Special Interview 2Interview with Kazuki Okimura, Counselor to the President, Japan Science and Technology
AgencyEmbracing the Future with Prosperity in Asia
Through Sakura Exchange Program in Science
By Japan SPOTLIGHT
The best foreign policy is often to create friendship between the young people among nations. Lifelong
friendships can contribute to international peace, and exchanges among young students of science could
lead to innovation as well as peace, since young people will be intellectually stimulated by the exchange
programs and more innovative than ever.
Kazuki Okimura, a former vice minister as well as president of the Japan Science and Technology
Agency (JST), founded the Sakura Exchange Program in Science in 2014. Absorbed in a China-Japanexchange program in science for many years and fascinated by the significant potential of China as apower in science, he noted the need to establish the Sakura Exchange Program in Science to create winwin bilateral relations. The program was eventually expanded to cover all Asian nations. He has been
awarded a couple of distinguished prizes by the Chinese government for his invaluable contributions toscientific cooperation between the two nations. He is currently counselor to the president of the JST and
director of the Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Program in Science Promotion Office. We held the followinginterview with him.
(Interviewed on June 15, 2017)

Introductionthat of Japan today. There are even someJapanese think tanks saying that economic
JS: Could you briefly tell us
growth and progress in Japanese science
about yourself, and in particularand technology will be only one-tenth ofyour relations with China?
what it is today in 2050.
Though China is a gigantic military andOkimura: I was a government official
technological power within only a fewworking for the Science and Technology
hours’ flight, we cannot easily access any
A g e n c y ( S TA ) o f t h e J a p a n e s einformation on Chinese science andgovernment. Since retiring from the STA,technology. I thought then we should
I have been working for the JST, first as
create more channels for communication
executive managing director and then as
with China on science and technology.
president. I am now counselor to theThis was my starting point towards
president of the JST and working at thecreation of the Sakura Exchange Program
China Research and Communicationin Science. With this conviction, weKazuki Okimura, Counselor to the President, Japan Science
Center (CRCC) as well as with the Japanfounded a JST office in Beijing in 2006
and Technology Agency
Asia Youth Exchange Program in Scienceand also the CRCC. With these two
Promotion, called the Sakura Exchange Program in Science.
organizations as platforms, we have been engaged in many
I became interested in China when I visited there to sign ancommunication programs with China, and have also been working
agreement on a program of the JST as executive managing director
on research concerning Chinese science and technology.
with the Chinese Science Academy. I was intrigued by the strength ofcontemporary Chinese science and became convinced of the need
JS: What kind of specific activities has the CRCC
been working on?
for Japan to establish a deeper channel for scientific exchanges withChina.
Okimura: I believe we have been working on all that we would need
As China and Japan are geographically close to each other, Japanfor communication on science and technology. We have been
has been strongly influenced by China in various areas, such as
working not only on research but also on running websites such as
literature, culture, religion, etc. Besides that, Chinese and Japanese“Science portal China” to introduce information on Chinese science
are also racially very close. Chinese science and technology isand technology in Japanese for Japanese readers, and “Reality ofmaking significant progress day by day and I believe its level exceeds
54 Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 2017

Japan” to present Japanese science and technology information inChinese for Chinese readers. In particular, the latter issues all kindsof information on Japanese universities, such as science andtechnology developed in the universities or information on available
academic programs or university faculties, as well as facilities for theinterest of Chinese students studying in Japan or interested instudying at a Japanese university.
I believe it is not only information provision but also exchange ofhuman resources that is crucial for achieving progress on mutual
understanding. So far, there have been only a few exchange
programs between some specific universities in China and Japan,such as the one between the University of Tokyo and Qinghua
University.
Twice in 2010 we organized an event called “Fair and Forumbetween Japanese and Chinese Universities”, an attempt to achieve
matching between 50 Chinese universities that we invited to Japanand Japanese universities. Unfortunately, we could not organize thisevent in Japan again in 2012 due to the territorial dispute between
China and Japan. But I thought if Chinese universities could notcome to Japan, then Japanese universities should go to China, andafter having consulted with the Chinese Education Department, wejoined their event in China to promote studying abroad for Chinese
students together with the major Japanese universities. We havecontinued this project until now and in 2017 we will hold thisexchange program in Shanghai with 45 Japanese universities joining
it. In this program, both nations’ students and the presidents of theparticipating universities discuss the ideals of university education orintroduce their developed technologies to each other. We feel theproject is having a positive outcome as quite a number of theparticipants are interested in joining the event again.

Sakura Exchange Program in Science
JS: We have heard that you are working hard on
youth exchanges between Japan and other Asian
countries. Could you explain about the Sakura
Exchange Program in Science?
Okimura: The Sakura Exchange Program in Science is an exchange
program inviting young people in Asia to Japan and providing themwith opportunities to learn about our advanced science andtechnology. This was started in 2014.
When the territorial dispute between Japan and China flared up in
2012, about 90% of Japanese responded negatively when asked in
an opinion poll if they like China, and the same percentage wasrecorded among the Chinese regarding Japan. Such a situation could
result in a deeply rooted cause of conflict in the future, and so

I thought we should do whatever we could to mitigate this difficulty.
I made a plan to invite 10,000 Chinese to Japan and talked with Dr.
Akito Arima, former president of the University of Tokyo, and thenEducation and Science Minister Hakubun Shimomura about thisplan. With Shimomura’s advice to create an exchange program withthe whole of Asia rather than just China, the Sakura Exchange
Program in Science was born.
The origin of this idea was the youth exchange program between
France and Germany after World War II. Both nations continued witha number of their youth exchange programs in which eight million
young people participated in 50 years following the war, and these
two nations which have fought each other many times in the past are
now core partners in the European Union. I thought Japan and China
should follow in their footsteps and having considered a youth
exchange program as the most effective way to achieve such a
productive relationship, started the exchange program by inviting
3,000 young Chinese to Japan in the first fiscal year.
Believing that a grassroots exchange program can create real
friendships, the JST invites many proposals for week-long exchange
programs from a wide range of educational institutions and after
examining them, the JST adopts some of the programs and financesthem. It invites collaboration between Japanese educational
institutions and those overseas. With this, I believe that good
networks among universities or research institutes can be created. Insuch a bottom-up method rather than a top-down one, we canincrease the number of organizations involved in this exchange
program. I hope all educational organizations such as high-schools,
universities, and research institutes all over Japan will takeadvantage of this program eventually, if we continue it.
So far, 286 Japanese institutes have invited young people from608 Asian institutes. In our experience, those Japanese institutes
that have once acted as a hosting organization do not hesitate to doso again. So we are running this program in the belief that all theJapanese institutes would be friends with all the Asian institutes.
At the beginning, we went to China to look for overseas
participating institutes and visited more than 10 to promote ourprogram. But given the intensified political tension between China
and Japan at that time, we had no positive response. Only theChinese Science and Technology Department kindly said they would
be happy to collaborate with us, regarding our program as anexcellent one.
JS: In this program, do the young people from Asia

go to a Japanese university or research instituteand join the classes there?

Okimura: Yes. They are invited to join a one-week program in Japan
Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 201755

Special Interview 2planned and scheduled in advance. Our spoken language is English.
I have found this program in which Japanese and Asian students
work together to be instrumental in creating friendship among them.
When the program has finished and people are saying farewell, there
are always tears. According to our follow-up study on the outcomeof this program, 40% of the participants come back to Japan. I amvery impressed by this number. Participants have shared theirenjoyment of this program through SNS and thus the program has
become widely known not only in Japan but around the world, and it
has been referred to in 1,520 media outlets, including China’sPeople’s Daily.

High-school Version of Sakura Exchange
Program in Science
JS: We have heard that a different program has beencreated for high school students. What does thishigh-school version of the Sakura Exchange
Program in Science look like?
Okimura: High-school students obliged to devote much of their timeto preparing for university entrance exams cannot spare time tocreate their own program. So the JST does this by asking our partnercountry’s government to select the smartest students from the best
schools as participants in the program. Therefore, so far, the best
and the brightest students such as those awarded gold medals at theInternational Science Olympiads have joined our program.
The participants join an observation tour of the best researchfacilities in Japan, such as the National Research Institute ofFisheries Science or the High Energy Accelerator Research
Organization, and also visit a university campus and attend a lecture
given by a Japanese Nobel Prize winner. Dr. Hideki Shirakawa, whowon the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, has become increasingly devoted
to this program and he is planning in this year’s program to invite all
the eight teams of participants to join in his experiments. For thispurpose, he has done a rehearsal twice with the participation of two
assistants, one from Shibaura Institute of Technology and the otherfrom the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. A
notebook with guidance on experiments in English with hisautograph is prepared for each participant and they can make notesin this and take it back home.
The young participants can meet a Nobel Prize winner in person
for the first time in their life and learn directly from him. They canwrite their impressions, and when reading them the professors
would be increasingly enthusiastic about teaching them. The Nobel
Prize winners would be highly motivated in encouraging the students
to become Nobel Prize winners too. This is how we can expect their
56 Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 2017

full support for our program. Our program for high-school students
has won a good reputation as a means of promoting science among
the best and brightest students in Asia.
JS: Are the participants generally all happy with theprogram?
Okimura: Yes. Almost 100% of them responded to our survey thatthey were happy with the program and also their impression ofJapan became better than before and they wanted to come back.
Among the 3,000 participants in the first year of our program, 292
students came back to Japan afterwards for study or research. Thisis one important outcome.
To tell the truth, the best and brightest Asian students are in
general more interested in the United States or Europe as places forstudying abroad. But after joining this program and getting to know
better about Japan, an increasing number of students are thinking
about Japan as their choice for studying abroad. They often change
their minds after experiencing the kindness of the Japanese and thegeneral safety of society in Japan. They may also find that US andEuropean university tuition fees are more expensive than here. InJapan, they could also find a part-time job easily and return to theirown country more often as it would be nearer by. Many Asianstudents find these points attractive, so our program will continue tocontribute to an increase in Asian students coming to Japan to study.
Another positive effect of this program would be to provide thehosting Japanese universities with an opportunity to work out aprogram in English. For example, Tokyo University of Science is now
not only hosting the program but also creating its own program forsending students abroad. This is how a more internationally minded
attitude is expanding in Japan, thanks to our program. I believe thisis very important for diversifying Japanese innovation. Japan is far
behind other Asian countries in terms of global outlook, so I hope
our program will contribute further to raising more broad-minded
attitudes in Japan.
JS: In this regard, will your program help stop thedecrease in the number of Japanese students
studying abroad?

Okimura: I think we can expect a variety of good impacts from ourprogram, including the one you mentioned. As you know, Asia is thecenter of global economic growth and thus deepening the exchangeof people within Asia and promoting a global mindset among theyoung would be the best strategy in the long run for Japan. The JSTmust make a good contribution to achieving this goal.

Relations with Business
JS: Can business firms join your program?
Okimura: Yes, we are open to private business. Sixteen companies
have joined so far. In our program for business firms, while the JST
pays for traveling expenses, business corporations pay foraccommodation expenses while staying in Japan. We are tellingJapanese business firms that they could be a beneficiary of thisprogram, since they could have an opportunity to share technology
information with the best universities in Asia, and this could be
useful for their own development of new technologies. I hope in the
future that Japanese firms interested in employing capable young
people from other Asian nations will join our program. I am sure they
will find many students with great potential.

Further Networking
JS: You have organized an alumni association of thisprogram. What is this association planning to do?

Okimura: Our alumni association has 12,690 members. The firstreunion took place in Tokyo and next year we will have the second
one in Beijing. The members all share information on theassociation’s activities by a mail magazine. We would like to increase
the members by 30,000 a year as soon as possible. Thus we could
reach one million members in 30 years. As I told you, all theparticipants are capable young people, so I guess among them acertain percentage will become leaders all over Asia. This would be ameans of Japan exercising its soft power through a human network.
JS: What do you think would be necessary to achieve

this goal?

Okimura: I think it would be important to follow up the participants
after the program. Our Japanese alumni in the Fulbright Scholarship
Program are all saying they were happy with the program in the US.
I would like to make our program as popular as the Fulbrightprogram. I am sure it is possible. It would help us maintain aJapanese presence in the world even though the Japanese economy
may shrink in the future. In order to make this happen, I would say itis important to follow up the needs of our alumni. The percentage ofparticipants in our first year program coming back to Japan is 7%,
but we presume that this percentage as well as the total number ofparticipants in our program will continue to increase hereafter. If anyof our alumni want to come back to Japan to study or work, we willneed to take care of them. We often hear that they cannot find arelevant program in Japan even though they want to come back toJapan to study. In a Japanese university, it is true that there are still
very few courses available in English, which means the facilities foraccepting foreign students coming from abroad are not wellequipped. If they take courses in Japanese, there must be goodlanguage schools where they can learn Japanese before starting tostudy in Japanese universities. We should strongly encourage theJapanese government and the universities to meet these needs ofstudents coming from abroad. With this follow-up, we could accept
an increasing number of our alumni who want to come back toJapan and after their studying in Japan they would be happy to work
here.

Two Concerns
JS: In expanding this program for the future, we thinkthere are two concerns to be addressed. The first isthe possibility of sensitive Japanese technologicalinformation leaking to overseas. Asian students
may not necessarily all be devoted to Japaneseinterests and overseas business could be thelargest beneficiary of the program by acquiring key
technology information of Japanese industries fromthose alumni who may get a good job in a foreigncompany after quitting working for a Japanese firm.
The second is whether the JST continues to beprovided a sufficient budget for this program in thefuture.
Okimura: I think we should be tolerant of such a technology
information leakage. Apart from defense technology, we should belenient towards the Asian students. I hope that young people canlearn about top-level Japanese technology and take it back to theirhome country and contribute to their home country’s prosperity. I do
not want them to contribute to Japanese economic prosperity. Japan
should, if necessary, redouble its R&D efforts to excel intechnological capacity over other Asian nations.
As for the budget, the size of the budget for the program in 2017is around 1.8 billion yen. The cost per participant has been lowered
as much as possible, thanks to the universities’ or high-schools’
involvement on a voluntary basis. I believe if we can invite 30,000
participants at a cost of 10 billion yen that would be very costeffective, since the program would lead to developing a sound basis
for a globalized mindset in Japan, which is today a key to achieving
innovation.
Written with the cooperation of Naoko Sakai who is a freelance writer.

Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 201757