I had
the impression that the initial entrance/problem setting and the exit/activity content were not coordinated. For
example, the entry point starts with the food crisis, but it is commonly believed that the food crisis is a distribution
problem rather than a production problem, so it will be pointed out that there is a lot of work to be done before
we get to entomophagy. If the main focus as an activity is on food culture and the added value of “deliciousness,”then the food crisis at the entry point does not align. The topic is nice and catchy, but if it is a global issue, it is hardto pick it up at the local level when it starts out big. The subject of changing attitudes was also unclear in someareas, and the outcome of the publication felt unbalanced. One could argue that if the business is viable, it would
be healthier to solicit investment there, and a grant from the Foundation would be unnecessary.

23

Consider ﬂexibility in approach to increase feasibility
Of the various approaches possible, why were school lunches chosen? While eﬀective in terms ofproviding everyone with the opportunity to try entomophagy, the allergy and emotional issues arecomplex, and from an advocacy perspective, it was diﬃcult to see where steps could be taken to
persuade people to try it in their school lunches. There should be many precedents, including theLaotian ﬁshmeal case that an international organization tried and failed, so it would be good torefer to them and show how they are trying to make use of them. Since some parties will lose out
if it is introduced in school lunches, it would be better to consider how to make sense of it andnegotiate it on an overall regional basis, including school boards and legislators as participating
members. In any case, there may be room to consider methods, such as whether it is better toprovide the insect food as a top-down approach like introducing them in a school lunch, or as abottom-up approach like inviting those who are interested and want to try, by spreading the word.

Project Presentation

C by Students

Promoting Mutual Understanding among Multicultural Communities in Japanese Society:

Creating Sustainable Teaching Materials Using Myanmarese Residents in Japan as a Case Study.

■Project Target Areas Education, multicultural coexistence■Overview This project aims to enable Myanmarese residents in Japan to interact with Japanese citizens in an enjoyable and conﬁdent manner as if Japanese language were theirmother tongue, while Japanese people can enjoy interacting with foreigners of diﬀerent
cultural backgrounds while in Japan, and works on solving problems to realize it. The projectseeks to ﬁnd out if it is possible to build a society that is rich in diversity and multicultural.
The project will ﬁrst record Japanese dialogues on speciﬁc themes as a foundation for creating dialogues, and then categorize and analyze the vocabulary and grammar used in the
dialogues to create teaching materials. These materials will be used to teach Mynmmarese in
their 20s and 30s who are living in Japan. After teaching, opportunities to put the material
into practice will be provided. The same attempt will be made on diﬀerent dialogue themes.
Japanese and Myanmarese residents in Japan will participate in each phase of the project.
This is a project to promote dialogues through the process of creating teaching materials
and opportunities for dialogue.

24

FeedbackTips for narrowing down from general to speciﬁc questions
Because the questions are so general and large, it is easy to stand on vague assumptions whentrying to cover the whole area, so it may be better to narrow the focus and ask speciﬁc questions.
Understanding the reality will also help us to have a better quality of discussion in general. Somehints for concretization: (1) The analysis of the problem mentions “lack of opportunities for
dialogue,” but there is room to delve deeper and examine who exactly is lacking in dialogue withwhom and what kind of dialogue is lacking. (2) You mention “strengthening Japanese language
education” in your agenda setting, but since international friendship associations and other organizations are already practicing this, you can ﬁll in whether you think there are not enough numbers
when it comes to “strengthening” it, whether the impact is insuﬃcient, whether there are problems
with the system that relies on volunteers, or whether the way volunteers are recruited is poor, andso on. Because it is a hot issue with many people involved, it is important to show who we collaborate with and where we position ourselves in the process. (3) Although there are plans to create
textbooks for the deliverables, there are already a variety of good textbooks out there, so supplementation and comments would be a more realistic strategy than creation. Also, the budget fordeliverables is estimated to be small, but we look at the budget as a reﬂection not only of theamount of money, but also the schedule, the balance of allocating eﬀort, so we ask, “Can we reallymake an impact?” and will cause anxiety. (4) If you are going to focus your target on Myanmar, why
not emphasize its strengths? For example, Burmese speakers acquire Japanese very quickly, perhaps
because their grammar is close to that of Japanese, but there must be a special knack to this, so it
would be possible to develop Japanese language education focused on Burmese speakers. (5) The
content you want to disseminate at a symposium also needs to be speciﬁc.

Mutual learning becomes an interactive design
What would be interesting to delve into is a focus on dialogue. The point that “even among Japanese people, there are usually no opportunities for dialogue” is true, and we felt that this could be
an approach to develop dialogue skills, including among Japanese people, by setting the purposeof the program as dialogue training rather than Japanese language training. This will allow us tomove away from a measurement approach whereby the measurement of Japanese language ability
is taken as an achievement. Mutual interactive training also leads to two-way, equitable learningand the larger, generalized goals set at the outset.

Transboundary perspective is a must
The framework of the international grant program is contingent on direct country travel. If the project is to promote dialogue, the project itself should have a transboundary nature, but the proposal
does not give a sense of regional or sectoral border crossing. For example, we can learn what isworking and what is not working in the current exchange initiative from the areas where people
from Myanmar are concentrated in Matsuyama, and we need to be aware of the regional spread andincorporate elements of how it can be developed internationally.

25

Comments from Students
Planning
・When I started to write an application form, many ideas came to mind at ﬁrst, but it wasdiﬃcult to set goals and make selections. I realized that writing an application itself was ineﬀect a process of ﬂeshing out the project. I also realized that when we try to collaborate

on a single project, it becomes diﬃcult to maintain overall balance and consistent logic, so
we need to make sure that the members of the project are well aware of each otherʼs understanding of the project.

・We tried to get a consensus on the project mission rather than separately writing the partsof the proposal by utilizing individual specialties, but we ended up generalizing our ideas
vaguely, which is something we could have done better.

・I realized that the Foundation is trying to maintain a good balance between novelty of the

project and its future prospect, so I tried to plan the project with the idea of designing as

interesting a project as possible. But to do so, I found it necessary to think of concrete
people, not abstract masses.

Having listened to the positions of supporting and implementing
・From what the grant recipients told us, we learned that the role of the proposal writer is

not so much to lead the members, but rather to act as an intermediary among the members.

・From what POs do before and after the selection of the applications, I could sense that theFoundationʼs greatest asset is really the network of its grantees. I was surprised to knowthat they seemed to be selecting future potential based on the past.

・I could gain a fresh idea that all the projects are similar in that they try to respect theconcrete process of collaboration, not the results of the projects. An anecdotal that maintenance of the network among policy-makers is equal to getting the consensus among participants in the project was eye-opening.

・In many cases, I try to conceptualize what I will do in an abstract manner, but I learned that

it is a good idea to start from a small project to deepen ideas. I realized that continuous

commitment will eventually bring about good results even when the project was managed
in an ad hoc way.

26

Three Summaries from the Coordinator
1. Keep an appropriate distanceMs. Yamashita grew up in Tokyo and has no too much strong emotional attachment to the town ofbamboo to which she commits. Mr. Fujimoto is from Kumamoto and knows well about Miyazaki in
Kyushu, but not about Tohoku. You may be able to see things clearly if you step a bit away fromthe things youʼre observing. Keeping an appropriate distance is the best policy. Donʼt come too
close, donʼt move too far, either.

2. Imagine an ideal stateStudents in the liberal arts may understand the importance of emergence, but may not have aconcrete picture of its process. Indeed, it is diﬃcult to foresee what will happen in the future.
However, it is important to verbalize the ideal state youʼre aiming when you design your researchor project. Have a hypothetical idea ﬁrst. Unless you have a clear image of the ideal future, you
cannot know what to do when situations are not getting better. Itʼs important to “master andreconstruct” conventional ways of doing as the case of mastering skills in traditional arts.

3. Utilize the “edges”
Itʼs important to know and utilize the “edges” where several powers meet together. Sometimes
collaboration among members of same discipline will bring about the good results, while sometimes will not. Itʼs heavily dependent on how eﬀectively you can utilize diﬀerent powers to complete your mission. Aggregating diﬀerent ideas will be diﬃcult in most cases, but you might beable to use them to destroy old ideas and create new ideas. Your network will help you a lot. Itʼsbetter to think both concretely and abstractly about how you collaborate with a variety of persons,
how you design your project, and how you will change the current situation, and so on.

27Professor of Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo

Afterword Shigeto Sonoda Selection Committee Chair, International Grant Program, The Toyota Foundation

It is I who proposed the IHS x Toyota Foundationʼs Intensive Lecture “Supporting International
Collaboration Projects/Ethics and Logic of Implementation” in November 2020, which is now
one year and seven months ago.
In February of the same year, the IHS Program and the Toyota Foundation co-hosted a symposium titled “The Ways to Have a Better Dialogue for Empathy - Mutual Learning and Exchanges-,” where a lot of learnings were gained. Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world,
and the Foundationʼs international grant program was severely aﬀected. With the world having
stopped moving, we asked ourselves if there is anything we can do. My answer was to keep “
online dialogue between grant recipients and students to deepen mutual learning.” This
proposal came to fruition as intensive lectures, and a series of online seminars for the generalpublic, “Considering the Ethics and Logics of International Collaborative Projects” (4 sessions),
was also conducted as a self-directed project of the Toyota Foundation.
We made good preparations. We shared the missions of the lectures with the speakers inadvance and told them what we wanted them to speak to the students about. Not only the grantrecipients but also those who are/were working for the Foundation were given an overview ofwhat an international collaborative project looks like from their own point of view. In addition,
we encouraged students to understand the essentials of international collaborative projects
through mock writing of the application form, given the diﬃculty of actually going abroad
under COVID-19 pandemic. The lecture record, upon which this report was edited, is a large oneof around 48,000 characters, which is the evidence that the lectures were productive andrewarding.
While online seminars are designed for an unspeciﬁed number of viewers and can be viewed on
YouTube at any time, in the case of intensive lectures, only six students directly beneﬁted, andmoreover, their interactions are only partially disclosed in this report. In terms of cost-eﬀectiveness (or social impact), intensive lectures may be regarded as a failure, but it is too early tojudge so. Not only the students, but also those who have participated in these lectures mayenrich their learning and contribute it back to society later on.
One of the students asked if those selected for the Toyota Foundationʼs international grant
program would ever be on the side of the selection committee. After hearing this question, I
realized just as a newly launched educational program will be a complete one when its graduates turn to the faculty side, the grant program will gain its complete identity when those who
were selected for the grant will turn to the selecting side.
Considering the eﬀort and cost spent as well as passionate messages of the speakers in theselectures, I sincerely hope that the students who participated in these intensive lectures will not
only apply for the international grant program and manage international collaborative projects,
but also become researchers or practitioners who will be invited to serve as judges for the international grant program in the future.

28

International Grant Program
Shinjuku Mitsui Building 37F,
2-1-1 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
163-0437, Japan

https://www.toyotafound.or.jp/english/
Published in June 2022