Japanese Studies
in the United States:
The View from 2012
Japanese Studies Series XXXX

2013
THE JAPAN FOUNDATION

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Contents

Prefaceix

Editor’s Introductionxi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Chapter 1 An Overview of Japanese Studies in the United States

1

Chapter 2 A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

20

Chapter 3 Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

40

Chapter 4

63Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

Chapter 5 Academic Courses on Japan

82

Chapter 6 Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

108

Chapter 7 Staffing, Infrastructure, and Support

137

Chapter 8

161

Japanese Studies in the Twenty-First Century

Appendix A Methodological Notes

171

Appendix B Undergraduate Programs in Japanese Studies

179

Appendix C Graduate Programs in Japanese Studies

183

Index

185

iii

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List of Tables

Chapter 2
Table 2.1. R ange and Number of Japan Specialists in the United States, by Source,
as Counted in Five M ajor Surveys of the Field, 1970–2012
Table 2.2. Turnover Table of Japan Specialists Between Studies
Table 2.3. Age Distribution of Japan Specialists in 1970, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 2.4. Comparison of New and R epeat Entrants by Age, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 2.5. Japan Specialists by Gender and Age, 2012
Table 2.6 Faculty and Non-Faculty Distribution of Japan Specialists, 1995, 2005,
2012
Table 2.7. Percent Distribution of Major Non-Faculty Occupations, 1995, 2005,
and 2012
Table 2.8. Disciplinary Distribution of Japan Specialists in 1970 to 2012
Table 2.9. Japan Specialists by Discipline Cluster, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 2.10. Employment Distribution of Japan Specialists by Disciplinary Group,
1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 2.11. Change in R egional Distribution of Japan Specialists, 1970–2012
Table 2.12. Japan Specialists’ Geographic R egion by Employment Status, 2012
Table 2.13. Disciplinary Distribution of Doctoral Candidates in 1989, 1995, 2005,
and 2012

23
24
25
27
27
28
29
30
31
31
33
33
37

Chapter 3
Table 3.1. Historical Periods of Specialization, 1995 , 2005, and 2012
Table 3.2. Geographic Areas of Specialization, Domestic and International, 1995,
2005, and 2012
Table 3.3. Domains of Subject Matter Specialization, by Number of R esponses andNumber and Percent of R espondents, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.4. Specialists’ Japanese Language Competence by Language Skill, 1984,
1995, and 2005

41
43
45
48

iv

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Table 3.5. Language Competence and Perception of its Importance, by Language
Skill and Age, 1995 and 2005
Table 3.6. Language Competence and Perception of Its Importance, by Language
Skill and Current Employment Status, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.7. Language Competence and Perception of Its Importance, by Language
Skill and Disciplinary Category, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.8. Percent Distribution of Highest Degree Earned by Japan Specialists,
1970, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.9. Comparison of Specialists with Doctorates and Specialists withProfessional Degrees, by Employment Status, Gender, and Language
Competence, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.10. R elation of Doctoral Dissertation to Japan (in %), 1984, 1995, 2005,
and 2012
Table 3.11. Japan As Subject of Doctoral Dissertation, by Age, Gender, Academic
Status and Language Competence, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 3.12. What Japan Specialists Need to R ead to K eep Up in their Fields, withR ank Order, by Material Type & Language, for Humanities and Social
Sciences
Table 3.13. R esearch Sources Japan Specialists Utilize, by Discipline Group, 1995,
2005, and 2012

49
50
51
53

54
55
56

59
60

Chapter 4
Table 4.1. Full and Secondary Directory Listings of Japanese Studies at American
Academic Institutions, 1989 to 1995; 1995 to 2005; 2005 to 2012
Table 4.2. Institutions with Japan Specialists, 1970–2012, by Number of Specialists
Table 4.3. R ate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic
Institutions in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012 by Level of Degree
Table 4.4. Percentage of Academic Institutions with Some Presence of JapaneseStudies in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Level of Degree offered by theInstitution
Table 4.5. R ate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic
Institutions in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Difficulty of Entrance
Table 4.6. R ate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic
Institutions in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Total Enrollment
Table 4.7. R ate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic
Institutions in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Undergraduate Enrollment
Table 4.8 Distribution of Academic Institutions and Specialists, by R egion, 2012
Table 4.9. R egional Distribution of Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions,
1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 4.10. R ate of Penetration of Japanese Studies at American Academic
Institutions in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Geographic R egion

67
68
73

74
75
76
77
78
79
80

v

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Table 4.11. R ate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Institutions in
2012, by R egion and Level of Degree Offered

80

Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Courses R elated to Japan, by Course Level and Extent of Content on
Japan, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 5.2. Disciplines Offering Courses Using Japanese Language Materials, 2005
and 2012
Table 5.3. Japanese Language Courses by Type, and Number and Percent ofInstitutions Offering Each Type, 2012, with 2005 Comparison of Numberof Institutions
Table 5.4. Highest Level of Japanese Language Courses Available at Schools
Offering On-Campus, In-Classroom Language Instruction, 1977, 1984,
1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 5.5. Japanese Language Courses and Course Enrollments for 1995, 2005,
and 2012, by Course Level or Type
Table 5.6. Estimated Percentage of Students Entering Japanese Language
Programs Who Have Prior Japanese Language Exposure
Table 5.7. Japanese Area Courses in Disciplines with 25 or More Courses, by
Course Level, 2012
Table 5.8. Japanese Area Courses in Disciplines with 25 or More Courses, by
Whether Content is Exclusively on Japan or Multinational, 2012
Table 5.9. Area Courses Focusing Exclusively on Japan in 1977, 1984, 1995, 2005,
and 2012, by Discipline
Table 5.10 Multinational Courses with Coverage of Japan in 1984, 1995, 2005,
and 2012, by Discipline
Table 5.11. Enrollments in Courses with Japan Coverage in 2012, by Discipline andCourse Type
Table 5.12. Survey R espondents’ Satisfaction with Teaching About Japan, 1984,
1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 5.13. R easons for Teaching Fewer Courses About Japan Than R espondent
Would Like, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 5.14. Adequacy of Teaching Materials for Japanese Studies, by Subject,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012

84
86

87

88
89
91
92
96
97
99
101
104
105
106

Chapter 6
Table 6.1. Organization of Instruction about Japan at Academic Institutions,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 6.2. Classification of Undergraduate Programs in Japanese Studies, 1977,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012

109
112

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Table 6.3. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 1984 and1995
Table 6.4. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 1995 and2005
Table 6.5. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 2005 and2012
Table 6.6. Mean number of Disciplinaries and Mean Number of Language Courses
Offered by Japanese Studies Programs, and Mean Number of Professorial
R ank Faculty, by Undergraduate Program Classification, 2005 and 2012
Table 6.7. Classification of Institutions with Graduate Programs in 1977, 1984,
1995, and 2005 Studies
Table 6.8 Mean Number of Disciplines Offering Area Courses with Japan
Content, Mean Number of Japanese Language Courses, and Mean Numberof Professorial Faculty, by Graduate Program Classification, 2005 and2012
Table 6.9. Graduate Program Status by Undergraduate Program Classification,
2012
Table 6.10. Turnover Table of Institutions with Graduate Programs in 1995 and2005
Table 6.11. Turnover Table of Institutions with Graduate Programs in 2005 and2012
Table 6.12. R ank Order of Institutions by Number of Doctoral Students inJapanese Studies in 2012, with Number and Percentage of Students,
Cumulative Percentage, and 1989, 1995, and 2005 R ankings
Table 6.13. Leading Doctoral Institutions of Japan Specialists Surveyed
1970–2012, by 2012 R ank Order
Table 6.14. Institutional Concentrations of Doctorates in Japanese Studies,
1970–2012
Table 6.15. Institutional Concentrations of Doctoral Candidates in JapaneseStudies, 1970–2012

114
115
117

118
120

121
122
123
124

127
131
132
133

Chapter 7
Table 7.1. Distribution of Staff Positions at Institutions with Instructional
Positions in Japanese Studies and Staff R atios, by Undergraduate
Program Classification
Table 7.2. Distribution of Staff Positions at Institutions with Instructional
Positions in Japanese Studies and Staff R atios, by Graduate Program
Classification
Table 7.3. Percent Distribution of Perceived R easons New PhDs Accept NonAcademic Employment, 1984, 1995, 2005, 2012
Table 7.4. Japanese Language Collection in the United States, by Number ofVolumes in Japanese, 1977, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012

138

139
141
144

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Table 7.5. Japanese Language Library Collections in the United States with Over
20,000 Volumes in Japanese, 1995, 2005, and 2012, in 2012 R ank Order
Table 7.6. Satisfaction with Materials on Japan in Library Collection at Own
Institution or One R eadily Accessible to R espondent, by Language ofMaterials, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 7.7. Librarians’ Perception of Changes in Library Support in Past Five
Years, 1995, 2005, and 2012
Table 7.8. Perception of Funding for Japanese Studies R esearch
Table 7.9. Perceptions of R elative Availability of Funding for Japan-R elated
R esearch, 2012
Table 7.10. Japan Specialists’ Funding Priorities, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012, in2012 R ank Order
Table 7.11. Preference for Funding A llocation Between Larger and Smaller
I nstitutions, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012

146

150
152
154
155
156
157

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Preface

The Japan Foundation, since its establishment in 1972, has been supporting Japanese studies all over the world, and has implemented surveys on the state of Japanese studies in main
countries. In cooperation with the Association for Asian Studies, the Japanese Studies Association of Canada, and later the University of Hawaii, surveys were conducted for North
America in 1989, 1995 and 2005. The results were published as multi-volume sets; Directoryof Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada, which was published in three editions,Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Japanese Studies in Canada: The 1990s,
and Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities. In
2010, the Japan Foundation once again initiated a survey on the state of Japanese studies in
the United States and Canada which would succeed the above surveys. With cooperation fromthe University of Hawaii again, the survey is now complete. Unlike the previous volumes, thesurvey results, data, and information are only available online. You may find them at http://
japandirectory.socialsciences.hawaii.edu/.
Since the publication of the last survey, domestic and international circumstances in Japan
have dramatically changed. In March 2011, northeastern Japan was devastated by the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster, while the financial crisis continues to put stress on theworld’s economy. These changes should also have no little impact on scholars and institutionsof Japanese studies. Therefore, we believe that this new survey, in the midst of such change inJapan as well as the world will provide not only a picture of the current state of Japanese studies but also as a marker or landmark for the future of Japanese studies. It is our hope that it will
be useful in promoting collaborative efforts and networking among those who are engaged in
activities related in Japan, not only in North America, but the rest of the world.
We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to Professor Patricia G. Steinhoff of the University of Hawaii, whose devotion and diligence directed the entirety of this project. Our sincere
thanks also go to Professor Julian Dierkes of the University of British Columbia for his constant cooperation and dedication to the project. We finally wish to acknowledge the Universityof Hawaii for undertaking the planning, data-gathering, and compilation of this project.
Eiji Taguchi
Executive Vice-President
The Japan Foundation
January 2013ix

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Editor’s Introduction

This analysis of the state of Japanese Studies in the United States is a companion volume
to the fourth edition of the Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutionsin the United States and Canada. It updates the U.S. portion of the analysis published in 2007
entitled Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities.
Because of continuing increases in the cost of publishing print volumes, we combined theanalysis of both countries into one volume last time. However, this time we are only producing
a fully formatted pdf file and not printing at all, so we have the luxury of once again doing afull volume of analysis on the United States alone and a separate volume for Canada.
The project as a whole is part of a continuing series of country studies that have beensponsored and underwritten by The Japan Foundation around the world. For the United States
and Canada, these have included a 1984 questionnaire study of Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates, a 1988 report on Japanese Studies in Canada containing a report and directory, a 1988
volume of essays on Japanese Studies in the United States, directories of the United States andCanada published in 1989, 1995, and 2007, a 1996 monograph on Japanese Studies in the United States in the 1990s and its companion volume for Canada, the 2007 monograph on JapaneseStudies in the United States and Canada, and the just-completed directory of Japanese Studies
in the United States and Canada. For the newest directory, we have produced three pdf volumes and have also made the directory information available on a searchable website at http://
japandirectory.socialsciences.hawaii.edu. The full directory pdf volumes are also available fordownload on the website.
As with the two previous studies, we have combined the collection of data for the directory and for the study of the state of the field, since much of the same information needs tobe collected for both purposes. This is my third monograph analyzing the state of JapaneseStudies in the United States based on the extensive survey data collected with the wonderfulcooperation of Japan specialists and Japanese Studies institutions in North America. Althougha fair number of Japan specialists who currently live outside the United States and Canada
also appear in the new edition of the directory, they are included in the directory because theyremain firmly attached to the intellectual communities of Japan specialists in North America.
However, we exclude them from this analysis of the state of Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates except for a brief analysis of the globalization of Japanese Studies and its impact on thefield in the United States.
The Japan Foundation study differs from other information resources about Japan Studies
in its goal of comprehensive rather than selective coverage and its inclusion of both people andinstitutions engaged in the study of Japan. Japanese Studies as field of specialization points
to a growing body of knowledge about Japan that some individuals learn, extend, challenge,xi

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xii

Editor’s Introduction

and share with others. In this volume I explore what it takes to learn, create, extend, maintain,
and transmit that body of knowledge about Japan. I look at the human and material resources
involved in this enterprise, and try to place it in historical context.
Because only six years have passed since the last analysis, I have treated this analysis as
an update of that study rather than starting anew. When I write these analyses I am constantly
reminded that I am following in the footsteps of others who have carried out similar tasks inprevious decades, and my own studies now extend across the past three decades. In the last
two monographs I have carefully extracted whatever data was available from earlier studies inorder to examine the patterns of continuity and change in the field. This time also I began by
updating the many tables in the last study to add the new numbers we have just collected. Then
I have tried to understand what the numbers signify for the current state of Japanese Studies
in the United States, and where it seems to be headed in the near future. I have revised andupdated the text as needed to reflect my best sense of the current situation. I look both forward
and backward, and often see things I missed earlier but can now see clearly with the benefit ofhindsight. This time I have taken the liberty of not rewriting methodological details and earlier
analyses, but I have extended and amplified them as needed.
I hope that this analysis of the state of Japanese Studies in the United States will be usefulto those involved in guiding and developing the field, and will also be a resource in the future
for those who want to know how Japanese Studies has developed over time.
Patricia G. Steinhoff
March, 2013

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Acknowledgments

This study, like its predecessors, has come about through the goodwill and generosity ofmany organizations and individuals. I want to thank particularly The Japan Foundation, theAssociation for Asian Studies, and the University of Hawaii, which have all been generous,
flexible, and patient in their support of the project.
At The Japan Foundation Tokyo Headquarters, three individuals have been centrally involved in the project this time: Mr. Tadashi Ogawa, who twisted my arm mightily to get me
to do it again, Mr. Hideki Hara, who oversaw it until his transfer in fall 2012, and Ms. Masayo Shiozawa, who has handled the final stages with Ms. Marie Suzuki. Unlike the previous
projects, this one was not managed out of the New York office of the Japan Foundation, but
directors and staff there graciously invited Professor Julian Dierkes and me to meet with theAmerican Advisory Committee in January 2011 to launch the project, and then invited me to
the AAC meeting in January 2013 to receive the first report of the project’s findings.
Although the Association for Asian Studies was less involved in the project this time, its
Executive Director Michael Paschal, had worked closely with the 1995 study as a staff member
at The Japan Foundation New York office and he has generously facilitated our relations with
the AAS for the two most recent studies. Julian Dierkes has been a joy to work with, always
ready to do whatever he can for the project despite being involved from a distance most of
the time. At the University of Hawaii, the project could not have been carried out without thecheerful and competent support of the College of Social Sciences Systems Manager, Harry
Partika, who spent many hours setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting the servers forthe project. The sociology department’s administrative assistant Cherry Lou Rojo provided
front-line fiscal support, and also worked closely with our fiscal officer, David Matsuda and his
assistant Lea Nohara. Luanne Nakamura of the Office of Research Support helpline held myhand and patiently assisted me when the university switched to a complex new grants management system that required principal investigators to do all sorts of complex online transactions
themselves, using a very unfriendly system. The sociology department Chair, Professor Valli
Kalei Kanuha, generously bailed us out when we lost track of our spending amid an impenetrable new fiscal system. I thank them all warmly for their support and patience with the
project’s complex fiscal arrangements.
The project has depended mightily on the expertise of programmers Skol Watanawongskul
and Trang Phan Tu, who programmed both the data website and the final searchable display
website, and desktop publishing specialist Wanda China, who not only handled the desktop
publishing end, but handled all the complex interfaces between Access, the Adobe programs,
and the SQL server databases. A whole host of very competent and reliable University of
Hawaii graduate students made the project happen on a daily basis, with cheerful dedication.
xiii

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Acknowledgments

Closely involved in the project at various times were graduate students Kristyn Martin, Shinji
Kojima, Yoko Wang, Mike Dziesinski, San Tun Aung, Jon Jarvis, Gita Neupane, Noriko Shiratori, Hiroki Igarashi, Hye Won Um, and undergraduate Liane Kobayashi. Joahna Rocchio,
another graduate student who is also a professional web designer, provided very helpful advice
on the final design of the directory’s display website.
At the end of the 2007 acknowledgments I thanked my husband and wrote that I had promised never to do this project again. He sighed patiently when I broke that promise and has beenas supportive as always. We both hope there won’t be a next time!
Patricia G. Steinhoff
March, 2013

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An Overview of Japanese Studies in
the United States

Over the past several years I have repeatedly heard anxious comments about the state ofJapanese Studies in the United States. People look at me with a grave expression and say, “Ihear that Japanese Studies is really declining, and everyone is going into Chinese Studies.”
Sometimes they assert confidently, “I understand that Japanese Studies is losing students andChinese Studies is booming.” Others comment, “Everybody seems to be switching from Japanese to Chinese these days. What will happen to Japanese Studies?” We have all heard someversion of this comment, which has taken on the status of an urban legend. Notice that it is almost always couched as a comparative statement about the relative strength of Chinese Studies
and Japanese Studies. It clearly reflects the fact of China’s rising economic strength that seems
to portend some decline for both the United States and Japan. Whether the rise of China has
a direct or indirect effect on Japanese Studies in the United States is a separate question thatmust be answered with empirical evidence.
People seek me out to make this comment because they know that I have been studying Japanese Studies in the United States for a long time, and they seem to expect that I willreinforce their impression with some data. Now I do have the data and can firmly refute theurban legend. The numbers are unequivocal: Japanese Studies is alive and well in the UnitedStates, regardless of what is happening in Chinese Studies. We will examine those numbers in
subsequent chapters. I do not have any comparative data for China, and no one has undertaken
for China the sort of studies that the Japan Foundation has so generously funded for Japan overthe past several decades. However, I can offer some insight into the question of why the myth
persists, through an analysis of the current state of Japanese Studies in the United States andthe factors that underlie its continuing health.
This study looks at Japanese Studies in the United States early in the second decade of thetwenty-first century, in the context of what has gone on before. Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates today reflects the life experiences and academic training of the people who identify
themselves as Japan specialists, and the structures that have been created to house and nurturethe study of Japan since the beginning of the postwar era. Our study therefore encompasses
both Japan specialists as individuals and Japanese Studies institutions with their collective
resources. The following chapters present the data collected from our recent surveys of Japan
specialists, Japanese Studies programs, and Japanese librarians with a great many tables of1monograph.indb 1

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numbers. I then try to interpret these data through comparisons with similar findings fromearlier studies of Japanese Studies in the United States, and by considering the findings within
the broader American academic context.
In this introduction I will first discuss what is distinctive about that American context,
then introduce these earlier studies briefly, and present a general interpretive framework of
three broad paradigms that have shaped Japanese Studies in the United States: the language
and area studies paradigm; the economic competition paradigm; and the cultural studies paradigm. I believe these three paradigms characterize the underlying assumptions and organization of Japanese Studies in the United States during particular time periods, and consequently
have a profound effect on the nature of the field today. The earlier studies themselves reflect
the paradigms within which they were conducted, even if that was not apparent at the time.
My hope is that this broad conceptual framework will help us see more general patterns in
the mass of detailed quantitative material that comprises the current study’s findings and theirrelation to the previous studies. Each paradigm has implications for the kinds of people whoare attracted into Japanese Studies, the organization of the programs in which they study andlater teach, and the kinds of knowledge they study and then extend through their own researchand teaching. However, the paradigms themselves are also affected very fundamentally bygeneral characteristics of American higher education, so that is where we will begin.

What is Distinctive about Japanese Studies in the United States?
Although Japanese Studies is thoroughly globalized and there are Japan specialists andJapanese Studies programs in countries all over the world, Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates remains distinctive. Japanese Studies in the United States is as much about America
as it is about Japan. It is profoundly affected by political and economic structures, and social
and intellectual currents within the United States, which are only partially related to changing
American perceptions of Japan itself. These American structures and preoccupations affectfour very practical and observable aspects of Japanese Studies.
First, American organizational structures and assumptions affect how the study of Japanis organized and carried out within academic institutions, and what kind of support it receives,
both internal and external. Academic programs develop and then replicate standard models
that respond to their own institutional and national needs. These do not necessarily bear any
intrinsic relation to the subject matter being studied. While there is considerable variability
within and between institutions, as well as change over time, there are still larger institutionaland structural constraints in American academics that limit that variability to a few recognizable patterns. These structures and assumptions are distinctively different from the way thestudy of Japan is organized and carried out in Japan or in most European countries.
Second, American concerns and perceptions of Japan affect who comes into JapaneseStudies. As the image and meaning of Japan and Japanese Studies changes within American
society over time, different types of students may be attracted to it for different reasons andtheir commitment to the field may vary accordingly. We therefore need to ask who is attracted
to the study of Japan and why, and what is the nature of their commitment to it. Yet to theextent that these people remain in Japanese Studies once they have entered it, they experienceand respond to subsequent changes in the larger national and international context as theirindividual lives and careers continue.
Third, American ideas and conditions affect what kinds of research American Japan specialists choose to do, first as doctoral students and later as mature scholars. These choices inmonograph.indb 2

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An Overview of Japanese Studies in the United States3

turn affect the economic support they can obtain to do the research, where they can publish theresults, and the ramifications of the research on their subsequent careers. The choices made byindividual Japan specialists are shaped by academic committees that guide graduate students,
dispense research funding, review manuscripts, and hire faculty, providing the dynamism thatboth reproduces and changes the field of Japanese Studies over time.
Fourth, the nature of the expertise that Japan specialists develop through their own training and research affects the courses and programs they will offer to their students; however,their impact is also filtered through broader institutional requirements and assumptions about
how programs and courses are supposed to be organized. American academic institutions giveindividual programs and faculty members considerable leeway to innovate within their own
courses and to create new courses, but changing the overall curriculum or the organization ofa program takes more time and collaborative effort. Such curricular changes in turn may respond to changes in the student body, or they may be intended to attract new kinds of students
to Japanese Studies, bringing us full circle back to the first and second factors.
Let us first examine this distinctively style of American Japanese Studies in a bit moredetail, to see how the four components fit together. Higher education in the United States
is organized somewhat differently from its organization in Japan or Europe. The dominant
structure is the disciplinary department, which is much smaller and narrower in scope than theJapanese or German faculty, and also does not have the same relationship with students. Therealso seem to be some differences in the relationship to students between American disciplinary departments and disciplinary courses of study in the British system.
Although in the history of higher education many of the academic disciplines we recognize
today are of fairly recent origin, the have become firmly entrenched as the basic organizational
units within American colleges and universities, particularly within the arts and sciences thatencompass most Japanese Studies activity. Disciplinary departments may fall under an artsand sciences administration as a whole; at large institutions there may be an intermediate layer
in which they report to a dean of humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences. However,these disciplinary departments have a great deal of independence, and they are not integrated
tightly into “faculties” to which students belong and within which they receive nearly all theirtraining.
There is also some resistance to the dominance of disciplinary departments in American
higher education, and interdisciplinary programs are often created to cut across disciplinary
boundaries. Precisely because disciplinary departments are not bundled into a structure ofvery separate faculties to which students are admitted, interdisciplinary programs can encompass faculty and courses across a very wide range of disciplines. They can and do involve
faculty who are housed in, affiliated with, and must respond to different organizational units
and lines of authority. Hence they create certain tensions between disciplinary departments,
which may be felt by faculty and students who try to straddle disciplinary lines.
This distinctive structure based on disciplinary departments shapes the nature of graduate
training in the United States. It has a strong impact on doctoral training in Japanese Studies
in certain fields, particularly in the social sciences. Most doctoral students in Japanese Studies in the United States study within a disciplinary department and receive a doctorate in thatdiscipline. While there are many master’s level interdisciplinary programs in Japanese Studies
and East Asian Studies, there are very few such degrees awarded at the doctoral level, although
there are now a few PhD degrees in Japanese or East Asian Languages and Cultures or Languages and Civilization.
The overwhelming majority of doctoral degrees concerning Japan or East Asia are award-

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4Chapter 1

ed as degrees in language, literature, history, or some other discipline; they are awarded by disciplinary departments with similar names. Except for degrees in Japanese literature and language (including linguistics and language pedagogy), virtually all of these degrees are offeredby departments that have at most two or three Japan specialists on their faculty. Moreover,
American doctoral programs generally have departmental course requirements, examinations,and writing requirements prior to the dissertation. In some programs basic course requirements are handled at the MA level, but there still are general program requirements before thestudent is allowed to proceed to the dissertation. This is radically different from the practicein some other countries, where students admitted to a doctoral program are only required tosubmit a dissertation for faculty approval.
It is also customary for doctoral students in American institutions to have a doctoral committee of several persons, who conduct the major evaluations and decisions about the student’s
progress. Although a student may have chosen a particular department in order to study witha particular scholar, that person may have little to do with the student’s admission to the program, and does not control the student’s program requirements. Consequently, a student’s
doctoral committee will have members who are not Japan specialists, and the orientation of thedegree program itself is not specifically focused on Japan or East Asia (although in some cases
there might be a special East Asia track within the program). Doctoral training in a disciplineis designed to prepare the student to teach in that discipline, so the course and examination
requirements are likely to include study of certain subfields in the discipline, which often do
not correspond to specific geographic areas of the world. At the dissertation level, the student’s
committee will understand the topic as a contribution to the discipline, using a study of Japan
to explore the issue. The dissertation topic itself will be designed to address an issue that is ofcurrent relevance in the discipline, and the student will have to defend it in those terms, rather
than as a contribution to Japanese Studies.
This disciplinary structure also affects undergraduate education, and is very much related
to the American ideal of an undergraduate liberal education, in which students must take arange of courses in different disciplines to meet general education requirements during theirfirst two years (which may include a foreign language requirement), and then choose a major to
specialize in during the last two years. The major is usually in a discipline but could also be an
established interdisciplinary program. This is quite different from systems in which students
are admitted to a particular faculty or course of study as freshmen and remain within it for
their full undergraduate program. While critics may argue that this structure of higher education reflects the fact that American students do not have as rigorous a secondary education
as students in other countries, the result is a distinctively different pattern of undergraduate
education.
In this system, students generally have a great deal of freedom to choose courses that meeta menu of requirements, rather than following a predetermined sequence of courses that lead tothe degree. Some courses may be required for a particular degree program, but there remains
considerable latitude for students to explore different topics and follow their own interests.
The American undergraduate program is based on course credits, which are the basic units
for general education requirements, requirements of the major, and other elective courses thatstudents may take. Typically, the major comprises far less than half of the overall number ofcredits required to graduate. Because of this loose, credit-based structure and a principle ofaccepting credits earned elsewhere, it is easy for students to transfer between institutions, orto begin at an inexpensive public two-year community college and then transfer to a four year
institution to complete their degree.

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5

Both public and private higher educational institutions in the United States face serious
long-term economic issues, and the current neo-liberal economic climate has definitely penetrated the ivory tower. At public colleges and universities, and increasingly at many private
institutions as well, economic decisions are heavily based on student demand for both courses
and majors. Even if an institution has made the commitment to develop a Japanese Studies program, the size of that program and its potential for growth and access to resources will depend
to a considerable extent on student enrollments over which it has limited control, since thestudents choose what courses they take within general guidelines. Moreover, courses related
to Japan that are offered in different departments will impact the status and resources of thosedisciplinary departments, and will also figure into their hiring decisions. Hence to understandthe state of Japanese Studies in the United States, we have to consider both what the JapanFoundation and most outsiders would consider “programs” that offer degrees, and also theindividual courses that are offered for credit at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Moregenerally, many features of Japanese Studies in the United States only become comprehensible
within the overall nature and structure of American higher education.

Three Paradigms of Japanese Studies in the United States
In this section I present an overview of the postwar history of Japanese Studies in the
United States based on a model of three different paradigms that I believe have profoundly
shaped the development of the field. In the process I also present the major studies that havebeen conducted about the field, as the basis for understanding the series of data tables that
underpin the analysis in subsequent chapters. The discussion of the early studies of the field isbased heavily on the account presented in the 1996 monograph Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates: The 1990s.
Japanese Studies as a recognized academic enterprise is primarily a postwar phenomenon
in the United States, although there were a few individual scholars and language programs
before the war. The first known study specifically on Japan1 was a survey carried out in 1933
by Yasaka Takagi of Tokyo Imperial University, covering individuals who were engaged in or“interested in” Japanese Studies, and academic institutions offering courses related to Japan.
It was commissioned by the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which
published it in 1935.2 Conducted by a sympathetic and knowledgeable observer who hoped
to increase American understanding of Japan, the survey revealed starkly how limited theresources for the study of Japan were in the United States prior to the war. While the U.S.
government may have carried out some surveys in conjunction with the creation of Japanese
language training programs during the war, none are known to be in the public record. Therealso do not seem to be any surveys from the first two postwar decades, when returning veterans went to graduate school on the G.I. Bill as the first postwar cohort of American-trained
Japan specialists.3
1 Jansen discusses a 1928 survey of all accredited academic institutions in the United States by the Institutefor Pacific Relations, which asked about any course coverage of China and Japan, but the Takagi survey
seems to be the first devoted entirely to Japan. Marius B. Jansen, “History: General Survey,” in The JapanFoundation, Japanese Studies in the United States: Part I, History and Present Condition, Japanese Studies
Series XVII, ed. by Marius B. Jansen (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1988), pp. 11–13.
2 Yasaka Takagi, Japanese Studies in the Universities and Colleges of the United States (Institute of Pacific
Relations, 1935), pamphlet, 50 pp.
3 The Japan Foundation, Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 3.

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As I see it, there have been three overlapping paradigms within which Japanese Studies has been carried out in the United States since the late 1950s. To some extent they reflectchanges within Japan itself, but they also constitute changes in the intellectual environmentof the United States that intersect and interact with what has been happening in Japan. I understand them as American phenomena that underlie and shape the way Japanese Studies ispracticed in the United States. I refer to them as the language and area studies paradigm, theeconomic competition paradigm, and the cultural studies paradigm.
The entire time span of postwar Japanese Studies in the United States is brief enough that
more than half of the field’s current participants have experienced all three paradigms. Socialchange is rarely sudden, revolutionary, and visible from the top down. Most often it appears
first as small scale conflicts, alternatives, and innovations in local contexts or on the periphery,
which only gradually come to displace the dominant pattern at the center. It is not always clear
what is happening as someone lives through it, even if one can see and experience some ofthe elements. The full scope of the transformation from one paradigm to another can generally only be comprehended in hindsight with a long historical view. Sociologists may havemore tools for looking at the present, but they cannot always see the full picture when it is justemerging. I identified these three paradigms from the vantage point of late 2006, and their differences have become even clearer since then.
The Language and Area Studies Paradigm
This paradigm was indeed a product of the Cold War, as its critics have charged. It was
instituted and funded by the US government in 1958 because of a perceived national need tohave a reserve of specialists trained in certain less commonly taught languages and their associated cultures. The programs were developed for many different languages and world areas,
generally at a small number of academic institutions that already had some infrastructure in
the form of faculty and library facilities. Although they supported the addition of more faculty
who would teach some undergraduate courses, the programs were established at top-ranked
doctoral training institutions. They provided fellowships to attract small numbers of graduate
students to study languages including Japanese and Chinese. Such languages were thought torequire special incentives because they were difficult and there was little immediate economic
benefit to learning them.
The model was that the institution should offer language training plus area courses thatsurveyed history, literature, and a few other disciplines such as political science, anthropology, sociology and economics. Interdisciplinary master’s degrees would be offered, but at thedoctoral level students would generally concentrate in an academic discipline with a language
and research focus on Japan. Columbia University and Indiana University developed separate
language and culture or language and civilization departments that housed both the language
program and a range of humanities specialists including historians. Most others such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Michigan separated language and literature fromthe other disciplines. Some programs combined their area studies into an East Asia program,
while others created separate programs for Japanese and Chinese Studies, but the language
and area paradigm applied in either case. Aside from a small number of positions in government, the primary career possibility for persons with this training was to go into academics
and expand the language and area studies model to more institutions.
Initially, the Japanese language and area programs attracted individuals who already hadsome personal exposure or connection to Japan, such as returning servicemen. By the early
1960s they also began to attract a relatively small number of students who did not have any

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7prior connection to Japan, but came to the study of Japanese language and culture out of intellectual curiosity or a search for something different, despite its perceived difficulty. Becauseof the language and area studies model, these students took a sampling of courses in different
academic disciplines. Some programs covered East Asia, while others concentrated solely on
Japan. There was usually only one survey course available per discipline, with perhaps twoeach in history and literature divided by time period. With relatively little material available
in English about Japan, everyone read all of the material across all the disciplines. Students
developed a common interdisciplinary framework for understanding Japan at the MA level
before moving into a discipline for doctoral study.
In the early 1960s, the nine largest Japanese Studies programs in the United States, together with the University of British Columbia in Canada, established a small specialized
school in Japan to provide one year of full-time advanced Japanese language study for theirstudents. Its aim was to prepare students to conduct academic research in Japan, using Japanese language sources and proper spoken Japanese. The Inter-University Center for Japanese
Language Studies was staffed by well-qualified Japanese language teachers under a rotating
American academic director, and was run by a consortium with representation from the tenparticipating institutions. Most of the students were American graduate students supported byfellowships from the federal program, but a few of the schools also sent advanced undergraduates for a year of study abroad, since at the time there were few other study abroad programs
suitable for American undergraduates with two or three years of Japanese language training.4
The development of the language and area studies paradigm coincided with the ascendance of modernization theory and functionalist social science ideas in American academics.
The intellectual model was of a unified national culture with institutions based on common
values that were widely shared and were taught to each new generation. These values andinstitutions could be transformed from traditional ones to modern ones along a trajectory thatwas presumed to be fairly uniform across societies. Japan under the American Occupation andafter became an intriguing case for investigating the process of modernization, and much of
the research on Japan during this period pursued questions drawn from modernization theory.
The notion of a single national culture with common values and institutions meant that a study
done anywhere in Japan was presumed to be representative of this commonality, and Japan
was presented to American students as a homogeneous collectivity with a traditional past anda modern future. By the 1970s modernization theory and its functionalist underpinnings werebeing widely questioned by younger American scholars, and more critical approaches slowly
worked their way into Japanese Studies.
I have chosen to call this first paradigm language and area studies rather than modernization, because the organizational model for the study of Japan through language and areastudies was retained long after modernization theory per se had gone out of style in the UnitedStates. As more students were trained in Japanese language and area studies and went on to
obtain doctorates in specific disciplines, Japanese Studies as an academic enterprise in the
United States expanded in two ways. First, the existing programs added more disciplines sothat they could offer broader area studies training, and sometimes added more specialists inliterature and history to represent different historical periods and disciplinary genres. Second,
new programs were developed at additional academic institutions. They generally started with
4 When the Japanese government wanted to promote Japanese Studies in the United States in the 1970s, itgave an endowment of one million dollars to each of the academic institutions that participated in the InterUniversity consortium.

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language, literature, and history, and then expanded to religion, political science, and othersocial science and humanities disciplines. Although there are still MA programs built on theinterdisciplinary language and areas studies model of Japanese Studies at many academic institutions in the United States today, the paradigm faced new challenges in the 1980s and cameunder direct attack in the early 1990s.
During this early phase of Japanese Studies guided by the language and area studies paradigm, three major studies surveyed Japanese Studies in the United States. The first postwar
study of the field was carried out in 1968–69 and published in 1970 by the newly formed Social
Science Research Council-American Council of Learned Societies Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. The formation of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies itself was intended toprovide national-level coordination and oversight to the developing field. The Japan committee
was housed at the Social Science Research Council, while a counterpart committee for Chinese Studies was housed at the American Council of Learned Societies.
The fact that it was a joint committee of the national academic organizations of the humanities and the social sciences underscores the broad interdisciplinary language and areastudies conception of the field. This first postwar study included a survey of Japan specialists,a compilation of data on Japanese Studies resources from various sources, and a series of narrative reports on the state of Japanese Studies in particular disciplines.5 The assessment was
intended to assist the Japanese Studies community in finding new funding sources after the
major supporters of the field in the immediate postwar period had begun to turn their attention elsewhere. It is the first study whose findings we will use for comparative purposes in thisreport, and we will refer to it subsequently as the 1970 SSRC-ACLS report.
This first postwar report on Japanese Studies was followed just a few years later by another major study that has provided the baseline data and evaluation criteria for many of the comparisons in subsequent surveys. The second postwar study, carried out by Elizabeth T. Massey
and Joseph A. Massey for the Subcommittee on Japanese Studies of the U.S.-Japan Conference
on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) and published in 1977, supplemented the1970 report with a survey of Japanese Studies programs at academic institutions.6 This study
was carried out as part of a collaborative effort to assess the institutional base for JapaneseStudies in the United States and American Studies in Japan, through the newly established institution of CULCON, a joint creation of the two governments whose mission was to improve
cultural and educational interchange. We will use this study’s criteria for some evaluations ofprogram strength, and will refer to it subsequently as the 1977 CULCON report.
The third study was conducted a few years later, when conditions in the United States andJapan, as well as the relationship between the two countries, were beginning to change. By
the 1980s the Japan Foundation had become a major source of support for Japanese Studies in
the United States. As part of an initiative to survey the state of Japanese Studies throughout
the world, the Foundation commissioned several different kinds of research on Japanese Studies in the United States. In other countries and regions these various kinds of research werecombined into a single package because the scale of Japanese Studies was so small, but by
5 SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, Japanese Studies in the United States: A Report on theState of the Field, Current Resources and Future Needs, (New York, February, 1970, mimeographed), 369
pp.
6 Elizabeth T. Massey and Joseph A. Massy, CULCON Report on Japanese Studies at Colleges andUniversities in the United States in the Mid-70s, prepared for the Subcommittee on Japanese Studies, U.S.Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange, (New York: The Japan Society, Inc., March,
1977).

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9that time Japanese Studies in the United States had become sufficiently large and complex thateach component became a separate study. The Japan Foundation first commissioned a surveyof both specialists and academic institutions through the SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee. The
Joint Committee in turn hired a commercial survey firm to do the study in 1982 and it was published by the Japan Foundation in 1984.7 We will refer subsequently to this study as the 1984
Japan Foundation report. This study was still carried out firmly under the language and areastudies paradigm, but its findings hinted at the changes that would later lead to the emergenceof the economic competition paradigm.
The Economic Competition Paradigm
The economic competition paradigm arose in the late 1980s when Japan emerged onto
the international scene as a key economic competitor of the United States and as a potential
market for American products. The study of Japan and Japanese language shifted from being
an obscure academic interest and to become knowledge that had economic value. Japan specialists were suddenly in demand to explain basic features of Japanese society to Americanbusinessmen who were being sent to Japan to work in multinational corporations, and new
sectors of the American economy discovered that they needed specialized kinds of expertiseon Japan. The new demands were very focused and impatient: major economic actors in the
United States wanted useful knowledge to equip people quickly for economically productive
work related to Japan, and they did not want to waste time on anything that was not immediately and directly relevant. This placed new strains on academic programs designed to produce
scholars who could do research in Japanese sources by training them deeply and broadly overa period of many years. The standard rule of thumb at the time was that it took ten years to
produce a fully-qualified Japan specialist; that was simply too long to wait to meet urgent
economic needs.
The solution was to create new programs to produce professionals with the requisite specialized Japanese knowledge. New fellowships and academic programs were createdto train economists who understood the Japanese economy and could work with Japanese
economic materials, and lawyers who understood Japanese law and could advise Americanbusiness clients (even though they could not formally practice law in Japan). Business schools
throughout the United States hired Japan specialist social scientists to teach their students how
to do business in Japan. Specialized Japanese language programs were developed to teachbusiness Japanese along with Japanese business etiquette, and at a higher level, to teach law
students with a basic knowledge of Japanese how to read Japanese legal documents. More
broadly, the economic competition paradigm brought a new appreciation of Japan’s place inthe modern world, which led scholars to make new comparisons between Japan and European
countries and to incorporate Japan into contemporary social science research with an international focus. Japan’s dramatic postwar development, following a different strategy than the oldmodernization concept had envisioned, led to comparative studies of the “flying geese” Asiandevelopment model, with Japan as the “lead goose.”
The next two studies of Japanese Studies in the United States, which I conducted for theJapan Foundation, coincided with the development of the economic competition paradigm
although I did not yet recognize it for what it was. The first study, in the late 1980s, was a survey that was used to produce a directory of Japan specialists and Japanese Studies programs,
7 The Japan Foundation, Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1980’s, (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation,1984).

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as part of the Japan Foundation’s worldwide series of such surveys. The survey and directory
covered both the United States and Canada, and we have followed the same pattern in thethree subsequent studies. The 1989 directory included a long introduction providing a basic
sociological analysis of the data.8 That study also included the production of a separate volumeof essays by prominent Japan specialists assessing the state of Japanese Studies in different
disciplines, which in retrospect can be seen as marking the end of the language and area studies paradigm as the dominant model for Japanese Studies in the United States.9
A few years later, the Japan Foundation asked me to produce another directory, and also towrite a monograph analyzing the state of Japanese Studies in the United States. The questionnaire for this second project included not only the material destined to appear in the directory,
but also a more detailed set of survey questions. I asked how Japan specialists did their work
and what conditions were like for both specialists and Japanese Studies programs in the early
1990s. These questions reflected both my general training as a sociologist and my long personal involvement in the field of Japanese Studies. For the analysis I used not only my own two
surveys, but also data from the previous surveys of Japanese Studies in the United States that
had been conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s, in order to see how Japanese Studies had
been developing and changing over time.
The economic competition paradigm brought new people into Japanese Studies forreasons that were more instrumental and opportunistic. In the early 1990s when we were collecting data for the 1995 study, we cast a wide net by asking all four year academic institutions
if they had any faculty doing work on Japan. Many faculty members who did notread or speak
Japanese were doing comparative research on Japan at that time and therefore were included
in our study. At the student level, the economic competition paradigm attracted new students
into Japanese Studies for instrumental reasons. Knowledge of contemporary Japan was suddenly the ticket to a good career in the professions or the social sciences. The payoff was
great enough to be worth the extra effort, especially if there were fellowships to support thelanguage learning and special programs focused on learning only what was needed for specificprofessional purposes. Some of these students did go into the social sciences and professional
fields as academics, but many of them did not intend to become academics; they were acquiring knowledge of Japan in order to build professional careers in the American economy andthe emerging global economy.
I analyzed the state of Japanese Studies in 1995 in terms of five themes: growth, differentiation, specialization, normalization, and internationalization. Growth was fueling theother four processes.10 I identified the engine of that growth as a change in American attitudes
toward Japan, and wrote about that phenomenon elsewhere as well,11 but at the time I did not
yet understand it as a different paradigm for Japanese Studies. From about the mid-1980s Japan
had suddenly penetrated the general American consciousness because of its rising economic
8 P. G. Steinhoff, “Editor’s Introduction” in The Japan Foundation, Directory of Japan Specialists andJapanese Studies Institutions in the United States and Canada. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies,
1989 (2 vols., 1168 pp)
9 The Japan Foundation, Japanese Studies in the United States: Part I, History and Present Condition.
Japanese Studies Series XVII, ed. by Marius B. Jansen. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1988.
10 The Japan Foundation, Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s. Ann Arbor: Association for
Asian Studies, 1996.
11 P. G. Steinhoff, “Japanese Studies in the Postwar United States: The Loss of Irrelevance” IHJ Bulletin
Winter, 1993. (Also published as Steinhoff, P. G., “Sengō no Amerika ni okeru Nihon Kenkyü: hikanrenseino sōshitsu” Kaihō Winter, 1993. in the Japanese edition of IHJ Bulletin)monograph.indb 10

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power. A string of popular books suggested Japan had found better ways to do a lot of things
that Americans always assumed they did better than anyone else. Japan specialists who had
previously toiled in obscurity on a subject that was only of narrow academic interest were suddenly thrust into the limelight as the purveyors of rare, economically valuable knowledge; ourrelatives marveled at our presumed foresight for having studied Japanese when nobody else
was interested. While there was clearly new external demand for Japanese Studies and Japanese language, growth could only occur to the extent that there were Japan specialists available
to meet that demand; our surveys documented that increase in supply and its distribution.
There was a dramatic increase in the number of persons identified as specialists on Japan(1,224 in 1989 and 1,552 in 1995) and the number of doctoral students in American universities
who were doing research related to Japan (412 in 1989 and 803 in 1995). This growth in the
supply of Japan specialists and doctoral students studying Japan was attributable to two factors that were specific to the American context. First, since Japanese Studies was primarily apostwar phenomenon in the U.S., virtually all of the Japan specialists who had ever lived werestill alive in the 1990s. Although the study documented that many of them had recently retired,
they were still active in the field. As a result of this demographic anomaly, everyone who wascoming into Japanese Studies was adding to the total, rather than replacing people who wereleaving the field through retirement and death. Second, under the language and area studies
paradigm there had been fellowship programs in place since the 1960s designed to attract small
numbers of graduate students to the study of Japanese as a difficult and understudied languagethat had no immediate economic value. However, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, students
were flocking to Japanese language classes precisely because it was perceived as economicallyuseful. The changed American perception of Japan was motivating more students to go into
the field at younger ages and without specialized fellowship support, although some students
were also getting new fellowships for specialized language training oriented to the professions.
The surveys also documented the dramatic spread of Japanese Studies programs andlanguage offerings to a wider range of academic institutions, from 108 in 1989 to 247 in 1995.
We supplemented these counts of Japanese Studies program entries by listing other academic
institutions that had a resident Japan specialist, based on the institutional affiliations of theJapan specialists who had entries in the directories. This brought the counts to 286 for 1989
and 440 for 1995. Although some of the change in this short time period was a result of morethorough canvassing of academic institutions for the 1995 study, the numbers are based onreal, verified entries in the directories. Expansion on this scale meant that Japanese Studies andJapan specialists were moving from elite graduate institutions into two and four-year colleges,
and spreading to nearly every state in the U.S. Thus the growing supply of Japan specialists
was supporting an expansion of academic courses and programs on Japan, which in turn werebeing created to meet the growing external demand for knowledge about Japan.
This expansion into more and more academic institutions gave rise to a major problem
that Japanese Studies in the United States faced in the mid-1990s: how to support the researchand teaching needs of Japan specialists who were based in institutions without a JapaneseStudies library collection or a librarian who could help locate Japanese materials. Most of theJapan specialists in the United States had received their doctoral training at a relatively small
number of major academic centers of Japanese Studies, which had Japan specialists in several
disciplines and substantial Japanese language library collections. However, many of these new
PhDs were now dispersed geographically and employed at institutions that lacked any Japanese Studies infrastructure. Some doctoral students were also being trained at institutions with
less-developed infrastructure for Japanese Studies.

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As noted above, rapid growth and the domestic impetus for it produced other changes inJapanese Studies. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the transformation of the study of Japan
into something of economic value meant that there was a demand for different types of training
than the traditional language and area studies curriculum, which had been designed to produce
academics. I used the sociological concept of differentiation to refer to this phenomenon. In addition to business, law, and economics, engineers were studying Japanese industrial processes
and being listed on the rosters of Japanese Studies programs. Since the aim of this new interestin Japan was to produce experts who would work outside of academics, they concentrated on
specialized forms of knowledge that most academic Japan specialists and Japanese Studies
courses could not provide, and they demanded a pace that the standard academic curriculum
for Japanese Studies could not accommodate. The result was the creation of separate programs
to train people in professional fields that were differentiated from the standard academic tracksof Japanese Studies.
I used the term normalization to point to three phenomena that related directly to conditions in the United States and to the American perception of the significance of Japan to its
interests. First, normalization characterized the way that the study of Japan was moving froman obscure academic topic for specialists toward being a normal part of the knowledge of an
educated American. The presence of courses on Japan in a wider range of institutions and thereported enrollments in these courses demonstrated that many students were taking courses
on Japan, or studying Japanese language who did not intend to become Japanese majors or to
pursue academic careers in Japanese Studies. Second, normalization referred to the growing
tendency for Japan specialists to find employment in the regular institutions of American society rather than only in academics. In the 1995 study, a quarter of the Japan specialists were
employed outside of traditional academic faculty positions. Some of them were employed aslibrarians, museum curators, and in academic administrative positions, as might be expected.
The surprise was that so many were employed in government and the private sector, in ­places
like banks, law offices, businesses, newspapers, magazines, think tanks, and government
agencies.
The third aspect of normalization was the growing body of English language material
about Japan. Academic material produced by American and other English-speaking Japan
specialists, supplemented by translations of literary works and other basic documents, had
become so extensive that it was possible to produce secondary academic studies on Japan
without using Japanese sources. It was not simply that there were plenty of materials available
for student term papers about Japan; American academics who did not know any Japanese
were starting to produce studies based on English-language materials, augmented in somecases with material acquired from Japanese colleagues, students, translators, or readily available data sources. Particularly in social science fields such as economics and sociology, studies
could be done with an appropriate data set, supplemented by some secondary research in the
English language materials available in the library. Many popular books and articles about
Japan were also being published by journalists and businessmen. While these aspects of normalization could be regarded as successes of Japanese Studies in the United States, they alsosuggested that in the future it might become such a normal part of American life that it would
lose its distinctiveness and become invisible.
The traditional integrated language and area studies approach to the study of Japan was
also under attack in the United States in the early 1990s because it was perceived to be a relicof the Cold War, not appropriate to the post-Cold War world. This objection to language andmonograph.indb 12

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area studies had a political cast, but it came primarily from social science disciplines thatregarded culture, and even language, as not really necessary. Non-Japan specialists in thosedisciplines felt their students could study Japanese politics and the Japanese economy using
quantitative datasets and the standard tools of the disciplines, and did not need the excess
baggage of language and area studies. However, the impact of these attitudes on the field ofJapanese Studies was obscured in the early 1990s because of the high political and economic
salience of Japan in the United States, which drew students to precisely these disciplines. Students were still attracted to those social science disciplines because of their interest in Japan,
but they faced great pressure to do particular kinds of research and not to waste their time on
language and area studies.
I saw this phenomenon in 1995 as part of a larger trend toward specialization, the tendencyof academic Japan specialists to focus on narrower and narrower topics, and to concentrateon specialized areas of knowledge defined by their disciplines, rather than on the broader,interdisciplinary approach that had characterized Japanese Studies in earlier decades. Thiswas partly a function of the greatly increased body of knowledge about Japan that was alreadyavailable in English, and upon which younger American Japan specialists were being trained
to build their own careers. It was no longer sufficient for young scholars to produce a very general study drawn largely from the readily available secondary literature in Japanese; increasingly, American scholars of Japan were expected to do original research in Japanese sources,
and to relate it to earlier work in both Japanese and English. This pushed them into smaller,
more manageable topics.
In both directory surveys we had presented respondents with a very large list of subject
specializations that was based on the category system used for the Bibliography of Asian Studies published by the Association for Asian Studies. In 1989, respondents had written in a large
number of new subject specializations, which I used to analyze new developments in the field.
These specializations were added to the list we presented to specialists in the second survey,
and again they added a large number of new categories. As I analyzed these new categories
and also the topics of dissertations in progress, it became apparent that the subjects of current
Japanese Studies research reflected the emergent trends in American academics in general,
rather than the issues concerning Japan that scholars Japanese might have pursued.
This was particularly true in the social sciences, where the structure of American graduate
education meant that most doctoral students would have a supervising committee consistingof perhaps one Japan specialist and several specialists in their discipline who knew nothing
about Japan. The pressure was, and still is, to produce work that is relevant to the concerns of
the discipline in an American academic context, even if it happens to be about Japan. In somedisciplines, work could not be solely about Japan, and graduate students were pushed into doing comparative studies that watered down their focus on Japan. More broadly, this disciplinary pressure has meant that doctoral students and young scholars select research topics basedon the hot issues and current theories in the United States, rather than what might be the mostintellectually compelling issues for the study of Japan itself.
To take the most obvious examples, the feminist movement and feminist scholarship hadbrought more women into graduate level Japanese Studies, and that in turn had prompted newstudies of women and gender issues in Japan. In addition, the study of minority groups looms
large in multi-ethnic, multi-racial American society, so young scholars of Japan produced anumber of studies of Japan’s much smaller minority populations because those were the sortsof questions they were trained to ask in their disciplines.

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I believe this has been a very useful development for Japanese Studies and for Japan, inthat foreign scholars and foreign-trained Japanese scholars have been able to pursue topics thatwere more difficult to do within the Japanese academic environment. However, the point to beunderscored here is that the driving force behind these studies has been American, not Japanese, academic preoccupations. The current concerns of American academic disciplines get
projected onto Japanese Studies, because the results of these studies are going to be evaluatedfor their relevance in the context of American academic publishing venues and job opportunities. In the mid-1990s, I saw this phenomenon simply as a new degree of specialization within
Japanese Studies. In retrospect, by 2006 I also perceived these particular topics as reflecting
the beginnings of the new cultural studies paradigm which will be discussed below.
The final characteristic I described in the 1995 study was internationalization, which I
soon regretted not having called globalization. The surveys revealed not only the sort of twoway movement between Japan and the United States that one might expect in Japanese Studies, but also a multi-directional, multi-national flow of people. There were American Japan
specialists teaching in Japan and in various other English-speaking countries, and there weredoctoral students from all over the world studying Japanese Studies in the United States. Although I thought it would seem odd to the Japan Foundation that doctoral students from othercountries would come to the United States to study Japan instead of going to Japan itself, thesituation was quite understandable given the scale of academic Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates and the growing availability of academic studies of Japan in English. For young scholars
who would be teaching Japanese Studies courses in English when they returned to their homecountries, knowing the English language literature on Japan could be just as important as being able to do research in Japanese.
A further aspect of the internationalization of Japanese Studies in the United States in the
1990s was the internationalization of its subject matter. Many studies involved cross-national
comparisons, and these were no longer limited to US-Japan comparisons, or to comparisonsamong Asian societies. Increasingly, Japan was being analyzed in the context of other industrialized societies in Europe, rather than in an East Asian cultural context. Japanese literature andfilm were being discussed in relation to literature and film from all over the world. There werealso studies that reflected the internationalization or globalization of Japan itself—including
both the internal internationalization of the growing foreign worker population in Japan, andthe presence of Japanese nationals and Japanese business interests in other parts of the world.
In short, within American Japanese Studies, Japan was increasingly being viewed as a part ofthe contemporary world that could be studied like any other place, nation, or culture, and not as
an exotic “other” that was totally different from one’s own life experience in the United States.
Thus, the themes of growth, differentiation, specialization, normalization, and internationalization allowed me to draw together a mass of disparate findings about the state ofJapanese Studies in the United States in the 1990s, and to relate them to the larger American
cultural context of the time. In each of these thematic areas, the state of Japanese Studies washeavily determined by the domestic context in the US. Sometimes this was a refraction of theeconomic power of Japan and the state of Japan-US relations, but in other cases it really had
little to do with Japan at all, but was simply a function of other conditions within American
society and particularly within American academics. The shape and characteristics of Japanese Studies in the United States were as much about American society as they were about the
study of Japan.
In retrospect, this period marked the rise of an economic competition paradigm for Japa-

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An Overview of Japanese Studies in the United States

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nese Studies in the United States, in which Japan was viewed as both an economic competitor
and a potential market. This new view of Japan demanded different forms of knowledge for
economic purposes, which the language and area atudies paradigm could not deliver effectively. So while the language and area studies paradigm persisted as an academic model despite
attacks against it from hostile disciplines, a completely separate system of specialized professional training was developed to meet the needs of the new economically motivated Japan
specialists. Those people intended to move into positions in the regular economy of the UnitedStates rather than becoming academic Japan specialists. It is also now clear that many people
identified themselves as Japan specialists during that boom period for Japan because of theircurrent research or professional interests, but they did not necessarily have a long-term commitment to Japanese Studies. Others may well still be utilizing their knowledge of Japan professionally, but because they are part of the regular economy of the United States and are not
identified as academics or Japan specialists, we are no longer able to follow and count them.
This analysis of the economic competition paradigm and its impact on Japanese Studies
in the United States during the 1990s also may suggest a different way of thinking about whatsome perceive as the current competition between Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies. I
would argue that in the second decade of the 21st century, Chinese Studies is under the swayof an economic competition paradigm. Today it is China that is perceived as an economic
competitor and also an economic market for the United States. The same economic forces thatdrove new interest in Japanese Studies in the 1990s are making similar demands of ChineseStudies today, bringing students who look to Chinese Studies as a source of economic opportunity. Examining what has happened in Japanese Studies in the United States since theeconomic competition boom of the early 1990s may help to put the current interest in ChineseStudies into better perspective and allay the fears of a zero-sum competition between Chineseand Japanese Studies.
The Cultural Studies Paradigm
A decade after the 1995 study, the Japan Foundation requested that I do a third edition of
the directory, and a new monograph analyzing the state of Japanese Studies in the United Statesin the early 21st century. The survey itself reflected the tremendous technological changes overthe intervening decade, as it was conducted largely online using a web-based data collection
system, and nearly all communication with specialists and institutions was conducted by email. I began the analysis by adding the new data to the series of earlier studies, generally bysimply adding a new 2005 column to the data tables that I had produced for the 1995 study. I
then tried to understand what had happened in the past ten years. In some cases this also meant
re-interpreting things that were starting to happen in the early 1990s, but whose impact was
not yet apparent to me at the time. It was through this process that I realized that a new cultural
studies paradigm had emerged.
In contrast to the social science and professional school focus of the economic competition paradigm, the cultural studies paradigm marks a resurgence of interest in the humanities
and the cultural side of Japanese Studies. However, cultural studies as an academic endeavor
is emphatically not the same as language and area studies. Although there are many specifictheories and variants encompassed by the term, I am using cultural studies loosely to referto intellectual currents that first arose in the humanities as an interest in the construction of
meaning, and then entered the social sciences through critical neo-Marxism, structuralism
and post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and the Birmingham School’s interest inmonograph.indb 15

5/20/2013 5:57:14 PM16Chapter 1

subcultures, media, and language. It is certainly not American in origin, but has been filteringfrom its European origins into American academics since the 1980s.12
I identified the following characteristics of a cultural studies approach that can be seen incontemporary American Japanese Studies:a) a sense that culture and political economy are intertwined and mutually embedded, sothat each needs to be studied in relation to the other;b) a conception of culture as something that is actively constructed and maintained by human actions, but also constantly changing;c) a conviction that culture is not monolithic at the national level despite attempts to makeit so, but rather can be found in a distinct form within many different subcultures and subgroups that occupy different positions in a society and therefore have different experiences
and perspectives;d) a deep interest in the transformations that have occurred over the past two centuries,
particularly in how people have experienced them and how they have represented those experiences in cultural products, coupled with a strong conviction that these transformations cannot
be reduced to simple binaries such as traditional and modern and applied predictively to any
society, but rather must be understood from within each case;e) the assumption that all cultural representations, including high and low culture, allforms of popular culture, and mass and micro-media, are significant as objects of study and assources of data;f) an understanding that meaning is not independent and absolute, but is “intertextual”
and derived from its relation to other cultural representations; hence anything cultural must be
studied in its context;g) an ethical commitment that the position of the person studying also has to be taken into
consideration in the production of research, so all research must be consciously self-reflexive.
These ideas about culture differ radically from the functionalist ideas underlying modernization theory. They also undermine the assumptions about the nature of the subject to be studied in Japanese Studies that were found in the language and area studies paradigm. This newparadigm encourages an exploration of the widest possible range of cultural representations,past and present, and of all sorts of subgroups, minorities, social movements, and social groups,
rather than assuming one monolithic “Japanese” culture and finding evidence for it everywhere.
These approaches also suggest new ways of looking at the cultural aspects of larger economic
and political relationships such as imperialism and colonialism, as well as the economic andpolitical aspects of domestic cultural products. The cultural studies approach requires highlevels of language skill and often visual skills as well. It demands close attention to context, andmoves freely across disciplinary lines. Yet it does not presuppose or even seek the sort of formalinterdisciplinary training that characterizes the language and area studies approach.
From the vantage point midway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, it wasapparent that cultural studies approaches were already visible in Japanese Studies in the early
1990s in the research topics of humanities scholars and to a lesser extent in courses, but at the
12 See Howard S. Becker and Michal M. McCall, eds. Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990, and Ellis Cashmore and Chris Rojek, ed., Dictionary of Cultural
Theorists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 for two efforts to introduce the concepts into
sociology. My description is taken loosely from Becker and McCall, p. 4 and is somewhat narrower than
Cashmore and Rojek’s scope.

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time they were somewhat overshadowed by the focus on the economic competition paradigm.
By the 2005 study the influence of the economic competition paradigm was waning and thecultural studies paradigm was becoming dominant in the United States. The first and mostobvious finding of the 2005 study was that the dramatic growth in Japanese Studies during
the 1990s had leveled off and even declined. The 2005 numbers for Japan specialists (1,284),
Japanese Studies programs (184), and current doctoral candidates (565) were all lower thanthey had been in 1995, but higher than in 1989. One could say that the bubble economy of Japanwas refracted into a bubble in American Japanese Studies in the 1990s. However, our JapaneseStudies bubble did not burst in the same way; it simply lost some of its excess air. JapaneseStudies was still alive and well in the United States in 2005, and had changed in some very
interesting ways.
By 2005 we had lost most of the first generation of Japan specialists in the United States,
who entered the field during World War II and shortly after, to retirement and death. The
population of Japan specialists had a much more normal demographic distribution, as young
scholars replaced those who had retired and left the field. There was still a big bulge of Japan
specialists in their fifties, but that reflected the impact of the famous American postwar babyboom generation, which is huge overall and has shaped the parts of the society it touched inevery decade since the 1950s. It was clear that there would be another drop in the numbersof Japan specialists over the next two decades as the baby boom generation leaves the field.
Yet there were still plenty of new young people coming into Japanese Studies in the early 21st
century to keep the field vibrant for the foreseeable future. In short, the sheer size of the field
in 1995 appeared in retrospect to have been somewhat of a demographic anomaly, rather thana level that would be sustained indefinitely. There was no great cause for alarm if we simply
drew the curve from 1989 instead of 1995.
The other strong characteristic of the pool of Japan specialists in 2005 was that it is moreacademic, because a higher proportion of the lawyers, economists, and businessmen of the
1990s were missing, along with some academics who were only temporarily caught up in theJapan boom and had moved on to other areas and other topics. Some of these erstwhile Japan
specialists, especially those working outside of academics, may still be using their Japan expertise professionally, but we had lost track of them. However, the committed academic Japan
specialists were still present in solid numbers. It was primarily those who were newcomers to
the field in 1995 who had disappeared.
Yet Japan remains one of the largest trading partners of the United States (after Canada,
China, and Mexico), so it is not as if the basis for the Economic Competition paradigm had
evaporated. What seems more likely is that those who need the sort of specialized professional
training on Japan that was developed in the 1980s and 1990s as an alternative to the language
and area studies model are still getting it through programs that are now well-established atseveral major universities with strong Japanese Studies programs. However, they are not being viewed as Japan specialists. They gain the language proficiency they need, which at somelevels may be in a special track designed for them, and they take other specialized courses
within their discipline or profession. Then they get jobs in the normal parts of the American
economy, or perhaps work overseas for multinational corporations. Their employers may value
and utilize their Japan expertise, but may also move them to other positions from time to time
according to the needs of the employer and as part of their normal career development. In this“normalized” state that I saw emerging in 1995, Japan expertise becomes just one part of ahighly trained professional’s skill set, on the same level as knowing French or Spanish and being able to work effectively in those cultural environments.

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As I have reviewed the data from our new 2012 survey and tried to make sense of thepatterns, it seems clear that Japanese Studies in the United States is now fully engaged in thecultural studies paradigm. Younger scholars embrace it, teach it, and build their research uponit. Yet because at any time the field contains people who came to Japanese Studies at different
times and reflect the dominant ideas of those times, there are still many traces of both the language and area studies paradigm and the economic competition paradigm embodied in Japan
Studies programs and individual Japan specialists. As we work through the data in the chaptersthat follow, I will point out those traces from time to time along with the mounting evidence ofthe dominance of the cultural studies paradigm.
Chapter 2 will introduce the general parameters of Japanese Studies at the end of 2012,
taking a demographic look at the people who now constitute our sample of Japan specialists in
the United States and comparing their characteristics to those of their predecessors in previous
studies. There is also a fair amount of boring methodological detail in this chapter, because fora small part of the audience (as well as for whoever tries to replicate this work in the future) it
is important to establish the logic and procedures underlying the data. We also include basic
information about doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies as future Japan specialists who arejust entering the field.
In Chapter 3 we continue to look at Japan specialists, this time examining their credentials, skills, and areas of expertise. We also ask how they maintain their skills and expertise,
which requires a closer look at what they do as professionals in this field. Because the time
for completion of this monograph has been limited, I am unable to make use of all the survey
data we collected about Japan specialists’ professional activities, and hope to write about it
elsewhere later on. I have included the most basic information needed to show what conditions
are necessary in order for professional Japan specialists to keep up with their ever-changing
field, so that we can refer back to it later when we look at other aspects of Japanese Studies.
The technological transformations of the information society over the past two decades plays a
key role here, as Japan specialists use new technology both to keep up with kinds of materials
that barely existed two decades ago, and as they study cultural phenomena that also have been
deeply influenced by the availability of new technologies.
Chapter 4 shifts the focus to Japanese Studies at academic institutions. Using the widest
possible measures available, I attempt to locate the presence of Japanese Studies within theoverall map of American higher education. To do this I rely on a separate dataset of all accredited institutions of higher education in the United States, and also trace the growth andmovement of Japanese Studies through all the previous studies. The aim in this chapter is tosituate Japanese Studies in a broader context, rather than to look inside the programs, but wealso begin to examine the scale of Japanese Studies programs through staff sizes.
We begin to look inside the academic institutions in Chapter 5, by examining JapaneseStudies courses. As noted earlier in this chapter, course credits provide the basic metric for
academic study in the United States, faculty have considerable latitude to offer courses basedon their expertise, and students have considerable freedom to take individual courses out of
personal interest or to meet various degree requirements, regardless of whether they are enrolled in a specific degree program related to Japan. This approach allows us to examine thegrowth of Japanese Studies through the expansion of both language and area courses and to
begin to understand what sustains the current enrollments in these courses. It also will demonstrate both the increased depth of Japanese language course offerings and the disciplinary
breadth of courses about Japan, whether they are solely about Japan or include Japan content insome broader course offering. We also look briefly at teaching conditions in Japanese Studies.

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An Overview of Japanese Studies in the United States

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Chapter 6 examines the formal academic programs in Japanese Studies at academic institutions, using criteria developed in the 1970s to categorize different levels of undergraduate
and graduate programs. We examine the overlap between undergraduate and graduate programs and their growth over time. This chapter also examines continuity and change in theinstitutions that have been the major producers of new doctorates in Japanese Studies since the1970s. We employ a number of measures to assess the current conditions of Japanese Studies
programs.
Chapter 7 examines the infrastructure for Japanese Studies in the United States, ranging
from a closer look at staffing of Japanese Studies at academic institutions, through library andmuseum collections and the other organizations that participate in or provide support to Japanese Studies. We include in this chapter Japan specialists’ perceptions of funding conditions
and their preferences for how support for Japanese Studies should be allocated, using questions
the Japan Foundation has been asking for several decades.
In Chapter 8 we provide an overview of the main findings of the study, draw some conclusions about the near future, and reevaluate our list of challenges and recommendations for theJapan Foundation.

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2
A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

How Many Japan Specialists Are There?
This chapter updates the extensive methodological discussion of how we obtain the numbers on which we base our analysis of the demographics of Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates. After incorporating the new data into the tables, we analyze these most recent developments in light of the long-term trends. Those who have no interest in the methodological niceties are welcome to skip down to the Age and Gender subheading to see the results.
Japanese Studies is surely one of the most-studied fields in American academics. Periodic
studies dating back to 1970 have tried to count how many Japan specialists there were in the
United States, identify their areas of expertise, and plot their geographic and institutional
distribution. This study is the latest in the series, and in addition to reporting the current
answers to those three questions, it builds upon its predecessors to analyze how the field has
been changing over time. We are particularly fortunate in that the previous three studies andthe current one have used very similar methods and their results may be compared with someconfidence.
The study of Japan is primarily a post-war phenomenon in the United States, and until fairly recently, virtually all of the Japan specialists who had ever been active in the United States
were still alive. The pattern of change was primarily about growth, as new Japan specialists
completed their degrees and entered the field to work alongside their elders. At the end of theseventh decade since the end of World War II, that is no longer the case. The field is now taking
on a more normal demographic pattern, in which older specialists leave through retirement anddeath and are replaced by a new generation. Our analysis of the current numbers, as well as thecomparison with previous studies, must keep this basic fact in mind.
The starting point for this sort of demographic analysis is to identify the parameters of theoverall population, use a systematic method to reach the members of that population and ask
them some questions. We then analyze the results, taking into consideration the gap between
the sample that actually answered the questions and the overall population they represent imperfectly. None of these steps is as straightforward as it might appear to be.
We can define our population of interest as Japan specialists, meaning persons with expertise in the study of Japan who use that expertise in a professional capacity, and the limitsof our interest as those currently residing and working in the United States. This study aims
20

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A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

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to be comprehensive and inclusive, so it tries to reach all known Japan specialists rather thana systematic sample. Yet every element of this definition gets pretty blurry around the edges.
First there is the question of who has expertise about Japan and uses it in a professional
capacity. We generally define the level of expertise as possession of a doctoral degree with evidence of specialization on Japan, presumably with a fair level of Japanese language capability.
This works as a device for screening out graduate students, but there have always been members of the Japanese Studies community who do not have a doctorate and do not necessarily
work in academic institutions that would require one. Therefore, we also recognize and try toinclude persons in government and in the public and private sectors outside of academia, whohold the requisite credentials for their work and are clearly utilizing their expertise on Japanprofessionally, but who do not have a PhD in some discipline related to Japanese Studies. We
blur the edges even further by occasionally including people who are working toward a PhD,
and thus technically doctoral students, but who are already working professionally as Japan
specialists or contributing to the field through publication.
Since the 1980s, Japan specialists have been moving in and out of the United States quite
regularly. Although for a current “snapshot” of the field we consider only those in the UnitedStates at the time of the survey, excluding such people from the mailing list and the survey
itself would make it extremely difficult for us to track and analyze the movement of Japanese
specialists over time. We therefore have chosen to keep known Japan specialists on our lists
even if they reside outside the United States, and to collect data from them even though we
may exclude it from the analysis. Individuals residing outside the U.S. are generally includedin the published directory, but not in this analysis of the current state of Japanese Studies in
the United States.
To complicate matters further, for purposes of creating a directory of Japanese Studies,
this survey and the previous three have chosen to define their universe as both the UnitedStates and Canada, and to collect data from this wider sphere. This decision was initiallymade because we were well aware of a substantial overlap between Japan specialists in the
United States and Canada: Canadians work in the US; Americans work in Canada; and they
all belong to intellectual networks that span the border. For purposes of data analysis we try
to separate the two groups and produce separate reports. However, we do count Canadiancitizens working in the United States, along with nationals from any other country, as part ofour US sample. Our boundary is geographic, not based on citizenship or residency. To reiterate, for the main data analysis to follow, we exclude specialists who are not currently in the
United States, even if they appear in the directory and are otherwise part of the US JapaneseStudies community.
Using these definitions or any others, Japan specialists in the United States constitutejust a few thousand people in a population of nearly 300 million: the proverbial needle in ahaystack. So how do we find them to send them a survey questionnaire? The earliest studies
focused on academics, so they identified the relatively small number of academic institutions
that offered courses and programs related to Japan, and asked them to identify their Japan
specialists. Moreover, when the field comprised only a few hundred Japan specialists, theypretty much all knew each other anyway. They had all received their advanced training at thesame institutions and they participated in the same small intellectual networks. By the 1980s
the number of identified specialists, or possible specialists, was growing rapidly. Academic
staff lists no longer provided a reliable way to reach the target population, so their lists were
supplemented with those of relevant organizations such as the Association for Asian Studies.
Every study prior to the previous one in 2005 has used mailed questionnaires. This one

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5/20/2013 5:57:14 PM22Chapter 2

and its predecessor have relied very heavily on the Internet, using institutional websites asa primary source of information about programs, e-mail as a means of communication withpotential respondents, and our own website as an online data collection system. Hence for thisstudy we needed not mailing addresses, but e-mail addresses. As the 2005 study proceeded,
we realized the extent of the digital divide even in our highly educated target population. We
had to resort to multiple methods to try to reach those who did not respond to e-mail invitations
to participate, or for whom we could not find a working e-mail address. For the current study
we did not face the same problem and we did not supplement either e-mail communication or
online data entry with any alternative methods.
The 1970 and 1984 studies were simple mailed questionnaires sent to Japan specialists.
The 1989 study was a mailed questionnaire used for the production of the first Directory ofJapan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in the United States and Canada; the datacollection was limited to what would appear in the published directory. The 1995 and 2005
studies were also used to collect data for a new edition of the directory, but added survey sections for specialists, institutions, and Japanese Studies librarians, in order to produce a deeper
and more extensive analysis of the state of the field. The current study follows the same patternof collecting data both for the fourth edition of the directory and for a more extensive survey ofthe current state of the field. The addition of a survey component to the directory questionnaire
has complicated the issue of sampling even further, since some respondents complete only the
directory portion, or do not respond to all of the survey questions. As in the previous studies,
we treat the full sample of directory respondents as the study sample, but provide the smaller
actual numbers when we report data from the survey portion.
Table 2.1 gives the basic range and number of Japan specialists counted in the six major
surveys of the field conducted from 1970 to 2012. The purpose of the mailing list is to cast awide net, and it should not be regarded as an estimate of the actual number of Japan specialists in the United States. It was understood that the 1989 and 1995 mailing lists were heavily
inflated with people who probably were not Japan specialists, and our lists for the 2005 and2012 studies contained the same inflation factors. Even though the Association for Asian Studies mailing list was only the source for about half of the final directory samples in each of thelast several studies, it accounts for a much higher proportion of the initial mailing lists. The
AAS regional category of Northeast Asia and country category of Japan both encompass awide range of AAS members who do not fit the more restrictive criteria for the Japan directory.
Our database includes participation information for the past four studies, and there is a certain
amount of movement in and out between surveys. Some people are in one directory, lost for
the next one, and turn up in the third. In addition, a person who is ineligible in one year mightwell become eligible at a later time. For the current study, we had usable e-mail addresses for
4,127 potential Japan specialists with addresses in the United States.
The number of Japan specialists in the 2012 directory shows an 11.8% increase over thenumber in the 2005 directory, while the staff list shows an 8.3% increase. Only in the past
two studies has the number reported on staff lists exceeded the number of Japan specialists
in the directory. There is no direct correspondence between the staff and specialist numbers,
since a fair number of specialists listed in the directory are not affiliated with the institutions
that report staff lists, and the staff lists also include a substantial number of professional staff
members who are not eligible for a directory listing. They are best understood as two different
ways of estimating the number of professional Japanese Studies personnel in the United States.
Although we do not know how many Japan specialists were never included in our lists,
we can do some evaluation of why people who were known to be Japan specialists did notmonograph.indb 22

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Table 2.1. Range and Number of Japan Specialists in the United States, by Source,
as Counted in Five Major Surveys of the Field, 1970–2012*
M ailing List

Academic Staff
Lists**

SurveySampleAcademics
Academics
Academics and non-academics
Academics and non-academics

597
1,535
4,009
4,442

416
781
936
1,452

2005

Academics and non-academics

4,199

1,607

2012

Academics and non-academics

4,127

1,789

332
841
1,224
[1,552]***1,638[1,284]***1,324[1,434]***1,526

Year R ange of Specialists Included

1970
1984
1989
1995

* 1970 information from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, Appendix 3, p. 107; 1984 information from 1984 Japan Foundation
Report, Appendix 1, pp. 89-93; 1989 information from 1989 Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in the United States and Canada, vol. 1, pp. ix-xi. 1995 information and table format from Japanese Studies in
the United States, The 1990s, p. 19.
** The 1970 SSRC-ACLS report contained a roster of individuals at specific institutions. The 1984 Japan Foundation
report gave the number of positions at each institution, calculating part-time positions as 1/2. We assume that the half
positions were mostly occupied by different individuals. Although we could not account for any half positions concealedin the whole numbers within one institution’s total, we did compensate for 56 identified fractional totals by counting
each as one additional person. The 1989 and 1995 figures are based on a count of names on staff lists reported for institutional directory entries. They undercount language instructors, who were not listed by some large institutions intheir directory entries. For 2005 this is the count of current staff as it appears in the institutional entries; it includes bothlanguage instructors and other Asian specialists listed by the institutions, who would not be included in the regular directory entries.
*** Two sample numbers are given for 1995, 2005, and 2012 to account for specialists currently residing outside theUnited States. The number currently in the US is given in brackets. The larger number is the best comparison to data forthe earlier years, but the number in brackets is the number we use for the analysis.

end up in the directory sample, by examining the carryover of entrants from one study to thenext, and tracking those who drop out. The 1995 study was conducted just five years after its
predecessor, and within that relatively brief time span we were able to trace 94 percent of those
who had appeared in the 1989 directory, although a smaller number (84.9%) were included in
the 1995 directory. The others we tracked were deceased, no longer active, or no longer in the
United States by 1995. This was an absolutely remarkable rate of follow-up as surveys go, andreflects several aspects of the study that differ from ordinary surveys: the cooperation of staff
at Japanese Studies programs, our ability to cross-check between institutional staff lists andour lists of individual Japan specialists, the networks within the field, and the strong support
the study has had from Japan specialists.
Trying to figure out what has happened to the field from one study to the next is a slipperybusiness, since some people leave the field through death or retirement from Japanese Studies
activity and new people enter the field, but our study captures an imperfect measure of either.
Table 2.2 tries to summarize these movements with two different but related measures. Fromthe perspective of one study, we can measure how many people also participate in the next one(the carryover rate, expressed as the percentage of those in the first study who also appearedin the second). Within each study, we can calculate how many persons in that study are repeat
participants and how many are new to that study.
Reading down in the %carryover column, 84.9% of those in the 1989 directory study

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Chapter 2

24

Table 2.2. Turnover Table of Japan Specialists Between Studies*
Year

1989
1995
2005
2012

% Carryover% R epeat

% New

–

–

–

(1,039)66.9%  (749)58.3%(1,015)
70.8%

(513)
33.1%
(509)
39.6%
(397)
27.7%

84.9%
48.3%
79.0%

% Not Quite
New**

–
(26)
2.1%
(22)
1.5%

Total

(1,224)100%(1,552)100%(1,284)100%(1,434)100%

Outside the
US

86
40
92

* Figures for 1989, 1995, and 2005 recalculated from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities
and Opportunities.
** In 2005 and 2012 we were able to distinguish between true “new” participants who had not previously been in our
database, and a small number of persons who were known previously but were either ineligible, declined to participate,or were lost between studies.

were also in the 1995 study, but that carryover rate dropped to 48.3% for the 2005 study. It has
bounced back to 79.0% in the present 2012 study. In 2005 this carryover drop, and the overall
decrease in the number of specialists, was attributed to a combination of three factors. The
first was generational turnover. Through 1995 most persons who had ever been Japan specialists in the United States were still active, but a decade later retirement and death had reduced
the numbers of the first postwar generation of Japan specialists. The second and third factors
stemmed from the Japanese Bubble economy and the ensuing economic competition paradigm in Japanese Studies in the United States. The heightened interest in Japan and the needfor professionals with Japan expertise had brought many new people into Japanese Studies in
1995. By 2005 some of them had moved on to some other field and were no longer working on
Japan. Others had been trained in Japanese economics, law, or business during the economic
competition paradigm and were employed in the mainstream economy outside of academics.
Although they participated in the 1995 study and were probably still using their Japan expertise professionally, a decade later they were no longer traceable if they had changed employers
or were no longer connected to the academic networks through which the study locates participants. The current study still contains some of these professionals, who retain their ties to
the Japanese Studies community.
The fact that the carryover rate rebounded between the 2005 and 2012 studies suggeststhat Japanese Studies has stabilized with a balance between normal generational turnover andthe influx of new specialists. Looking at the internal division in each study between repeat participants and new entrants further reinforces this picture, but the length of time between studies also may play a role. The current study’s rate of 70.8% repeat participants is just slightly
higher than the 66.9% repeat rate for 1995, when there was a similar length of time between
two studies.
The far right column in Table 2.2 gives the number of Japan specialists who are American
citizens working outside the United States. The numbers for 1995 and 2012 are very similar,
while in 2005 there were only half as many who participated in the study but were living
outside the United States. Nearly half of these global American Japan specialists are in Japan(46.7%), followed by Canada (32.3%). The rest are in Europe (8.9%), with smaller percentages

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A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

25

in Korea (4.4%), Australia and New Zealand (3.3%), China and Hong Kong (3.3%) and thePhilippines (1.1%). Nearly all of them are affiliated with academic institutions in these countries, with a few in Japan at national research institutes and a small number with non-academic
positions or no affiliation. These people have been included in the directory, and those residing
in Canada have been included in the Canadian volume of the study. They are all excluded fromthis analysis of Japan specialists in the United States.
We can offer some indirect answers to our first question: how many Japan specialists are
there in the United States? First, the true number of active Japan specialists in the United Statesin 2012 may still be lower than it was in 1995, but it has grown substantially just since 2005.
Second, although the elusive actual number of active Japan specialists in the United States isundoubtedly larger than our survey sample, we can be confident that a fairly high percentage ofthem, probably over half, are represented in the present study. This is certainly a high enoughpercentage to provide a reliable picture of conditions in the field; in fact, it is so high a percentage of the unknown actual population that statistical measures of significance are irrelevant.
Any differences we find are quite real, and highly unlikely to have come about by chance. We
therefore can look primarily at comparisons of simple percentages and take them at face value.
With that assurance about the nature of the study sample, we can proceed to examine the data
more closely.

Age and Gender
We know that in the past, the overall age distribution of Japan specialists in the UnitedStates was skewed by the fact that virtually everyone who had ever been a professional Japan
specialist in the United States was still alive and active. This was just beginning to change
at the end of the twentieth century, but the effects are now quite pronounced. Table 2.3 gives
the Age Distribution of Japan Specialists in 1970, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012. To facilitate
Table 2.3. Age Distribution of Japan Specialists in 1970, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
Age

21–30
31–40
41–50
51–60
61–70
71+

1970
%

1984
%

1995
%

2005
%

2012
%

11
38
32
15
4
–
332

2
25
34
26
12
–
841

0.9
11.3
31.1
25.3
20.7
10.7
1,552

0.6
14.6
19.1
27.9
20.0
12.5
1,216

0.6
11.2
24.1
21.5
25.6
16.9
1,292

* Data for 1970 from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, Appendix 3, p. 108; for 1984 from 1984 Japan Foundation Report,
Table 1, p. 13; for 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 23, Table 2.2. Data for 2005 adaptedfrom Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, p. 21, Table 2.2. Data for 2012
separates those who were included in the 1995 directory and those who are new to the study in 2012. When date of birth
was not reported, we estimated age from the first academic degree, but sometimes these dates were also omitted, so 68
persons (9 from 1995 and 59 new entrants) are omitted from the 2005 figures and 143 were omitted from 2012 (41 from2005 and 102 new ones)** Because some persons who were not in the 2005 study had been in the 1995 study, they have been treated as having
been in 2005 so that the “New in 2012” column represents people who are completely new to the study and therefore
likely to be new entrants into Japanese Studies.

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Chapter 2

comparison, Table 2.3 utilizes the same age categories as the earlier studies, although it is asomewhat awkward distribution.
The effects of the generational shift are quite clear. In 1970, 11 percent of Japan specialists
were under 30 and only 4 percent were over 60. The great majority (70%) were in their 30s and
40s, and less than 20 percent were over 50. In 1984 the overall sample had more than doubled,
but very few were in their 20s. More than half were in their 30s and 40s, but over a third wereover 50. The 1995 sample had again almost doubled. The age distribution had shifted upwardagain, with more than half the field over 50 and less than one percent under 30. Actually, in
1995 the percentage of Japan specialists in their fifties was stable, and the real increase was inthose over sixty. We also added another decade because a tenth of the respondents were in theirseventies. In 2005 the overall sample was about 20 percent smaller than the big 1995 sample.
The percentage in their 30s had increased slightly, but those in their 40s had shrunk by about
60 percent. Slightly more were in their fifties. A stable 20 percent were in their 60s, but morethan one in eight were over 70. By 2012 the percent in their thirties was about the same as in1995, while about a quarter of the sample was in their forties. The rest of the sample reflected
the gradual aging of the same group of people who remained in the field. The percentage intheir 50s had declined to about a fifth of the sample, while those in their 60s now took up theslack, and the percentage in their 70s and beyond continued to grow.
The other noteworthy feature of the age distribution comparisons is the virtual absenceof professional Japan specialists under the age of 30. In the 1960s when the first large crop of
Japan specialists were trained with heavy infusions of federal support for area studies and lesscommonly taught languages, universities were expanding to meet the demands of the baby
boom generation. At that time, young faculty members often had completed their doctorates
before the age of 30, or were hired before they had finished their dissertations. In the decades
since, graduate training has lengthened and virtually no Japan specialists are eligible for inclusion in the directory before the age of 30. The few people in that age category are generally
persons with qualifications other than a doctorate.
For further analysis of the age distribution of the sample, we will use a different set of age
categories, as shown in Table 2.4. These correspond more closely to the ages at which Japan
specialists enter and leave professional employment. Japan specialists generally reach professional status in their early 30s, and 65 is the traditional retirement age, although it is clear thatmany Japan specialists today remain active much longer. We can see more precisely how thefield is changing by comparing the old and new directory entrants in the 2005 study and thecurrent one using more appropriate age categories.
The mean age of Japan specialists overall is only slightly higher (55.8) in the current study
than it has been in the past two studies (54.9 and 54.0). The average age of persons new to eachstudy has been about the same in 2005 (44.4) and 2012 (45.5), both of which are lower than the
average age of new entrants in 1995 (48.8). The latter figure once again points to the unusual
characteristics of those who were new to the study in 1995, many of whom were moving into
the study of Japan from other professions in which they were already working, or were making
lateral moves as academics.
The age gap between old and new entrants in 2005 and 2012 may be obfuscated somewhat
by the growing number of persons for whom we could not even estimate a birth year because
they had also concealed the dates of earlier academic degrees. Yet it seems probable that those
who wish to conceal their age are not in the youngest age groups. Comparing the new entrants
in the three studies, those in 2005 and 2012 are more heavily concentrated in the two youngest
age groups. Comparing the holdover entrants in the three studies, the percentage 65 or older ismonograph.indb 26

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27

Table 2.4. Comparison of New and Repeat Entrants by Age, 1995, 2005, and 2012*  Study

1995 Study

2005 Study

2012 Study

In 1989
%

New
1995
%

1995 A ll%

In 1995
%

New
2005
%

2005 A ll
%

In**
2005
%

Under 35
35-44
45-54
55-64
65 or older
Not stated

0.1
13.6
32.1
26.0
26.7
1.6

9.7
33.3
27.7
16.0
9.9
3.3

3.3
20.1
30.6
22.7
21.1
2.2

0.1
4.8
27.3
39.1
27.5
1.2

17.0
40.9
17.6
9.5
3.9
11.0

7.2
19.8
23.3
26.8
17.7
5.3

0.1
11.4
21.2
29.1
33.9
4.2

11.2
33.8
17.0
8.8
7.3
21.9

2.9
17.6
19.6
22.7
27.2
10.0

Total %

100.1

99.9

100.0

100.0

99.9

100.1

99.9

100.0

100.0

Total N

1,039

513

1,552

750

535

1,285

970

465

1,435

Mean Age

57.3

48.8

54.9

61.7

44.4

54.0

59.9

45.5

55.8

Age
GroupsNew 2012 2012 A ll%%

* 1995 data from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 2.3; 2005 data from Japanese Studies in the
United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities Percents may not total to 100% because of rounding.
** Because some people were not in 2005 but had been in the 1995 study, this number was recalculated to include all
persons who had been in either study, so that the “New in 2012” column reports only those who have not been in the
study before.

Table 2.5. Japan Specialists by Gender and Age, 2012
Female

M ale

Total

   Age

#

%

#

%

#

%

Under 35
35-44
45-54
55-64
65 or older
Not stated

22
119
132
128
93
64

42.3
44.7
46.5
40.0
25.7
44.4

30
147
152
192
269
80

57.7
55.3
53.5
60.0
74.3
55.5

52
266
284
320
362
144

100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0

Total

558

39.1

870

60.9

1428

100.0

now a third of the holdovers. Although this group of Japan specialists will no doubt remain active well beyond age 65, within another decade the age distribution of Japan specialists should
show a much better overall balance across age groups, with a more regular flow of people inand out of the field by age.
The gender balance in Japanese Studies has been improving steadily. The 1970 study consistently referred to Japan specialists as “men” although over 10 percent of those included were
women. Things have improved substantially since then. In 1995 the overall sample was almost
30 percent female, and 37.6 percent of the new entrants were women. Moreover the genderratio was more balanced with each successively younger age cohort. As Table 2.5 shows, thegender ratio seems to have stabilized at roughly 45:55 for the three younger age cohorts, withthe percent female dropping in the two older age categories.
Interestingly, the gender ratio is also roughly 45:55 among those who did not wish to re-monograph.indb 27

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28

port their age and for whom it could not be estimated from education. This suggests that theissue for them is more likely fear of age discrimination in employment, rather than feminine
coyness about revealing their age. They were primarily individuals with quite recent PhDs,
who may well have come to graduate school later in life rather than in a direct progression
through educational levels.

Occupations and Disciplines
Although specialization on Japan began and has remained primarily oriented to academic
careers, our previous studies found a number of Japan specialists employed outside of academics. The most basic occupational division we need to examine is therefore the proportion of thestudy sample that is employed as academic faculty. Following the practice established in the
1995 study, “independent scholars” are also included in this category. In all three studies, theanalysis is based on the primary occupation listed, although a number of people with anotherprimary occupation list faculty as their secondary occupation. As shown in Table 2.6, oursample remains predominantly academic faculty, with the percentage increasing from twothirds in 1995 to three-quarters in the past two studies. The proportion employed in other occupations has shrunk correspondingly from a quarter of the 1995 sample to the current 15.6%.
All three studies contained a substantial number of persons who were retired or not employed. Not surprisingly, two thirds of those who were retired or not employed were 65 orolder. There is very little difference by age group between those employed as faculty andthose in other occupations. Table 2.7 provides a closer look at the occupational distributionof those who are not employed as faculty. The data demonstrate once again how different the
1995 study sample was from the two twenty-first century study samples. In 1995, persons inbusiness and librarians were tied as the top two categories, followed by those in government
service (including diplomatic service, government service, and military service combined),
research staff, lawyers, and educational administrators.
The 2005 and 2012 distribution is substantially different, with business dropping to seventh
place and those non-faculty occupations that are most closely related to academic JapaneseStudies and its support (librarian, educational administrator, and museum curator) taking the
top three slots. This is a clue to the strengthening of academic Japanese Studies that we will explore in more detail in subsequent chapters. They are followed in ranks 4, 5, and 6 by foundation
staff, government, and research staff. The biggest decreases since 1995 have been in businessand law. We do not know whether these professionals have moved on to positions that do notinclude the study of Japan, or if they are still using their Japan expertise although we have losttrack of them. In the 1995 study, I pointed to the increase in Japan specialists working outside
Table 2.6 Faculty and Non-Faculty Distribution of Japan Specialists, 1995, 2005, 2012*     TypeYear

Faculty

NonFaculty

not Employed

R etired,

Total# of R espondents

1995
2005
2012

65.5%
74.1%
75.4%

25.1%
18.1%
15.6%

9.3%
7.8%
9.0%

99.9%
100%
100%

1,544
1,236
1,427

*1995 data from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 26; 2005 data from Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, pp. 24-25. Percents may not total to 100% because of rounding.

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29

Table 2.7. Percent Distribution of Major Non-Faculty Occupations,
1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995

2005

2012

Occupation

%

N

R ank

%

N

R ank

%

N

R ank

Business
LibrarianGovernment
Research Staff
LawyerEduc. Administration
Foundation Staff
Museum Curator
WriterMass Media
Translator
Secondary Teacher
Other

14.0
14.0
10.7
8.7
7.6
7.6
7.1
5.9
5.6
4.1
3.8
3.6
7.4

(55)
(55)
(42)
(34)
(30)
(30)
(28)
(23)
(22)
(16)
(15)
(14)
(29)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

5.6
18.1
7.8
6.5
4.3
12.5
6.0
8.6
5.6
3.4
1.7
3.0
16.8

(13)
(42)
(18)
(15)
(10)
(29)
(14)
(20)
(13)
(8)
(4)
(7)
(39)

7
1
4
5
9
2
6
3
7
10
12
11

4.1
21.1
5.7
4.6
3.1
14.4
7.7
8.2
4.1
.05
3.1
1.5
21.6

(8)
(41)
(11)
(9)
(6)
(28)
(15)
(16)
(8)
(1)
(6)
(3)
(42)

7
1
5
6
9
2
4
3
7
12
9
11

Total

100.1

393

99.9

232

99.3

194

* 1995 data calculated from 1995 database, not previously reported. Totals may not add to 100% due to rounding. The“other” category in each time period contains occupations with a smaller number of respondents than the smallest category reported separately.

of academia as evidence of the normalization of Japanese Studies in American society. That
still holds true, but it is now much clearer that the more Japan specialists move into the normal
mainstream of American society, the harder it is to track and count them in studies such as this.
Another approach to understanding the nature of Japan specialists’ expertise is to lookat their disciplinary specializations. These overlap in some categories with occupational categories, but allow us to examine academic specializations in more detail. For this analysis werevert to using the full sample, since those who are retired or unemployed remain active in thefield through publication and other forms of participation.
All the studies of the field since 1970 have looked at disciplines, so we can take a relatively
long look at their persistence and change. Table 2.8 shows the change in disciplinary distribution of Japan specialists since 1970. The 1970 data had a limited number of disciplinary categories and thus a large percentage of people were lumped into the “other” category.
The 1984 data lacked an “interdisciplinary” category. For all other categories the definitions appear to have been consistent. The percentages of most standard academic disciplines
have been quite consistent over the past 42 years, after we factor in the smaller number ofavailable categories in 1970. The notable exception is history, which originally comprised afull third of all Japan specialists and now is down to about a fifth. The other notable feature isthat the 1995 distribution now appears to have been somewhat of an aberration in an otherwise
relatively stable picture.
The sharp increase in the professions in 1995, and the smaller increase in economics in1984 and 1995 reflect both the influence of the Japanese bubble economy and the existenceof special well-funded programs designed to increase the number of lawyers and economists

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30

Table 2.8. Disciplinary Distribution of Japan Specialists in 1970 to 2012
 Discipline1970 %

1984 %

1995 %

2005 %

2012 %

Anthropology
Art, Art History
Economics
HistoryLang. & Literature
Political Science
Religion, Philosophy
Sociology
Interdisciplinary
Professions
Other

10
5
4
33
19
10
–
4
–
–
15

7
10
5
24
22
13
6
4
–
4
6

6.0
6.3
5.8
16.3
21.2
8.3
5.9
3.6
3.8
13.3
9.7

6.9
5.7
3.2
20.9
22.0
9.2
6.5
3.7
6.1
6.3
9.5

7.3
5.6
2.2
21.1
22.1
9.1
6.8
3.1
7.3
6.4
9.2

Total %

100

101

100.2

100.0

100.2

# Specialists

332

841

1,544

1,236

1,333

* 1970 data from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, p.110; 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table A-2, p. 95. 1995
data from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 29, Table 2.5; all included with 2005 data in JapaneseStudies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, p. 26, Table 2.6.

specializing in Japan during that period. Both categories have decreased by about 50 percent
since 1995, which corresponds to our findings about non-faculty employment in these areas.
The special programs achieved their aims and their funding ended. While they have not been
pumping large numbers of economists and lawyers into Japanese Studies over the past dec­ade,
the people these programs trained in the 1980s and early 1990s are presumably still working,but largely outside of academics, where we are less able to keep track of them. With the end of
the Japanese bubble economy, interest in business shifted from Japan to China, and that also accounts for some of the decline in the category of the professions, as we saw earlier. Despite thedecrease in the numbers represented in the current study sample, these professional fields haveleft a strong mark within academics, as will be apparent when we examine the range of courses,
degree programs, and specialists at the larger Japanese Studies programs in Chapters 5 and 6.
While this disciplinary distribution is useful for a long-term view of the field, in the 1995
study we also began using a broader system of disciplinary clusters that allows us to analyze
disciplines in relation to other variables more effectively. The new code clusters the disciplines
as follows: humanities (art history, history, religion, philosophy, literature); social sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, geography, psychology, communications);
language and linguistics; interdisciplinary fields (Asian studies, Japanese studies, women’sstudies, international studies, urban studies, etc.); arts (all performing and practicing arts);
professions (architecture, business, law, library science, education); sciences (natural sciences,
information and computer science, engineering). Table 2.9 gives this distribution for the past
three studies for which we have directly comparable data.
Overall, the traditional academic areas of the humanities, language and linguistics, andthe social sciences continue to account for the overwhelming majority of Japan specialists,
with percentages very similar to those found in 2005. The humanities alone now account fornearly half of all Japan specialists. Interdisciplinary fields have increased recently, while theprofessions are holding steady.

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Table 2.9. Japan Specialists by Discipline Cluster, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995 Total

2005 Total

2012 Total Discipline  Cluster

#

%

#

%

#

%

Humanities
Lang. & Ling.
Social Sci.
Arts
Interdiscip.
Professions
Sciences

579
100
483
46
81
226
12

37.9
6.5
31.6
3.0
5.3
14.8
0.8

562
109
308
54
76
118
5

45.6
8.8
25.0
4.4
6.2
9.6
0.4

628
117
311
50
97
119
7

47.3
8.8
23.4
3.8
7.3
9.0
0.5

Total %

1,527

99.9

1,232

100

1,329

100

* 1995 data from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 30, Table 2.6. Included with 2005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, p. 27, Table 2.7.

Table 2.10. Employment Distribution of Japan Specialists by Disciplinary Group,
1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995 (% and #)2005 (% and #)2012 (% and #) Discipline Group

Faculty

Non-Faculty

Faculty

Non-Faculty

Faculty

Non-Faculty

Humanities

82.5
(429)
77.5
(335)
83.9
(78)
45.1
(96)
50.7
(38)
61.0
(25)

17.5
(91)
22.5
(97)
16.1
(15)
54.9
(117)
49.3
(37)
39.0
(16)

86.2
(451)
82.2
(240)
88.8
(95)
45.1
(51)
66.2
(49)
68.1
(32)

13.8
(72)
17.8
(52)
11.2
(12)
54.9
(62)
33.8
(25)
31.9
(15)

90.2
(507)
86.5
(244)
90.4
(104)
55.7
(63)
74.4
(67)
83.3
(35)

9.8
(55)
13.5
(38)
9.6
(11)
44.2
(50)
25.6
(23)
16.7
(7)

72.9
(1,001)

27.1
(373)

79.4
(918)

20.6
(238)

84.7
(1,020)

15.3
(184)

Social Sci.
Lang. Ling.
Professions
Interdisc.
Arts
All Fields (% and #)* Table does not include those who are not working, scientists and engineers, and cases with missing data. Data for 1995
from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 32, Table 2.7, included with data for 2005 in Japanese Studies
in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, p. 27, Table 2.8.

One final issue is how the disciplinary clusters relate to type of employment. Table 2.10
compares the distribution of faculty and non-faculty by discipline cluster for all employed
respondents in 1995, 2005, and 2012 (omitting those who are retired and unemployed). While
the overall balance between faculty and non-faculty employment has shifted toward faculty
employment (bottom row of table), the distributions have not been consistent in all disciplinary groups.
The comparison with 1995 data demonstrates the overall effect of the loss of a dispro-monograph.indb 31

5/20/2013 5:57:16 PM32Chapter 2

portionately larger percentage of the non-faculty sample. In the professions, the split between
faculty and non-faculty is identical for 1995 and 2005 with a 10 percentage point differencein favor of non-faculty employment. This has reversed in 2012, leaving a ten percentage point
difference in favor of faculty employment. The actual numbers in this category have also
decreased by about half since 1995. All other groups have a higher percentage employed as
faculty in all three years, with higher margins in faculty employment in each successive study.
In Chapters 5 and 7 we will take another look at changes in the number and distribution ofacademic faculty within Japanese Studies programs, using staff lists reported by academic
programs rather than entries in the specialist directory.

Geographic Distribution of Japan Specialists
As in 1995 and 2005, the largest numbers of Japan specialists were found in the two largest
states, with 209 in California and 137 in New York. Massachusetts is not far behind with 108
specialists. Four more states had more than fifty Japan specialists participating in the study:
Hawaii with 76, Pennsylvania with 71, Illinois with 62, and Michigan with 68. Nine otherstates have more than 30 Japan specialists represented in the sample: Ohio (53), Indiana (40),Connecticut (34), District of Columbia (35), Washington (38), Virginia (34), North Carolina(32), New Jersey (33) and Wisconsin (35). These top 15 states plus the District of Columbia account for three-fourths of the Japan specialists in the study, and all but one of them had a larger
number in 2012 than in 2005. At the other end of the spectrum, only one state, North Dakota,
did not have any Japan specialists represented. This is a substantial improvement from 1995,
when there were six states with no Japan specialists in the study. Also, only nine states wererepresented by less than five Japan specialists. Thus, the geographic spread of Japan specialists
throughout the United States has continued and most states now have at least a minimal clusterof expertise on Japan available.
For further analysis of the geographic distribution of Japan specialists, we combine theminto regional clusters. Data are available from several earlier studies for comparison, as shownin Table 2.11. As explained in the earlier studies, we have recalculated data from studies in
1970, 1977, and 1984 to arrive at these figures. They are somewhat inexact because the data for1977 and 1984 are calculated from faculty FTE (full-time equivalent) counts reported by academic institutions; we do not know to what extent part-time faculty members were combinedin the overall FTE counts. The numbers for 1984 are also substantially undercounted because
they come only from academic institutions, but by that time nearly 10 percent of Japan specialists were not affiliated with academic institutions. There is also a decrease in the absolute
number of specialists reported for 1984 compared to 1977, which we believe is accounted forlargely by variations in the quality of the data collection of the two surveys. The 1977 survey
was conducted by CULCON and thus had strong legitimacy within the field, intensive personalized follow-up, and high compliance; the 1984 study was conducted by a professional survey
firm with no ties in the Japanese Studies community, using only standard survey methods andlimited follow-up. Data from the last three studies are comparable in method, and the variations in their responses have already been discussed.
The regions are defined as follows: Northeast (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont); Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and District of Columbia); South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee); Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio,

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33

Table 2.11. Change in Regional Distribution of Japan Specialists, 1970–2012*  R egion

Northeast
Mid-AtlanticSouth
MidwestSouthwestMountain
Pacific
Total N

1970

1977

1984

1989

1995

2005

2012

%#

%#

%#

%#

%#

%#

%#

25.1 (103) 17.6 (155) 18.2 (142) 23.7 (282) 19.9 (307) 23.9 (304) 22.2 (314)
7.5 (31) 9.1 (80) 7.2 (56) 13.1 (156) 17.0 (263) 14.5 (184) 14.0 (198)
3.9 (16) 7.0 (62) 7.0 (55) 6.3 (75) 6.7 (104) 6.3 (80) 7.6 (107)23.6 (97) 24.4 (215) 21.1 (165) 21.2 (253) 20.9 (323) 23.6 (300) 24.3 (344)
6.1 (25) 9.1 (80) 7.9 (62) 5.5 (66) 6.3 (98) 6.7 (85) 7.1 (101)33.8 (139) 32.7 (288) 38.5 (301) 30.1 (359) 29.2 (451) 25.1 (319) 24.9 (352)
(411)

(880)

(781)

(1191)(1546)(1272)(1416)* 1970 data based on roster of specialists at academic institutions included as a supplement to the 1970 SSRC-ACLS
study. 1977 data based on count of faculty from the 1977 CULCON institutional survey. 1984 data from 1984 JapanFoundation study, based on faculty counts reported in institutional survey. 1989 data reported in “Introduction” to Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada, vol. 1, p. xiv and based on specialists in the directory. 1995 data based on specialists included in the 1995 study as reported in Japanese Studies in the
United States: The 1990s, p. 44, Table 3.1. Data from previous studies included with 2005 data in Japanese Studies in
the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, p. 29, Table 2.9.

Table 2.12. Japan Specialists’ Geographic Region by Employment Status, 2012*
Faculty

Non-Faculty

Not EmployedTotal  R egion

N

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

Northeast
Mid-AtlanticSouth
MidwestSouthwestMountain
Pacific

229
135
94
268

73.4
68.2
87.9
77.9

52
48
9
43

16.7
24.2
8.4
12.5

31
15
4
33

9.9
7.6
3.7
9.6

312
198
107
344

100
100
100
100

83
264

82.2
75.0

13
49

12.9
13.9

5
39

5.0
11.1

101
352

100
100

Total

1073

75.9

214

15.1

127

9.0

1414

100

* Data from 2012 entrants in directory of Japan specialists, minus cases with missing data.

Wisconsin); Southwest-Mountain (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico,
North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming); Pacific (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington).
Most regions display both percentages and absolute numbers that are reasonably consistent with past studies. The two areas with unusually high increases in 1995, the mid-Atlantic
and the Pacific, have declined somewhat, while the Northeast and Midwest regions that experienced decreases in 2005 have now rebounded. The two smallest regions, the South andSouthwest-Mountain, have surpassed their 1995 peak number of specialists.
Since Japan specialists operate in a national or even international job market, the distribution of specialists reflects to some extent the kinds of job opportunities that are available
in each region, as shown in Table 2.12. Although the differences are not large, the relatively

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34

Chapter 2higher percentage of faculty in the South reflects the more recent build-up of Japan expertise atacademic institutions there, and the relatively low demand for Japan specialists in non-facultyareas. By contrast, the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions have a relatively higher proportionof Japan specialists in non-faculty positions. Although the numbers are small, the higher unemployed levels in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific reflect primarily retired faculty in theareas with the largest and oldest concentrations of Japan specialists.
Thus far we have examined the basic demographic characteristics of the current pool of Japan specialists in the United States, and we have tried to see patterns of change by comparing
the current data with that of previous studies. We can begin to project these patterns into the
future by analyzing the current crop of doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies, and comparing it with the earlier data on doctoral candidates that we have collected since 1989.

Doctoral Candidates in Japanese Studies
The primary purpose of analyzing data on doctoral candidate in Japanese Studies is to see
where the field is headed in the future; however, because we have been building a database of
doctoral candidates now for close to two decades, we are also able to examine more closely
what has been happening to the flow of doctoral students during that time. It therefore adds
another dimension to our efforts to find out how Japanese Studies has changed over the past
decade. And even though we do not collect data directly from doctoral candidates, we haveenough information now to put doctoral candidates into the large demographic and geographic
context of the field as a whole. We therefore begin this analysis with an extended explanation of
our methods for collecting information about doctoral candidates and tracking them over time.
We then look first at overall patterns of stability and change over time, and then move to look
more closely at the composition of the current crop of doctoral candidates.
The number of doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies has been assessed in various ways
by all studies since the 1977 CULCON study, but differences in the methods of data collection
make comparisons with the earliest studies difficult. In addition, changes in the nature of the
field itself make it more and more difficult to get an accurate count of the number of doctoralcandidates. These changes are beginning to call our basic definitions into question. We must
work through these issues as we try to make sense of the data we do have.
The 1977 CULCON study reported 314 doctoral candidates, based on reports from thedegree-granting institutions of the number of candidates they had enrolled. At that time thenumber of institutions with Japanese Studies programs was small and well-known. Doctoralcandidates in Japanese Studies were generally associated with these programs and often supported by them, and their work was guided by a relatively small number of Japan specialist
faculty members who were also affiliated with the same Japanese Studies programs. It was
feasible at that time to ask the Japanese Studies programs how many doctoral students they
had, and to obtain something pretty close to a true national total in that way.
Just a few years later, the 1984 Japan Foundation study used the same method, but as
we have noted before, that study was carried out by a professional survey firm and lacked
the intensive follow-up, inside understanding, and network ties of studies before and since.
Both of these early studies asked institutions to report numbers, and not the actual names ofstudents. The 1984 study’s numbers were sufficiently ambiguous that we have been unable touse them in subsequent analyses. That study reported 308 currently enrolled doctoral students
plus 174 students at Columbia who were “concurrently enrolled in both masters and doctoral
programs.” Absent any attempt to sort out that wildly inflated number to separate masters andmonograph.indb 34

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A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

35

doctoral level students and eliminate double-counting, all that can be said is that the number ofdoctoral candidates had probably increased in the early 1980s, but it is not clear by how much.
We also do not know how many of the same students were counted in both 1977 and 1984.
The difficulty with the numbers in the 1984 study points to a chronic problem in the reporting that continues to plague all attempts to count doctoral candidates. Systems of graduate education vary considerably between institutions in the United States and also between
departments and programs within the same institution. Some programs admit students withbachelor’s degrees directly into doctoral programs, and have them carry out MA level course
work along the way to their doctorates. Others keep masters level and doctoral level programs
completely separate. At some institutions, a Center for Japanese Studies or East Asian Studies offers MA programs in Japanese Studies, but all doctoral programs related to Japan arehoused in individual disciplinary departments. The faculty advising students in those doctoral
programs may or may not insist that their students acquire Japanese language and some certification of their Japanese Studies expertise through an MA program or a graduate certificate. Other institutions manage their Japanese programs through a broad language and culture
department that encompasses several disciplines and offers both masters level and doctoral
degrees. These structural variations make it impossible to achieve a high level of consistency
in the reporting of doctoral students in Japanese Studies.
To complicate matters further, although the Japan Foundation always asks for students
who are “writing doctoral dissertations on Japan,” there is no agreement about when that commitment is made and what it means. It varies by program, by discipline, and even by individual
student, since doctoral dissertations are developed in many different ways. Programs also
report the data they have to collect for other purposes, which is likely to be either all thosecurrently in the program or all those who have just graduated. Consequently, what is typicallyreported is the students who have been admitted to a doctoral program (or a track leading toa doctoral program), and appear to have a strong intention of writing a dissertation on Japan.
This means that the count at any point in time may include students who were counted in an
earlier study, and may also include some students who do not ultimately complete or even begin a doctoral dissertation on Japan.
While there are no perfect solutions to these chronic problems, the three most recent
studies of Japanese Studies in the United States sponsored by the Japan Foundation have attempted to clarify the situation in a number of ways. First, since the 1989 directory study, we
have asked not for a count of doctoral students, but for the actual names, departments, anddissertation topics (if known) of doctoral students in Japanese Studies. Second, we also ask
both the Japanese Studies programs and the Japan specialists who participate in the study toreport doctoral students. These two methodological innovations allow us to obtain the broadest possible reporting on current doctoral students. However, even though two sources are
better than one, our information is still limited to those programs and specialists who respondto the survey.
For the 2005 study with its online data collection system, we added a way for doctoral
students to register themselves on the data collection website. A total of 90 doctoral students
did so; two-thirds of them were also reported by either their institution or one or more faculty
members, but one-third we would not have known about otherwise. We also had a place fordirect registration on the 2012 data collection website, but a much smaller number of students
actually registered. Our methods of triangulation in data collection and the use of actual namesof doctoral students also allow us to track the students over time, and to determine which students have been reported previously and which are new. As part of this tracking of doctoralmonograph.indb 35

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36

Chapter 2

students over time, in the past three studies we have asked both Japanese Studies programs
and Japan specialists to tell us the current status of their previously reported doctoral students.
We received update information from institutions about 882 students, nearly half no longer inthe program, six percent continuing, and 45.6 percent new. Current status was reported for 40
percent of those who had left, and a degree year was reported for a third. A very small number had left the program without finishing or had left Japanese Studies. Japan specialists who
participated in the directory reported on 1,130 doctoral students, of whom five percent werestill in the program, 36 percent were new, nearly a quarter had recently completed their degree,
and a third were reported as no longer at the institution. Here, too, a very small number had
left without finishing or left Japanese Studies. A degree year was provided for one third of all
the students reported. There is fairly a high degree of overlap between those reported by theinstitutions and by specialists, so the yield from the two sources is much smaller.
While this updating is far from complete, it helps us follow these students after they leave
their doctoral programs. We further supplemented the list by adding all persons with entries
in the specialists directory who had listed a doctorate received after the publication of theprevious directory. This method added 168 persons to the list, only a third of whom (59) werealready on our lists. To prepare the doctoral student information for analysis, we first cleaned
the data to eliminate as many duplicate entries as we could identify from names and institutional affiliations. We were helped by specialists and programs who occasionally reported new
married names for students, but there may still be some duplication that we could not eliminate
because the same person is in the database under two different names. A handful of students
had moved to a different doctoral institution, generally because their primary advisor had also
moved. In a few cases, students were reported to us by a faculty member at a different institution. This time we had 47 doctoral students reported who are studying outside the UnitedStates. For this analysis we use only doctoral students at institutions in the United States. We
have confirmed that 484 students have completed doctoral dissertations in the United Statessince 2005. A third of those students have entries in the 2012 directory of Japan specialists.
A total of 639 current doctoral candidates have been reported to the study, and we can dosome additional analysis of this sample, comparing it with the current doctoral candidates reported in the previous studies. The gender ratio in Japanese Studies has been steadily moving
toward parity, and this movement is clearly shown in the analysis of past and present doctoralcandidates. Gender was reported directly for the majority of the current doctoral candidates inthe sample. When it was not reported by the institution or a faculty member or by a candidate
who registered on the project website, we were generally able to deduce it from the name, as we
did in the previous studies. Gender could not be determined by these methods for about 6 percent of the sample. A small part of the indeterminacy can be attributed to persons with genderneutral first names. However, most of it is due to doctoral students who do not have American,
European, or Japanese first names from which gender could be readily deduced. Among both
past and current doctoral students for whom gender could be determined, results were close togender parity. The past doctoral candidates sample as of 2005 was 48.5 percent female and 51.5
percent male, while the 2005 current doctoral candidates sample was 51 percent female and 49
percent male. In 2005 we raised the possibility that if the gender ratio continued to shift toward
women, this might raise the danger in the future of feminization of the profession, which inother fields has carried with it a decline in professional status. However, the 2012 sample ofcurrent doctoral candidates, minus the ones for whom gender could not be determined, has
shifted back somewhat: 54.7 percent of those for whom gender could be determined are male,and 45.3 percent are female. If all of the 39 gender-missing individuals were female, the ratio

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A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

37

would be 48 percent female to 52 percent male. If all of them were male, it would be 57 percent
male to 43 percent female. The real ratio is somewhere in between.
Actually, the shifting gender ratio among Japanese Studies doctoral candidates reflects thegender shift in American academics in general. While men still dominate in faculty positions,particularly at higher academic ranks, the study body is now increasingly female. Analyses ofthese changes in American academic institutions generally point to factors that are not particularly relevant to Japanese Studies, such as the return to school of older women. One factor that
may be relevant is the relatively higher proportion of Asian women in the college population.
Our data on doctoral candidates does not permit us to pursue these lines of analysis further,since we do not have reliable data on age, ethnicity, or national origin.
We can also examine changes in the disciplinary distribution of doctoral candidates. For
this purpose, we also have data from the 1995 study on both 1989 doctoral candidates’ disciplines and those of new doctoral candidates in 1995. We omit the 2005 sample of past doctoral
students from this analysis, since it largely represents a retrospective look at the two earliergroups, but include the current doctoral candidates in 2005. Table 2.13 shows the comparative
results, using the same disciplinary categories that were employed in 1995 and 2005.
The table presents both the actual number of candidates in each discipline and the disciplinary percentage distribution of these four discrete cohorts of doctoral candidates. We havealso added the rank order to further illuminate the situation. Because there are changes in the
distribution as well as fluctuations in the actual number of doctoral candidates in each discipline, we have to look at both, and at their rank order, to see what is happening. First, as wefirst discovered in 1995, a number of programs have expanded or have been reconfigured as
Table 2.13. Disciplinary Distribution of Doctoral Candidates in
1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012*1989 Candidates

1995 Candidates

2005 Candidates

2012 Candidates  Discipline

#

%

R ank

#

%

R ank

#

%

R ank

#

%

R ank

Anthropology
Art History
Economics
Education
History
Linguistics
Literature
Performing Arts
Political Science
Religion-Philos.
Sociology
Asian-E.Asian St.
Other
Not Stated

35
32
21
16
67
34
84
13
58
29
25
6
25

7.9
7.2
4.7
3.6
15.1
7.6
18.9
2.9
13.0
6.5
5.6
1.3
5.6

4
6
10
11
2
5
1
12
3
7
8
13
8

74
21
15
20
88
61
72
22
96
34
28
86
51

11.1
3.1
2.2
3.0
13.2
9.1
10.8
3.3
14.4
5.1
4.2
12.9
7.6

4
11
13
12
2
6
5
10
1
8
9
3
7

43
36
5
13
100
47
74
3
68
30
29
74
43

7.6
6.4
0.9
2.3
17.7
8.3
13.1
0.5
12.0
5.3
5.1
13.1
7.6

6
8
12
11
1
5
2
13
4
9
10
2
6

52
35
2
4
128
25
87
13
44
29
26
35
74
85

8.1
5.5
0.3
0.6
20.0
3.9
13.5
2.0
6.9
4.5
4.1
5.4
11.5
13.3

3
5
12
11
1
9
2
10
4
7
8
5

Total

445

99.9

639

99.9

668 100.0

565 100.0* 1989 and 1995 (new) data from Japanese Studies in the United States, The 1990s, ch. 2 Table 2.9. Reproduced with2005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 2.12, p. 37.

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Chapter 2

East Asian languages and cultures programs, which encompass a broader range of humanities
disciplines and encourage students to do doctoral work that crosses traditional disciplinarylines. The result is that it is more difficult to assign current doctoral students in these programs
to a traditional discipline, although after the dissertation is completed it is often clear whether
it is primarily history, literature, linguistics, or something else. There was a large jump in thenumber of students in such programs in 1995 that was sustained in 2005, but the number andpercentage have declined in 2012.
The most striking finding for 2012 is the large increase in History doctoral students. History, which ranked second to Literature in 1989 and to Political Science in 1995, emergedin 2005 as the leader in number and percentage of doctoral students by a wide margin. That
position has been maintained in 2012 and fully 20 percent of all current doctoral students inJapanese Studies fields are getting their degrees in History. One possible explanation for thisdramatic increase is that Japanese History now actively embraces the study of postwar Japan,
which up through the 1990s was largely relegated to anthropology, political science, and sociology. Literature retains its #2 ranking in 2012 but shows only a modest increase in numbers
and has a stable percentage for 2005 and 2012.
Political Science, which rose sharply to a number one ranking in 1995, ranked fourth in2005 and 2012. Both the number and percentage of Political Science students dropped substantially in 2012 even though it retained its #4 ranking. Anthropology has now overtaken Political
Science in both number of students and percentage, to take the #3 ranking. Linguistics has
also dropped in numbers, percentage, and correspondingly, in the rankings. Performing Arts
suffered a big decline in 2005, but has recovered in 2012, while Education has seen a steadydecline.
It is clear that Economics has suffered a drastic decline since the late 1980s, which was
visible in 1995 and has grown more severe since. Although there was a brief period of interestin the Japanese economy in the late 1980s and there were special programs designed to encourage doctoral students to specialize in the Japanese economy, the highly quantitative nature ofmodern economics training makes it difficult to define Japanese economics as a professionally
relevant area of expertise. Some of the more qualitative content that characterizes the Japanese
economy has been redefined as being in the purview of “political economy,” which is pursued
under the rubric of political science, or as relevant to international business, and pursued aspart of management programs. Hence while there is still research being conducted on the Japanese economy, and there are still graduate level courses on the subject, doctoral students withexpertise on the Japanese economy are much less likely to define themselves, or to be identified by others, as doing economics under the rubric of Japanese Studies. Moreover, doctoral
students with expertise on the Japanese economy are much more likely to go into the private
sector or other non-academic employment, making them even more invisible as academic
Japan specialists.
In contrast to the shifting patterns we have seen in these disciplines, Religion-Philosophy
and Sociology are characterized more by relatively level numbers of doctoral students in eachof the four time periods. Although Art History showed a dip in 1995, it, too, now has about thesame level of students it had in 1989. For all three of these fields, the percentage distributions
and rankings suggest a decline, when in fact all three have been quite stable or even show aslight increase in the number of students they attract. They are likely to remain small but important components of the field for the foreseeable future.
Overall, our analysis of doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies reveals a solid flow of new
blood that will be entering the field over the next few years. The fairly large current cohort ofmonograph.indb 38

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A Demographic Profile of Japan Specialists

39

doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies is particularly important in light of the overall demographic transition in the field. This solid cohort of doctoral students ensures that there will bea steady flow of specialists into academic departments to replace those who are retiring andleaving the field. Given the current shape of the field and the disciplinary distribution of thecurrent crop of doctoral students, it seems likely that most of them will end up in academic
positions.
Japanese Studies remains small enough, however, that a large increase in doctoral students
in a particular discipline can produce short-term dislocations in the job market. We have seenin the past that many of the academic positions that Japan specialists fill were not marked as“Japanese Studies” but instead were filled serendipitously by someone who happened to be a
Japan specialist. This is easier to accomplish in some disciplines than in others. Social scientists can usually sell themselves as generalists or as having some recognizable disciplinary
subfield that does not refer specifically to Japan. Specialists in Japanese language and literature
do not have that luxury. The discipline that is most likely to experience this sort of job market
pressure in the near future is history; many of these newly minted Japanese historians mayneed to find their niche more broadly in Asian history or world history even though the largest
Japanese Studies programs can now accommodate several Japanese historians specializing indifferent time periods or approaches. We will revisit this issue again in Chapter 7.
We now turn back from looking at doctoral students as the coming generation of Japan
specialists, to look more closely at the credentials and expertise of those who are already inthe field.

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3Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

This chapter will look more closely at the expertise and credentials of Japan specialists
who have participated in the 2012 study, comparing this group whenever possible with ourfindings from previous studies. We will look at the areas of specialization of Japan specialists, their Japanese language skills, their academic and professional credentials, and how they
maintain and expand their language skills and expertise about Japan. Some of the topics wewill examine are based on data from the survey portion of our questionnaire, as opposedto the directory entry portion. Not everyone who participated in the project completed thelengthy survey portion, so the sample size is somewhat smaller for these parts. We will use themaximum amount of information available for each question, and the relevant sample size andany other methodological considerations will be noted in the tables or in the discussion. Even
though the survey sample is smaller, it still represents such a large proportion of the estimatedoverall population of Japan specialists in the United States that we can present the data withconsiderable confidence using simple percentages and means.

Areas of Specialization
Although from the outside, the term “Japan specialist” may conjure up an image of people
who know everything there is to know about Japan, no Japan specialist in the United States
would claim such comprehensive knowledge. In the 1995 study we noted the increasing specialization in the field, and the correspondingly greater depth and specialization of the research
Japan specialists do. While this has produced overall a much broader array of material about
Japan available in English, that in turn means that even specialists no longer can keep up withall of the scholarship their colleagues have produced, while at the same time maintaining theirown expertise in a narrower area. A wide range of disciplines are represented within JapaneseStudies, as noted in Chapter 2. Both disciplinary training and the demands of professional
teaching and research affect what aspects of Japan are significant for any specialist.
We look now at three additional dimensions of specialization: historical periods, geographic regions, and a very broad array of subject matter specializations, or topics, in which
specialists claim expertise. Information on these three dimensions was collected as part of thespecialist directory entries, and the categories were used to produce indexes for the directorythat help users identify specialists with particular qualifications. We now use this information40

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Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

41

to examine the current state of the field and compare it with the shape of the field in the past. In
all three of these dimensions of specialization, our data collection methods encourage specialists to report all of the categories in which they have expertise. This requires special handlingof the data, since the number of responses far exceeds the number of people who responded. In
addition, we are often constrained to handle the current data in the same way it was reported
in the past, in order to see patterns of continuity and change. Most of this change comes about
through new people entering Japanese Studies and older ones leaving, but some part also reflects the continuing intellectual development of Japan specialists who pursue new research
topics and acquire expertise in new areas over the course of their careers.
Historical Periods
Perhaps the most basic form of specialization, with an obvious but imperfect relationshipto academic discipline, is the range of historical periods in which a Japan specialist has someexpertise. Table 3.1 compares the range of historical periods of specialization reported in thecurrent study with those reported in 1995 and 2005, when the data were collected in the same
Table 3.1. Historical Periods of Specialization, 1995 , 2005, and 2012*1995 Historical Period

Prehistory
Nara
Heian
Kamakura
Ashikaga
Sengoku
Tokugawa
Early Tokugawa
Late Tokugawa
Bakumatsu
Tokugawa All**
Meiji
TaishoShōwa
Early Shōwa
Postwar Shōwa
Shōwa All**
Heisei
Total
Mean # Responses

2005

2012

# of
­R esponses% of­R espondents# of­R esponses% of­R espondents# of­R esponses% of­R espondents

69
103
174
172
135
131
261
112
127
149

5.1
7.6
12.9
12.8
10.0
9.7
19.4
8.3
9.4
11.1

514
458
567
324
741

38.2
34.0
42.1
24.1
55.0

479

35.6

61
102
159
154
131
131
255
111
128
142
636
485
460
514
341
613
1,468
568

5.4
9.0
14.0
13.6
11.5
11.5
22.4
9.8
11.3
12.5
30.2
42.7
40.5
45.2
30.0
54.0
75.6
50.0

52
101
185
164
134
146
288
122
143
162
655
554
527
571
405
660
1,636
700

4.0
8.0
14.6
12.9
10.6
11.5
22.7
9.6
11.3
12.8
30.1
43.6
41.5
45.0
31.9
52.0
72.7
55.1

4,516

1,347

4,355

1,136

4,914

1,270

3.35

3.83

3.87

* Data for 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.2, ch. 4, p. 72. 1995 data included withdata for 2005 in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.1, p. 41.
** Because of the possibility of multiple responses, the Tokugawa All and Shōwa All percentages are calculated basedon the number of respondents across the internal categories, with overlap eliminated. These figures were not calculated
for the 1995 data.

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42

Chapter 3

way. Overall, the three distributions are quite similar. Virtually every historical period showssome increase from 1995 that is fairly stable between 2005 and the present. However, there
are noteworthy increases in the number and percent of respondents who specialize in three
periods: Taisho, Early Shōwa, and the contemporary Heisei era. While it is quite understandable that more people would now report that they specialize in Heisei Japan, which had barely
begun when data were collected for the 1995 study, the increase in interest in the first half ofthe twentieth century is less predictable. By 2012, the Heisei category contains all those who
study contemporary Japan, and the Late Shōwa category is shrinking somewhat as it comes tobe understood as the postwar era that ended in the 1980s.
Two historical periods, Tokugawa and Shōwa, have internal subdivisions to reflect themore fine-grained periods in which specialists concentrate their study. There is some overlap,
as some respondents reported specializing in the entire period, while others picked only internal subdivisions and still others reported both. The results indicate that while the majorityof Japan specialists have expertise on modern Japan, there are still substantial numbers ofspecialists on earlier historical periods. Although persons in the humanities are more likely to
specialize in pre-modern Japan and social scientists are more likely to specialize in Shōwa andHeisei Japan, there is also substantial overlap. Overall, nearly three-quarters of Japan specialists report that they study the Shōwa era, and more than half say they study Heisei, reflecting
the general tilt toward studies of modern Japan.
Geographic Specialization
While Japan specialists quite obviously specialize in the geographic area of Japan, somespecialists also treat Japan either comparatively or in the context of a larger regional grouping. In addition, there are individuals who specialize in a particular geographic area within
Japan. Our question about geographic specialization is designed to explore both of these issues. Respondents were asked to identify all of their geographic areas of expertise, using a listthat permitted the choices of All Japan, Other Countries in relation to the study of Japan, andthen specific regions within Japan and other countries and regions. The results are shown in
Table 3.2, which compares the data from the present study with data from 1995 and 2005 thatwas collected in a similar manner. The most dramatic finding is the same as it was a decadeago: the great majority of Japan specialists study Japan alone; they do not study Japan either
in comparative context with other societies or as part of a regional perspective that includes
Japan. We will look more closely at the detailed findings separately for Japan and for otherworld areas studied in relation to Japan. In both cases, respondents were offered more specific choices, but we have aggregated them into larger units for presentation in the table, andhave corrected for multiple responses by presenting both the total number of responses for the
category (which can include the same person choosing two units within a category) and thenumber of respondents. Percentages are calculated based on the number of respondents, andadjusted to eliminate these multiple responses.
Most respondents report that they study Japan as a whole, but the percentage has declined
from its 2005 high. There have consistently been two regions for which more than 10 percent of the sample claims special expertise: Kanto and Kinki areas, the regions encompassing
the Tokyo metropolitan area and the Kansai cities of Kyoto and Osaka and the new entrant,
Kyushu-Okinawa. These are undoubtedly the two areas in which most Japan specialists haveresided while conducting research on Japan, even if the research itself concerned Japan as awhole. If we read the results more as an indication of the areas in which specialists have resided
and with which they are therefore most familiar, and not necessarily because they have done

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Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

43

Table 3.2. Geographic Areas of Specialization, Domestic and International,
1995, 2005, and 2012*  Geographic R egion

1995

2005

2012

# of
% of
­R esponses ­R espondents

# of
% of
­R esponses ­R espondents

# of
% of
­R esponses ­R espondents

Domestic
All Japan
Chubu
Chugoku
Hokkaido
Kanto
Kinki
Kyushu/Okinawa
ShikokuTohokuTotal N
Mean # responses

1,215
76
62
36
174
178
105
21
44
1,911
1.39

88.6%
5.5%
4.5%
2.6%
12.7%
13.0%
7.7%
1.5%
3.2%
1,372

1125
94
82
35
244
335
142
27
76
2,133
1.7

93.7%
4.8%
3.8%
3.0%
15.2%
14.4%
7.7%
1.7%
4.4%
1,201

1190
202
99
50
470
615
238
160
150
3,057
2.24

87.1
7.5
5.2
3.7
21.4
18.7
10.0
2.6
5.9
1,366

International
Other Countries (general)
China
Hong Kong*
Taiwan
Korea
Southeast Asia
Pacific Islands
Former Soviet Union
Other World Areas

63
323
86
164
267
175
60
71
330

9.8
50.2
13.4
25.5
41.5
27.2
9.3
11.0
51.3

43
374
[47]
126
251
197
42
52
391

8.3%
56.3%
[9.1%]
24.5%
41.0%
23.9%
8.2%
6.8%
46.4%

78
542
[29]
153
356
307
40
102
952

10.7
74.5
[3.9]
21.0
48.9
42.2
5.5
14.0
130.8

Total N

1,539

643

1,477

515

2,530

728

Mean # responses

2.39

2.87

3.48

* Data for 1995 adapted from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.Ch. 4, p. 74. For 2005, Hong
Kong is included in the China category. The data contain multiple responses at two levels. Some categories have beencombined for this display, so the number of responses in such categories exceeds the number of respondents. In addition,
respondents are counted in each geographic region in which they responded, so the total of the regional percentages
exceeds 100%.

research explicitly on these regions, the pattern makes more sense. What is new in 2012 is thatthe percentage of specialists reporting expertise in specific regions of Japan has increased forevery region. Kyushu-Okinawa (reflecting primarily interest in Okinawa), now is reported asa region of specialization by 10 percent of respondents. There is a one-third increase in thosereporting expertise on Tohoku, presumably because of scholars turning their attention to thearea after the 3.11 disasters.
The findings for the study of other areas as part of the study of Japan can be read in asimilar way. As in the past, less than half as many people report expertise on such other areas,
compared to the number who report that they study all or some part of Japan. However, thissurvey had the highest number of respondents reporting study of other areas (728), and a totalmonograph.indb 43

5/20/2013 5:57:17 PM44

Chapter 3

number of reports of expertise outside of Japan that is dramatically higher than in previous
surveys. Moreover, the mean number of choices in the international regions is substantiallyhigher than the mean number reported within Japan itself. In short, most Japan specialists
claim expertise only on Japan as a whole but not on specific regions of the country; those who
claim expertise on other geographic areas outside Japan are fewer in number, but they claim
expertise on more areas.
The percent who report that they have expertise on China has increased, but there arealso substantial increases in the number and percent who report expertise on Korea, Southeast Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and the generic category of “other world areas,” which
includes Western Europe and North and South America, as well as Africa, the Middle East,and South Asia.
Subject Matter Specialization
As in the previous studies, we have used a very detailed list of subject matter specializations that was based originally on the subject classification system used by the Bibliographyof Asian Studies. Within fifteen basic subject matter domains, specialists were encouraged to
select from a list of more specific topic areas or to write in additional ones. We first used thissystem in 1989, and found that the new topic areas that specialists wrote in reflected emerging
areas of research interest. Those write-ins were added to the basic list in 1995, and respondents
contributed additional new topics. We followed the same procedure for the 2005 study and2012, but received relatively few new write-in topics. Since this question is part of the data thatappears in the directory, we have information from 1,380 respondents who reported an averageof 10.7 subject matter specializations. Table 3.3 shows the fifteen basic subject matter domains,comparing the 1995 and 2005 data with the current study. Because multiple responses are possible within each domain, for each time period the first two columns report the total numberof responses in a domain and the mean number per respondent. The remaining columns report
the number of respondents who selected the domain and the percent of respondents who selected one or more topics within a particular domain.
Subject matter domains may appear to correspond roughly with academic disciplines, butthey are intended to reflect topical areas on which scholars may do research and publish theirfindings. Particularly in a field with an interdisciplinary tradition such as Japanese Studies,
we would expect respondents to make selections from different domains, and in fact they do.
The domains differ in the array of specializations listed and their specificity, which may haveinfluenced the number of specializations selected within a domain, but should not have affected the number of respondents who made any selection at all within a domain. Based on the
distribution of the percent of respondents who made any selections within a particular domain,
we can view the domains as larger or smaller within the overall context of Japanese Studies.
They therefore provide a rough snapshot of the relative dominance of particular subjects ofstudy within Japanese Studies in 2012.
As in the past, the largest domain is History (40.4% of respondents), with Anthropology,
Psychology and Sociology (33.2%) next, followed by Literature (26.7%) and Politics (22.8%).
These percentages reflect substantial decreases for the two social science categories. Overall,
respondents selected specializations in an average of 2.76 domains, further reinforcing thenotion that these domains reflect areas of interest that frequently cross disciplinary lines.
Literature had the highest mean number of selections, at 6.06, followed by Anthropology,
Psychology, and Sociology at 5.75. In most other domains the mean number of selections
ranged from two to four. This pattern indicates that while the number of specialists in themonograph.indb 44

5/20/2013 5:57:17 PM

monograph.indb 45

5/20/2013 5:57:18 PM

1.90
2.15
1.81
2.42
2.74
2.71
4.51
3.08
2.05
3.15
3.27
2.14

434
579
226
1,546
829
464
1,627
625
407
1,404
1,094
416

14,459Total*

1,507

203
199
446
335
194

229
269
125
638
303
171
361

615
269
444

#

13.5
13.2
29.6
22.2
12.9

15.2
17.9
8.3
42.3
20.1
11.3
24.0

40.8
17.9
29.5

%

R espondents

12,249

501
275
1,118
906
232

274
344
218
1,573
503
227
1,942

2,174
824
684

#

10.74

3.71
2.29
3.80
4.06
2.11

2.03
2.63
2.48
3.13
3.16
2.84
6.03

5.10
3.78
3.29

Mean

R esponses

2005

1,140

135
120
294
223
110

135
131
88
502
159
80
322

426
218
208

#

11.8
10.5
25.8
19.6
9.6

11.9
11.5
7.7
44.0
13.9
7.0
28.2

37.4
19.1
18.2

%

R espondents

14,738

655
372
1,222
1,107
267

337
432
290
2,035
842
285
2,597

2,633
1,049
637

#

10.7

4.12
2.62
3.89
4.29
2.01

2.13
2.79
2.44
3.65
3.63
3.39
7.06

5.75
4.18
3.37

Mean

R esponses

2012

1,380

159
142
314
258
133

158
155
119
557
232
84
368

458
251
189

#

11.5
10.3
22.8
18.7
9.6

11.4
11.2
8.6
40.4
16.8
6.1
26.7

33.2
18.2
13.7

%

R espondents* Data for 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.6, Ch. 4, p. 80. Data were not available for 45 respondents. For 2005, reported for both years inJapanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.3, p. 45. Data were not available for 17 respondents. Mean number of responses calculated by dividing the number of responses in each category by the number of respondents for that category. Percent of respondents is calculated for each category against the total
number of respondents. The count of respondents is unduplicated within each category, but respondents selected items in an average of 3.19 categories in 1995, 2.76 categories in
2005, and 2.7 categories in 2012.

9.59

3.97
3.14
3.42

Mean

2,444
846
1,518

#

Anthropology, Psych., Soc.
Art, Art History
Business and Economics
Communication,
Library Science
Education
Geography, Environment
History
Language, Linguistics
Law
Literature
Music, Dance,
Theatre Arts
Philosophy
Politics
Religion
Science and Technology DomainR esponses

1995

Table 3.3. Domains of Subject Matter Specialization, by Number of Responses and Number and Percent of Respondents,
1995, 2005, and 2012*

46

Chapter 3

actual disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology is not large enough to accountfor its high ranking, topics within this general social domain are often selected by persons inother disciplines.
The most striking finding at the domain level is the continuing sharp reduction in thepercent of respondents selecting specializations in the domain of Business and Economics,
which has dropped from 29.5 percent in 1995 to 13.7 percent in 2012 and is now less than half
the scale it was during the heyday of the economic competition paradigm. The decrease in thesmaller Law domain is of roughly the same magnitude, as it has gone from 11.3% of respondents in 1995 to 6.1% in 2012. In both of these cases, the decline is due to the absence in the
study of people who were included previously, either because they no longer work on Japanor because they are now outside the range of our collection methods. Most other fields havestayed roughly at the level they were in 2005, with small fluctuations. These results correlate
well with our general findings about the shift in the composition of Japanese Studies since the1995 study.
Comparison of the individual subject matter specializations within these general domains
reveals more subtle shifts in topic that suggest current trends in the field. These findings are
too detailed for a table, so we present only the highlights. Within the large domain of Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology, the subject matter specializations of cultural and socialchange, comparative and cross cultural studies, gender, sex roles, and women, and popular
culture remain the most commonly selected specializations. The categories of cultural studies
and material culture have grown rapidly. There is substantial interest in a more differentiatedapproach to Japanese society that examines particular sub-groups and subcultures, which wehave linked to the rise of the cultural studies paradigm. In the domain of communication,
information, and library science, mass media and film studies remained the most frequently
selected categories.
By contrast, the decrease in the Business and Economics domain continues across theboard. The small domain of law also declined across the board, as did Science and Technology.
In the large domain of history the standard categories remain strong, but there were increases
in women’s history, local and regional history, colonial history, and historiography. Most subject matter specializations in the small domain of language and linguistics were stable or decreased, except for an increase in rhetoric, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. In the domainof literature, the most common specializations were modern fiction, fiction in general, comparative literature, and literary translation. However, there were increases in specializationin popular fiction, historical fiction, literary theory, feminist theory and criticism, women’sliterature, and oral narrative and performance, all of which reflect the influence of the cultural
studies paradigm. In the domain of Religion there were decreases across the board, except inthe very small categories of monastic institutions, shamanism, and Jishu Buddhism.
Overall, what can be discerned from these many small shifts is an increased focus on thekinds of specializations that are associated with cultural studies, which are found scatteredacross several domains. These include greater interest in subcultures and minorities, in local
and regional variations, in discourse analysis, in literary and feminist theory, and in various
forms of popular culture that are also registered in literature, performing arts, and religion.
Just as significant are the decreases in many more standard areas of specialization found in thevarious domains. And while the evidence just from analysis of subject matter specializations
is not overwhelming, we will see that it resonates with evidence in other parts of the data aspart of an emerging picture of a paradigm shift away from economic competition and toward
cultural studies.

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Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

47

Language Competence
Regardless of their areas of special interest and expertise, most Japan specialists need afairly high level of Japanese language competence in order to claim and exercise that expertise. It is difficult to measure language competence in a survey instrument, since one can only
ask respondents to assess their own level of competence. For the 1989 and 1995 directories,
respondents were asked to list the languages they knew, and just the names of these languages
were printed in the directory, with no indication of the level of ability. For the 2005 directory
study, The Japan Foundation wanted to know more specifically whether respondents could
participate in an academic conference in certain languages. We adapted that into a question
asking respondents to list up to four languages in which they had “working competence,”
defined as sufficient listening and speaking ability to participate in an academic conference,and sufficient reading ability to conduct research. These self-assessments were published in
the directory entries.
However, the survey portion of the studies in 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012 also asked a setof more specific questions about the respondent’s Japanese language competence. All threestudies asked respondents to rate their Japanese language ability in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, using a scale ranging from “no usable proficiency” to “native proficiency.”
In 1984 the scale jumped from “Limited Scholarly Needs” to “Scholarship with Ease.” From1995 a new category of “Adequate for Scholarship” was added in between these two to reflect
better the gradations in Japanese language ability for non-native Japan specialists. Table 3.4
shows the results for these self-report measures for the four time periods. In each case we show
the percent of respondents choosing each category, plus a cumulative percentage figure, whichmakes it easier to see how language skills have changed over time.
The data demonstrate steady increases in Japanese language competence since these skills
were first measured in 1984. The percentage whose listening skills are inadequate for more thanlimited scholarly needs has decreased from over 40 percent of the sample in 1984 to a quarterof the sample, while the percentage whose speaking ability in Japanese is inadequate for morethan limited scholarly needs has decreased similarly. The increase in reading skills is evenmore impressive: from over a third whose reading ability was inadequate for more than limited
scholarly needs in 1984 to only a fifth with such limited reading ability now. Writing in Japaneseremains the weakest skill, but even here there has been substantial progress. In 1984 nearly twothirds of the sample reported that their ability to write in Japanese was inadequate for more thanlimited scholarly needs, but that percentage has dropped to less than half. At the same time, thepercentage reporting native proficiency is under a quarter of the sample: hence the increases areaccounted for by specialists who have achieved levels of proficiency in Japanese as a second
language that are either adequate for scholarship or permit scholarship with ease.
The importance of particular Japanese language skills may vary with an individual’s discipline and area of specialization, so since 1995 we have also asked respondents to rank theimportance of each language skill for their work, using a simple three point scale ranging from“not necessary” through “useful” to “indispensable.” Table 3.5 compares reported language
ability in the four skills and the respondent’s assessment of its importance, by age, for 1995,
2005, and 2012. The table shows both the number of respondents in each category and themean value for all respondents in that category. Mean scores on importance can range from 0
to 2, while mean scores on language ability can range from 0 to 5.
Although the changes are not dramatic, there is a fairly consistent increase in the mean
perception of the importance of each of the language skills in the younger age groups, and amonograph.indb 47

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Table 3.4. Specialists’ Japanese Language Competence by Language Skill,
1984, 1995, and 2005*
1984

1995

2005

2012

Language Skill andCompetence Level

%

Cum %

%

Cum %

%

Cum %

%

Cum %

Listening
No Usable Proficiency
Adequate for Daily Needs
Limited Scholarly Needs
Adequate for Scholarship
Scholarship with Ease
Native Proficiency

10
14
19
–
28
29

10
24
43
–
71
100

8.9
15.4
12.2
19.0
20.4
24.1

8.9
24.4
36.5
55.5
75.9
100.0

5.8
10.2
9.2
26.5
27.2
21.2

5.8
15.9
25.1
51.5
78.8
100.0

6.5
9.3
9.3
24.4
25.5
24.9

6.5
15.8
25.1
49.6
75.1
100.0

N
Speaking
No Usable Proficiency
Adequate for Daily Needs
Limited Scholarly Needs
Adequate for Scholarship
Scholarship with Ease
Native Proficiency
N
Reading
No Usable Proficiency
Adequate for Daily Needs
Limited Scholarly Needs
Adequate for Scholarship
Scholarship with Ease
Native Proficiency
N
Writing
No Usable Proficiency
Adequate for Daily Needs
Limited Scholarly Needs
Adequate for Scholarship
Scholarship with Ease
Native Proficiency
N

789
9
16
21
–
27
27

1,010
9
25
46
–
73
100

813
12
6
19
–
37
26

797

9.5
25.1
38.6
59.5
77.2
100.0

1,010
12
18
37
–
74
100

805
22
22
20
–
13
23

9.5
15.6
13.5
20.9
17.7
22.8

798

16.4
7.8
9.8
24.6
24.6
22.8

24.6
18.7
16.6
14.2
6.3
19.7
989

6.2
16.7
28.2
56.6
79.9
100.0

798
16.4
24.2
34.1
77.2
77.2
100.0

1,007
22
44
64
–
77
100

6.2
10.5
11.6
28.4
23.3
20.1

835

7.1
4.7
9.9
23.7
34.9
19.6

14.9
16.8
17.2
25.7
9.2
16.1
798

6.8
17.2
27.6
56.5
76.2
100.0

833
7.1
11.8
21.7
45.5
80.4
100.0

798
24.6
43.3
59.9
74.0
80.3
100.0

6.8
10.3
10.4
28.9
19.7
23.8

8.1
5.1
8.9
23.1
30.7
24.2

8.1
13.1
22.0
45.1
75.8
100.0

831
14.9
31.7
48.9
74.7
83.9
100.0

14.9
14.2
17.0
23.3
10.3
20.2

14.9
29.2
46.2
69.5
79.8
100.0

823

*1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 21, p. 40. 1995 data from Japanese Studies in the United States:
The 1990s, Table 4.9, Ch. 4, p. 86. All reported in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities andOpportunities, table 3.4, p. 48.

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Table 3.5. Language Competence and Perception of its Importance,by Language Skill and Age, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995
Importance#2005
A bilityCompetence Levels

Mean

Mean

#

Listening
<35
35–44
45–54
55–64
>64

1.71 38
1.66 211
1.51 314
1.38 217
1.35 189

3.83 36
3.47 210
2.94 323
2.84 224
2.55 204

Importance
Mean

#

2012
A bility

Mean

ImportanceA bility

#

Mean

#

Mean

#

1.79 73
1.67 173
1.66 178
1.52 166
1.56 89

3.62 73
3.49 169
3.36 179
2.73 1682.84 91

1.61
1.62
1.60
1.65
1.45

38
203
198
202
193

3.32
3.59
3.54
3.19
2.77

37
203
196
205
194

Total

1.49 969

2.99 997

1.64 707

3.23 709

1.58 834

3.28 835

Speaking
<35
35–44
45–54
55–64
>64

1.59 39
1.60 211
1.43 314
1.28 213
1.29 189

3.67 36
3.33 210
2.83 322
2.76 226
2.53 2041.62 73
1.57 173
1.61 178
1.34 167
1.39 88

3.51 73
3.38 169
3.21 179
2.63 1682.79 90

1.39
1.53
1.46
1.53
1.33

3.14
3.46
3.39
3.06
2.69

Total

1.41 976

2.90 998

1.51 706

3.12 708

1.46 827

3.16 833

Reading (Modern)<35
1.79 38
35–44
1.77 211
45–54
1.59 312
55–64
1.45 214>64
1.41 192

3.69 36
3.45 2102.92 324
2.76 223
2.57 202

1.82 73
1.82 173
1.75 178
1.51 168
1.59 90

3.58 73
3.56 170
3.43 178
2.93 166
2.98 88

1.84
1.76
1.72
1.74
1.53

37
202
195
202
192

3.49
3.67
3.57
3.32
2.84

828

3.36 831

37
199
195
196
185

2.86
3.01
2.80
2.51
2.01

812

2.60 823

Total

1.57 967

2.96 985

1.70 710

3.34 704

Writing
<35
35–44
45–54
55–64
>64

1.29 38
1.20 2090.99 311
0.87 2070.82 180

2.18 36
2.62 2092.07 324
2.05 218
1.81 190

1.26 73
1.18 173
1.15 1780.92 165
0.85 89

2.86 73
2.72 170
2.60 176
1.86 166
2.01 87

Total

1.00 945

2.18 977

1.09 706

2.46 703

1.14
1.25
1.15
1.18
0.93

38
202
197
200
190

37
203
196
205
192

37
203
196
204
191

37
202
196
202
186

* Perception of Importance is measured on a 3-point scale: 0 = not necessary; 1 = useful; 2 = indispensable. The mean
falls between 0 and 2.0. Language competence is measured on a 6-point scale: 0 = no usable competence; 1 = adequate
for daily needs but not for research; 2 = sufficient for limited scholarly needs; 3 = meets research needs adequately; 4 =meets research needs with ease; 5 = native proficiency. The mean falls between 0 and 5.0. Data for 1995 from JapaneseStudies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.10, ch. 4, p. 88. These data were included in Japanese Studies in the
United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.5, p. 49. For 2005, 29 persons for whom age could
not be calculated are omitted from the age categories but included in the totals.

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Chapter 3

50

corresponding increase in mean levels of competence in the corresponding skills. In short,younger scholars accord greater importance to all of the language skills, and also believe they
have achieved higher levels of competence in those skills. It must be emphasized, however, thatlower mean levels of language skill in the older age groups does not reflect uniformly lower
levels of ability. Rather, the older age groups simply have a higher proportion of individuals
with lower levels of language skill, which brings the means down.
When we do the comparison by faculty status, as in Table 3.6, the means for both perceptionof the importance of Japanese language ability and actual skill levels in Japanese have increased
for all three categories: faculty, non-faculty, and retired persons, since 1995. This shift suggeststhat the relatively greater loss of the “bubble factor” in 1995 is contributing to the increases inmean levels across the board. That is to say, the participants in the 2005 and 2012 studies, andthe survey portion in particular, are more likely to be committed Japan specialists, whether they
are current faculty, non-faculty, or retired. However, it is also clear that faculty have both thehighest perception of the importance of language skills and the highest actual reported abilities.
Table 3.6. Language Competence and Perception of Its Importance, by Language Skill
and Current Employment Status, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995

2005

2012

 Employment­Status and­Language Skills

Mean

#

Mean

#

Mean

Listening
Faculty
RetiredNot Faculty

1.56 671
1.42 89
1.33 223

3.12
2.72
2.70

685
96
229

1.65 557
1.61 31
1.57 1193.24 557
2.96 23
3.21 129

1.62 684
1.49 75
1.37 137

3.35 686
3.01 72
3.03 137

1.49 983

2.99

1,010

1.64 707

3.23 709

1.57 896

3.27 895

1.48 667
1.34 90
1.24 222

3.03
2.67
2.90

685
97
228

1.54 557
1.45 29
1.41 120

3.15 556
2.83 23
3.08 1291.50 678
1.37 73
1.25 137

3.24 685
2.96 71
2.83 137

1.41 979

2.90

1,010

1.51 706

3.12 709

1.45 888

3.16 893

1.65 669
1.57 89
1.32 222

3.16
2.79
2.43

680
97
230

1.74 560
1.63 30
1.56 120

3.42 553
3.09 223.03 129

1.73 677
1.68 76
1.48 137

3.48 683
3.25 71
2.89 138

1.57 980

2.96 1,007

1.70 710

3.34 704

1.68 890

3.37 892

1.05 655
0.98 82
0.85 221

2.34
2.09
1.73

670
94
225

1.10 556
1.03 30
1.06 120

2.49 552
2.22 23
2.36 1281.18 666
0.97 72
1.01 134

2.71 677
2.41 69
2.31 137

1.00 958

2.18

989

1.09 706

2.46 703

1.14 872

2.63 883

Total
Speaking
Faculty
RetiredNot Faculty
Total
Reading
Faculty
RetiredNot Faculty
Total
Writing
Faculty
RetiredNot Faculty
Total

ImportanceA bility

Importance#A bility
Mean#

ImportanceMean#

A bility
Mean#* Data for 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.11, ch. 4, p.90. 2005 data along with
1995 data reported in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.6,
p. 50.

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Table 3.7. Language Competence and Perception of Its Importance,by Language Skill and Disciplinary Category, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995
Importance2005
A bility

Importance2012
A bility

ImportanceA bility

Disciplinary ­Categories
and Four Language Skills

Mean

Listening
Language &  Linguistics
Humanities
Social Sciences
Professions
InterdisciplinaryArts

1.90 69
1.53 395
1.53 291
1.25 133
1.30 50
1.19 26

4.29 68
3.20 399
2.94 305
2.39 136
2.21 53
2.18 28

1.93 45
1.67 361
1.59 167
1.55 49
1.53 49
1.44 27

4.36 44
3.30 359
2.87 170
2.94 51
3.47 47
2.68 28

1.51 182
1.59 419
1.88 74
1.49 68
1.71 62
1.46 39

3.14 185
3.23 417
4.43 75
3.15 68
3.50 60
2.87 38

1.49 964

3.00 989

1.64 701

3.22 702

1.59 852

3.31 851

1.87 70
1.45 395
1.45 285
1.18 50
1.18 501.04 26

4.25 68
3.10 399
2.85 3072.04 52
2.04 52
2.18 28

1.89 45
1.57 361
1.43 166
1.33 49
1.39 49
1.37 27

4.32 44
3.19 359
2.75 170
2.90 50
3.28 47
2.68 28

1.37 180
1.47 414
1.86 74
1.31 67
1.61 62
1.28 39

2.99 183
3.12 417
4.37 75
2.97 68
3.32 60
2.74 38

1.41 960

2.91 989

1.51 700

3.12 701

1.47 844

3.19 849

1.91 69
1.76 395
1.51 290
1.21 132
1.14 49
1.07 26

4.27 67
3.37 403
2.80 303
2.13 134
1.77 53
2.07 27

1.89 45
1.82 364
1.54 167
1.45 49
1.59 49
1.44 27

4.30 44
3.58 358
2.80 1682.71 49
3.57 47
2.54 28

1.49 179
1.82 417
1.86 74
1.40 67
1.81 62
1.38 39

2.99 183
3.54 418
4.32 75
2.93 67
3.68 60
2.54 37

1.57 961

2.96 987

1.70 704

3.33 697

1.69 846

3.40 848

1.71 68
1.03 385
0.95 280
0.83 1300.66 50
0.62 26

3.90 67
2.29 392
2.12 298
1.66 134
1.18 51
1.55 27

1.69 45
1.11 361
0.96 167
0.96 481.06 49
1.00 27

3.95 44
2.47 355
2.04 169
2.31 49
2.75 48
1.96 28

1.03 175
1.10 406
1.72 75
1.05 66
1.25 60
0.97 38

2.38 178
2.52 414
4.09 75
2.48 67
2.95 60
2.11 37

0.99 939

2.18 969

1.09 700

2.45 696

1.14 828

2.64 839

Total
Speaking
Language &  Linguistics
Humanities
Social Sciences
Professions
Interdisciplinary
Arts
Total
Reading
Language &  Linguistics
Humanities
Social Sciences
Professions
Interdisciplinary
Arts
Total
Writing
Language &  Linguistics
Humanities
Social Sciences
Professions
Interdisciplinary
Arts
Total

(#)

Mean

(#)

Mean

(#)

Mean

(#)

Mean

(#)

Mean

(#)

* Data for 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States, The 1990s, Table 4.12, ch. 4, p. 91. Included in JapaneseStudies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.7, p. 51.

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52

Chapter 3

Although there are the expected variations in both perceptions of importance and actual
skill levels between the disciplinary categories, it is also apparent that both perception of importance and actual skill levels have increased in virtually every category. The most remarkable increases are in the weakest skill category of writing Japanese. This may well be a function of the greater availability of Japanese language capability in standard word-processing
software, which makes it much easier for non-natives to produce written Japanese based on
their speaking and reading ability rather than on their ability to write Japanese characters byhand, from memory. In 2012, the highest levels of language competence are reported by social
scientists. The category is small (75) and appears to contain a relatively high percentage of native speakers, which may have skewed the results.
Overall, our findings on language competence are encouraging. We find higher language
skills more or less across the board, reflecting the greater language abilities of the younger age
cohorts. Moreover, there is a correspondingly higher evaluation of the importance of Japanese
language ability which also can be found pretty much across the board. Higher language levels
reflect stronger language training and greater exposure to Japan, but they still require constantmaintenance for all but native speakers. We therefore are interested in how Japan specialists
maintain and enhance their language skills.
Language Learning and MaintenanceA total of 822 persons answered the survey question asking how they had learned Japanese. This was a multiple response variable and respondents gave an average of 1.8 responses.
Only 2.2 percent reported that they did not know Japanese, while 19.8 percent said they were
native speakers and 4.6 percent had learned Japanese as children. Two-thirds had learned Japanese through formal instruction outside of Japan, a slight decrease from 2005. In addition, half
said they had learned through formal instruction in Japan, about the same as in 2005. However,nearly a quarter said they had taught themselves in Japan, while 17.4% had taught themselves
outside of Japan, the same as in 2005.
A slightly smaller number, 807, answered a survey question asking how they maintained
their Japanese language skills. This question had more categories, and respondents selected anaverage of 3.1 responses. About a third of the respondents said they use Japanese at work, and aquarter say they use it frequently in Japan. About half as many reported that they use it at home
(18.7%) or in leisure activities (16.4%). Ten percent use Japanese on the Internet. Sixty percent
of respondents maintain their Japanese by reading for research purposes. However, over onethird keep up by watching TV or movies (37.8%) and a nearly identical number read but not for
research purposes (37.4%). Nearly a third (31.1%) keep up by using Japanese on the Internet. A
relatively small percentage of respondents report barriers to maintaining their Japanese: they
do not have good opportunities to do so (13.4%) or they do not have the time to make use ofavailable opportunities (10.5%).
Language skills have risen substantially among younger Japan specialists, As language
skills rise and opportunities to use Japanese in daily life expand, the process of language maintenance becomes self-reinforcing. Overall, it appears that Japan specialists today are likely tohave regular opportunities to maintain their Japanese and the primary barrier is the lack oftime to do so, if the opportunities are not already incorporated into their daily lives.
Academic Credentials
In addition to language skills, most of the participants in our study of Japan specialists in
the United States have academic credentials that attest to their professional status. However,monograph.indb 52

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Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

53

they do not necessarily hold a doctorate. For some professional fields in Japanese Studies another professional degree is the appropriate credential. Our data on academic credentials aretaken from the information respondents report for their directory entries. They are asked toreport all academic degrees, with the year of receipt, the field, and the institution. To use thedata for this analysis, we identify all candidates with one or more doctorates. We also identify
a variety of professional degrees, such as JD or other post-graduate law degree, MBA, MD,
MFA, and post-graduate library degrees, counting only one instance of each degree per candidate even though a substantial number of respondents have double degrees. For this analysis
we have only counted the MA if the respondent does not have any of these other higher degrees, and in many cases the MA is a specialized professional credential, such as a Master’sin International Relations for someone in government service. The results are shown in Table
3.8, which compares the findings for 2012 with data from previous studies that used similar
criteria.
The percentage of PhDs has increased to its highest level ever, at 87.1 percent. One reason for the increase is that in the present sample, many of the respondents with professional
degrees such as an MBA, one or more law degrees, a library credential, or an M.D., also had
a PhD. Than in turn reflects the increasingly academic nature of the sample and the risingdemand for academic credentials in order to teach in professional fields in academic institutions. It is also noteworthy that the percentage of persons at the “All But Dissertation” stage
is at its lowest level ever. The percentage of respondents whose highest degree is an MA has
also dropped considerably, and they were often in fields where this was the most appropriate
credential such as journalism, diplomacy, and some areas of academic support.
Table 3.9 compares Japan specialists with doctorates and those with other professional
degrees (including those for whom the MA is the appropriate terminal degree) on several dimensions. Among those with a PhD, 82 percent currently hold faculty positions, 9 percent holdnon-faculty positions, and 8.5 percent are retired. Only a quarter of those who hold anotheradvanced terminal degree other than an MA, or for whom the MA is the appropriate terminal
Table 3.8. Percent Distribution of Highest Degree Earned by Japan Specialists,
1970, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012* Highest Degree

1970 %

1984 %

1995 %

2005 %

2012 %

PhD
ABD
MA**
JD or other Law Degree
MBA (Business)
MLS or Library Science
MD (Medical degree)
MFA (Master of Fine Arts)BA, unknown, other

79.9
10.8
7.0
0.7
0.0
–
0.2
–
1.4

81.0
7.0
9.0
–
–
–
–
–
–

77.4
1.8
11.1
6.5
2.9
2.5
0.5
1.3
3.9

81.2
1.2
11.4
2.2
1.1
2.4
0.4
1.2
4.5

87.1
0.7
6.2
2.5
1.2
3.2
0.3
–
2.1

* Data for 1970, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.13, ch. 4, p. 95.
1970 data from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, calculated from supplemental roster of specialists. 1984 data from 1984 JapanFoundation Report, Table 2, p. 14. All figures previously reported along with the 2005 data in Japanese Studies in the
United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.8.
** Figures for MAs are for persons with no other advanced degree, but ll other degrees are reported in total, and there issome overlap between them.

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Chapter 3

54

Table 3.9. Comparison of Specialists with Doctorates and Specialists withProfessional Degrees, by Employment Status, Gender, and Language Competence,
1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995

B. Gender
Male
Female
Total

Professional

Doctorate

Professional

Doctorate

Professional

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

77.2
12.6
10.2

97
114
23

41.5
48.7
9.8

871
130
36

84.0
12.5
3.5

61
60
3

49.2
48.4
2.4

984
109
102

82.3
9.1
8.5

26
73
9

24.1
67.6
8.3

1,133 100.0 234 100.0 1,037 100.0 124 100.0 1,195

99.9 108 100.0

833
300

62.2
37.8

73.5 185
26.5 49

79.1
20.9

679
358

65.5
34.5

85
39

68.5
31.5

743
451

51
57

47.2
52.8

1,133 100.0 234 100.0 1,037 100.0 124 100.0 1,194 100.0 108 100.0

C. Language Competence
Scholarly  Use
455 60.9
Not Schol   arly Use
237 31.7
None
55
7.4
Total

2012

Doctorate

A. Employment
Faculty875
Not Faculty
143
Retired
115
Total

2005

71

47.7

345

67.8

11

61.1

514

71.6

32

50.8

55
23

36.9
15.4

140
24

27.5
4.7

6
2

33.3
5.6

90
116

12.5
16.2

12
19

19.0
30.2

747 100.0 149 100.0

509 100.0

39 100.0

718 100.3

63 100.0* Data for 1995 and 2005 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.9 p.54. Sample size is reduced for the language analysis because the scale is based on survey data that areavailable for a smaller number of respondents.

credential, are faculty, two-thirds hold non-faculty positions. The percentage retired or unemployed is the same as for faculty, at 8.3 percent.
The gender balance has also improved both for those with doctorates and those with other
degrees, where now more than a third of faculty members in the sample are female, along withhalf of non-faculty. There has also been substantial improvement in the Japanese language skillsof both groups. Just over 70 percent of those with doctorates have Japanese language capabilities for scholarly use, while half of those with professional degrees also had strong Japanese
language skills. However, the number of persons reporting no Japanese ability has jumped forboth categories, although the sample size for the professional category is quite small.
For those with a doctorate, four studies in 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012 have asked whether
the dissertation was wholly or partly on Japan, or not on Japan. The percentage distributions
are shown in Table 3.10 for each study by the major disciplinary categories, although the 1984
study reported a slightly different residual category. The clear overall trend is toward a higher
percentage of dissertations wholly on Japan, and a much smaller percentage in the main disciplinary grouping with dissertations that were not on Japan at all. Even in the social sciences,where there is often pressure not to do dissertation research wholly on Japan, two-thirds ofsocial scientists in the 2012 study reported that their doctoral dissertations were wholly on

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Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

55

Table 3.10. Relation of Doctoral Dissertation to Japan (in %), 1984, 1995, 2005, and2012*

1984 StudyHistory
Language & Literature
Arts
Social Sciences
Total Sample
1995 StudyHistory
Language & Literature
Social Sciences
Other
Total Sample
2005 StudyHistory
Language & Literature
Social Sciences
Other
Total Sample
2012 StudyHistory
Language & Literature
Social Sciences
Other
Total Sample

Wholly on
Japan (%)

Partly on Japan(%)

Not on Japan
(%)

N

70
54
46
54

20
25
11
24

10
21
43
22

(173)
(178)
(56)
(272)

58

22

21

(679)

68.7
62.3
50.4
40.0

22.7
27.3
20.9
18.9

8.6
10.4
28.7
41.1

163
209
230
190

54.4

22.2

23.4

(737)

79.0
75.0
66.0
55.2

16.8
14.6
24.7
18.3

4.2
10.4
9.3
26.5

(143)
(96)
(97)
(230)

66.4

18.4

15.2

(566)

76.3
74.3
65.0
52.1

15.6
16.2
17.5
26.1

8.1
9.6
17.5
21.8

135
136
120
238

64.5

20.0

15.4

629

* Data for 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 4.15, ch. 4, p. 98. 1984 datafrom 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 5, p. 18. We are unable to reconstruct exactly the same categories used forthe 1984 study, but categories except “arts” and “other” should be equivalent. All earlier data was reported in JapaneseStudies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.10, p. 56. For 1995, 2005, and 2012,
only persons who responded to the survey question and who had completed a doctoral dissertation are included in thecalculations.

Japan. Half of respondents in the “Other” category also wrote a dissertation wholly on Japan.
This suggests an very strong focus on Japan, which reinforces the earlier finding that the majority of Japan specialists do not claim expertise on other countries in relation to Japan, thoughinterest is rising.
Table 3.11 compares the data from 1995, 2005, and 2012 on several additional variables,
all of which reflect this general trend. The tendency for dissertations to be wholly on Japan isstrong in all age groups, but higher in the younger age cohorts. The focus on Japan is greater
for women than for men, but is substantial for both genders. The focus on Japan is strong foracademics, but the non-academic category is too small to evaluate.

monograph.indb 55

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5/20/2013 5:57:20 PM% A ll

22.7
18.0
16.7
19.6
24.3

53.9
57.0

C. Academic Status
Academic
Non-Academic

D. Language Competence
None
1.9
Not Scholarly
42.4
Scholarly Use
66.8
81.5
37.9
8.9

23.4
25.0

25.3
18.8

5.6
13.6
19.6
34.1
32.6

% Not

on Japan

54
224
440

638
100

541
197

18
169
235
222
144

Total #
Cases

40.9
68.0
78.0

66.7
66.2

64.1
73.3

67.3
77.1
67.6
60.0
56.8

% A llon Japan

18.2
15.2
26.0

18.0
22.1

17.8
18.5

29.1
16.4
19.0
16.3
14.9

% Partly
Japan

40.9
16.8
13.7

15.3
11.7

18.1
8.2

3.6
6.4
13.4
23.7
28.4

% Not

on Japan

2005

22
125
300

472
77

370
184

55
140
142
135
74

Total #
Cases

23.7
60.5
78.3

66.1
33.3

63.5
70.2

70.8
73.3
68.3
64.9
56.6

% A llon Japan

29.0
25.0
15.7

19.1
33.3

18.5
20.0

29.2
18.7
19.3
18.3
18.2

% Partly
Japan

47.3
14.5
6.1

14.8
33.3

18.0
9.8

0.0
8.0
12.4
16.8
25.2

% Not

on Japan

2012

93
76
396

581
3

367
225

24
150
145
131
143

Total #Cases

* Data for 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States, The 1990s, Table 4.16, p. 99. Included with 2005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.11, p. 57.

21.8
22.8

52.9
58.4

B. Gender
Male
Female

50.0
27.8
22.6
16.5
18.1

44.4
58.6
57.9
49.4
49.3

% PartlyJapan

A. Age35 or Under
35–44
45–54
55–64
65 or Older

on Japan

1995

Table 3.11. Japan As Subject of Doctoral Dissertation, by Age, Gender, Academic Status and Language Competence,
1995, 2005, and 2012*Expertise and Credentials of Japan Specialists

57

One somewhat surprising finding is that 60 percent of those who claim their Japanese is
not adequate for scholarly use did a dissertation solely on Japan, along with nearly a quarter ofthe much smaller group that claims to have no Japanese language skill. Although this finding
seems anomalous, it is conceivable for certain fields in which the relevant research materials
are primarily either quantitative data or are available in English. Our summary measure oflanguage competence for scholarly use also sets the bar quite high; it is possible that persons
who rated their Japanese language skills as adequate for limited scholarly needs, or adequate
for scholarly needs in only one or two of the four skills, would score on the summary measure
as not having Japanese suitable for scholarly use, even though they did have sufficient Japanese
to meet the limited requirements of their dissertation.
In 1995, our analysis of the areas of specialization of Japan specialists, their language
competence, and their academic credentials pointed to a divide between those who had acquired their expertise on Japan through language, area, and disciplinary training acquired
through formal academic study, as opposed to those who had acquired their expertise experientially or through different professional track and for whom Japan was not necessarily thesole focus of interest. That division has now largely disappeared, and the pool of people whoare now identified as Japan specialists are more likely to have strong Japanese language skills
and an academic focus that is wholly on Japan. While on the one hand this attests to the highlevel of expertise these Japan specialists have attained, it does leave the field open to the criticism that it is too narrow and tends to look at Japan in isolation. It is important to rememberthat those other people with their more diverse forms of expertise on Japan still exist; they aresimply less likely to be identified, or to identify themselves, as “Japan specialists” today, andthey are much less likely to be working in an academic setting.

Maintaining Expertise on Japan
Japan specialists need not only to maintain their language skills, but also their expertise
about Japan, both for teaching and for research purposes. We need to know what sorts of materials Japan specialists use in order to keep up in their field, and how they get access to thosematerials. Our primary concern here is with the general maintenance of expertise, rather thanwith the highly specialized resources one might need in order to carry out a specific research
project. In 1995, 2005, and 2012 we have asked a set of questions designed to explore this topic.
In 1995 we asked about a range of different types of materials that might be used in various
fields, including books, journals, government documents, technical reports, mass media, quantitative data, and visual materials. For each type, we asked whether the person needed to use
English materials, materials that had been translated into English, or materials in Japanese. For
2005, we had to add several new categories to reflect the realities of the information age: online
news reports, online discussions, and online journals. For 2012 we kept the same expanded list.
A total of 755 persons responded to this set of survey questions, which is somewhat morethan the number responding to it in 2005. Virtually everyone reported that they need to readbooks (97.2%) and journals (94.2%) in English. Presumably this includes both academic materials in their discipline and the English language literature about Japan that they and theircolleagues produce. Already, by the 1990s, the latter had grown so voluminous that it is nolonger possible for most Japan specialists to keep up with it beyond the range of their own
discipline and specific research interests. Around half of respondents reported that they alsoneed to read books (53.6%) or journal articles (42.2%) that have been translated into English.
For Japan specialists, however, this English language material is simply the beginning of whatmonograph.indb 57

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Chapter 3

is needed in order to keep up in one’s field. More than three-quarters of respondents said thatthey need to read books (77.0%) and journals (69.4%) in Japanese in order to keep up. The
majority of respondents also reported that they need to read newspapers and magazines inEnglish (68.93%) or Japanese (57.0%) to keep up with their field. Over half use visual materials
in English (55.9%), and only a slightly lower percentage (49.8%) use visual materials in Japanese. A clear indication of the rapid inroads made by online material is that well over half ofthe respondents (60.7%) reported that they need to read online news to keep up, while almost
half (46.9%) read online news in Japanese. Similar percentages participate in online discussion
groups in English (43.4%) or read online journals in English (56.7%) to keep up, although substantially smaller numbers use online discussion groups in Japanese (19.6%) or online journals
in Japanese (32.8%) to keep up. Overall, the percentages seemed to be up slightly for all of thecategories of Japanese materials.
While the overall figures are dramatic and impressive, the need for materials of various
types varies by discipline. We present these data in Table 3.12, comparing the 1995 and 2005
findings with those from the current study for Japan specialists in the humanities and the social
sciences.
Books and journals in English rank continue to rank at the top of the list for Japan specialists in both the humanities and the social sciences, but after that the divergence is striking.
While books and journals in Japanese rank third and fourth for those in the humanities, in thesocial sciences newspapers and magazines in English rank third, followed by online news in
English. In the social sciences, newspapers and magazines in Japanese, and books in Japanese
come next in fifth and sixth place. In contrast, translated books, and newspapers and magazines in English, hold the fifth and sixth ranks for those in the humanities. Visual materials in
English rank seventh for those in the humanities, while for social scientists, that place is heldby government documents in English. There is nothing particularly odd about these differences, since they clearly reflect the places where the tools of the trade for these two disciplinary groups are most likely to be found.
The Japanese library community has been struggling for the past three decades to keep
up with the expanding range of types of materials that Japan specialists need for their work
beyond the basics of Japanese language books and journals. Various arrangements have been
painstakingly created to provide better access to the sorts of specialized materials that social
scientists need, and libraries are also trying to meet the growing demand for visual materials. Fortunately, new technologies are making it easier for Japan specialists to obtain someof these materials on their own, and are also helping libraries provide better access. We will
examine these efforts in some detail later; the point to be reinforced here is that these needs fora broader array of resources in Japanese are now widespread within Japanese Studies. Quite
obviously the increased need for materials in Japanese reflects the increased levels of Japanese
language ability that we have found among Japan specialists.
Overall, these findings suggest that the current pool of Japan specialists not only havestrong language skills and subject matter expertise, but that these two types of expertise arecomplementary and mutually reinforcing. We can now look briefly at how these specializedskills and expertise are utilized. Although the number of Japan specialists who responded
to the survey portion of the questionnaire is considerably smaller than the number that completed the directory portion, the overwhelming majority of those survey respondents reportthat they are currently doing research on Japan. Those who said they are currently doing research were asked a series of more detailed questions about the nature of that research, while
those who reported that they are not currently doing research skipped to a different part ofmonograph.indb 58

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Table 3.12. What Japan Specialists Need to Read to Keep Up in their Fields, with Rank Order,
by Material Type & Language, for Humanities and Social Sciences*
1995

M aterial Type and­Language

2005

2012

Humanities

Social­Sciences

Humanities

Social­Sciences

Humanities

Social­Sciences

%

R ank

%

R ank

%

R ank

%

R ank

%

R ank

%

R ank

1
5
3

92.9
50.2
54.7

1
5
4

99.4
66.0
82.2

1
5
3

98.7
47.2
61.0

1
13
6

77.3
51.3
64.2

1
5
3

67.6
28.4
43.7

1

2
6
4

90.4
39.2
49.8

2
9
6

96.3
52.1
77.3

2
9
4

96.2
39.0
56.6

2
16
8

75.3
38.0
61.8

2
12
4

64.0
22.5
39.2

2

39.2
24.8
29.9

9

16.6
8.0
17.2

59.1
25.8
56.0

7
21
9

13.7
5.6
15.0

40.5
14.4
35.6

27.7
12.6
22.0

20

4.1
1.9
3.6

22.1
6.8
17.1

87.4
30.2
62.9

3
19
5

48.5
16.5
39.9

52.2
17.6
40.9

10

6.2
2.4
5.8

Books
English
94.8
Translated
67.8
Japanese
80.3
Journal Articles
English90.9
Translated
55.3
Japanese
74.0
Government Documents
English13.3
Translated
7.9Japanese
13.5
Technical Reports
English11.8
Translated
6.9Japanese
10.3
Newspapers, Magazines
English50.6
Translated
24.3
Japanese
43.2
Quantitative Data
English22.1
Translated
12.3
Japanese
19.7
Visual Materials
English22.1
Translated
12.0Japanese
18.4
Online News
English–Translated–
Japanese–
Online Discussion
English–Translated–
Japanese–
Online Journal
English–Translated–
Japanese–# Respondents
407

7
8

12

28.3
12.9
22.5

14

5.5
2.8
3.7

69.1
28.9
45.7

3
13
8

62.6
21.8
52.8

46.0
21.9
35.7

7

11.3
4.6
9.2

11

19.3
6.8
14.5

54.9
23.9
51.5

–
–
–

47.5
15.3
36.8

–
–
–

42.3
4.9
13.5

–
–
–
311

44.2
11.3
23.3
326

6
8

7

15

10

11

73.0
25.2
49.7

4
22
11

39.7
13.7
28.8

13

37.7
5.0
12.6

17

32.2
4.5
10.9

13

31.5
4.5
13.5

12

49.1
10.7
22.6
159

12

44.0
12.2
24.9
466

8

38.7
7.2
19.8
222

14

11
14

12

36.0
10.8
27.9

18

9

7

3

45.7
18.0
41.8

11

7

9

53.6
16.7
45.0

43.4
16.4
32.1

10

14

6

6

5

30.2
6.8
27.0
52.0
12.2
40.1

4
8

10

* Data for 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 5.11, chapter 5, p. 123. Ranks only given for
categories with at least 25 percent response. Reproduced with 1005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada:Continuities and Opportunities, Table 3.13, p.60.

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60

the survey. Consequently, although the sample size is smaller for this part of the survey, all
the respondents are actively doing research. Respondents were asked whether the purpose of
their research was academic publication, preparation for teaching, or for their non-academic
work. The overwhelming majority (86.3%) say their research is intended for publication.
Less than half (43.8%) say they do research to prepare for teaching, but the categories overlap
substantially. Nearly 10 percent say they do research as part of their non-academic professional work.
Another way of distinguishing types of research is whether it is classified as basic or applied. Just over half of those doing research report that they do basic research on intellectual
questions, while about a fifth say that they do applied research with practical applications.
Over a third said they do primary research using original Japanese sources or data, and a third
say they do primary research using original English sources. Nearly half say they do secondary
research based on the research literature in Japanese and forty percent say they do secondary
research based on the research literature in English. These categories often overlap, and morethan 20 percent of researchers say they do all four. The strong overlap reflects the fact thatJapan specialists in the United States are not simply using certain Japanese materials for theirresearch, but are also incorporating both the Japanese language and English language scholarship that is relevant to their work.
A related issue is how Japan specialists obtain the materials they need for their research.
This question was also asked in 1995 and 2005, so we are able to compare responses for thetwo major disciplinary groups in the current study, those in humanities and the social sciences,as shown in Table 3.13. As in the past, most Japan specialists report using materials from their
Table 3.13. Research Sources Japan Specialists Utilize, by Discipline Group,
1995, 2005, and 2012* R esearch Sources

1995

2005

2012

SocialHuman- Sciences
ities %%

SocialHuman- Sciences Total
ities %%%

SocialHuman- Sciences Total
ities %%%

Personal Collection
88.6
Institution’s Collection
71.4
Other Institution Collection
78.4
Government Materials
18.4
Private Collections
17.1
Data from Collaborator
5.2
Data Collected by Respondent 24.4
Private/Comm. Databases
2.9Internet Resources–
ILL/Document Delivery–
Ordered Online
–

77.9
71.5
52.2
34.7
13.9
14.6
62.8
10.6
–
–
–

93.6
78.1
88.9
26.6
25.6
4.4
30.3
9.4
32.7
40.7
17.2

86.6
76.4
65.4
60.6
23.6
22.8
73.2
19.7
55.9
33.1
17.3

90.2
78.9
78.7
34.9
25.7
12.9
48.2
13.3
43.3
37.3
19.0

91.2
79.5
88.6
28.4
25.9
5.4
25.2
10.7
44.4
52.4
18.0

78.9
74.6
69.3
67.5
21.1
23.7
74.6
14.9
59.6
29.8
13.2

85.1
68.3
79.6
37.9
24.0
12.2
43.0
13.2
51.3
42.4
18.1

# Respondents

274

297

127

541

317

114

597

385

* Questions are independent, so percentage totals exceed 100%. Data for 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the
United States: The 1990s, Table 6.15, Chapter 6, p. 149. Data reproduced and 2005 data included in Japanese Studies in
the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 4.15, p. 85.

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61

own personal collection, but to a slightly lesser extent than in previous studies. Two-thirds of
respondents now report that they use materials from their institution’s collection, down fromthree-quarters in 2005. Four out of five also report using materials from the collections of otherinstitutions, with humanities scholars as heavier users than social scientists. By contrast, social
scientists are more than twice as likely to use government documents. About a quarter of Japan
specialists obtain research materials from private collections. data Social scientists are more
likely than humanities scholars to obtain data from collaborators, but the level is quite low.
Three quarters of social scientists still collect their own data through interviews and observational methods, compared to only a quarter of humanities scholars.
We added three new response alternatives in 2005 to reflect the increased availability of
research resources from online sources. Half of all respondents now report obtaining data
research data from the Internet, with social scientists more likely to use such sources. Interlibrary loan and document delivery also are now used by about 40 percent of the sample as asource of research materials, but not surprisingly, this is used more by scholars in the humanities. Less than 20 percent of Japan specialists now order needed research materials themselves
online. It is significant that while very high percentages of Japan specialists use research materials in their own private collection, and three-fourths of social scientists collect their own
data through interviews and observations, Japan specialists still remain heavily dependent on
research materials in their own and other institutions’ collections. Hence even while travel
to Japan for research purposes is now reasonably accessible, library resources remain very
important, particularly those that are accessible either in the United States or can be ordered
online for delivery in the United States.
As in previous studies, we asked Japan specialists about the most important audiences fortheir research, giving them three choices out of a list of six options. The results paralleled thosein 2005. “The scholarly community of Japan specialists” was the most common first choice,while “the scholarly community in my discipline” was the second most common choice. These
two responses also garnered the vast majority of second choices. “Students” was a distant third
choice, with “the general public” as a distant fourth. The priority given to the scholarly community of Japan specialists over the scholarly community in the discipline underscores the distinctive nature of this multidisciplinary community. Probably only for specialists in Japanese
language and literature who live in East Asian language and literature departments is there no
tension at all between these two research audiences, because they are essentially the same. In
other disciplines Japan specialists are unlikely to comprise more than a small minority within
their department and the question of which audience should be more salient can have serious
career consequences. Even if the department is very supportive of the Japan specialist’s areaof research and teaching, the work will still be evaluated by disciplinary standards. It is clear
from these data that Japan specialists consider both the Japan specialist audience and the disciplinary audience to be very important, and they aim to have their work evaluated positively
by both audiences. This is easier to accomplish in some disciplines than in others. In somesocial sciences it may require writing different publications for two quite distinct audiencesthat evaluate the work according to different standards.
Japan specialists maintain their expertise through their research, through participationin professional organizations, and by maintaining personal networks with colleagues. As inprevious studies, Japan specialists have high participation rates in the Association for AsianStudies and in other Japan-related conferences and seminars, but also participate to a lesser
extent in their national disciplinary associations. This pattern also attests to the salience ofmonograph.indb 61

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Chapter 3

their identity as Japan specialists. They continue to report high levels of contact with both
Japanese scholars and with other Japan specialists. They view these relationships as personal
friendships as well as valuable ways of keeping up with new developments in the field and furthering their own research. In all of these ways, Japanese Studies constitutes a true communityof scholars with which participants identify to a remarkable degree.

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4Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

In this chapter and the following three we shift our attention from looking at Japan specialists as individuals to studying the institutional contexts within which they work and produce
the field we call Japanese Studies. We will use the maximum amount of data we have for eachcomponent of this analysis, which will require a certain amount of gear shifting and additional
methodological explanation at various points so that the information can be assessed properly.
We will begin in this chapter by taking the broadest possible view of Japanese Studies in the
United States, using three different data sources: Japan specialists’ entries from the specialists’directory, program entries from the directory of Japanese Studies institutions, including staff
lists, and a national list of academic institutions in the United States. Our goal will be to place
Japanese Studies in a national academic and geographic context.
Then in chapter 5 we will move down to the smallest unit of academic instruction on Japanand examine individual courses offered at academic institutions, combining that with some
information from the specialists about teaching conditions and teaching materials for JapaneseStudies courses. In chapter 6 we will examine organized programs of study at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition to applying criteria to classify programs offered by various
institutions, we will refer back to the national context in order to see where programs of various types are located in the academic and geographic landscape. This chapter will also bring
doctoral students and doctoral degrees back into focus by examining changes in the institutions that are producing specialists with doctorates related to Japanese Studies. Finally, chapter
7 will examine the infrastructure and support for Japanese Studies at academic institutions
and other institutions that provide resources for the field. In that context we will look particularly at library resources and other research resources, focusing on recent changes in how Japan specialists and students can obtain access to them. That chapter will also examine funding
for Japanese Studies and offer Japan specialists’ current views on how resources for JapaneseStudies ought to be allocated. These four chapters will provide much data and many perspectives on the current state of Japanese Studies programs and activities in the United States.
We begin now by placing Japanese Studies into a broad, national context. In this chapter
we will look at the distribution or spread of Japanese Studies within the United States. Overthe past sixty years, both the number of academic institutions with Japan specialists and thedensity of Japan specialists at those institutions have grown dramatically. We begin with theacademic institutions that employ Japan specialists, combining data from institutions with that63

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64

Chapter 4

from specialists. After using these data to look for changes in the overall distribution and scaleof Japanese Studies programs over the past decade, we will try to place the academic institutions with Japan specialist staff and programs into the broader picture of post-secondary academic institutions in the contemporary United States. This will not only place the geographic
distribution of the programs into context, but also allows us to look at the representation ofJapanese Studies within different types of academic institutions. Here, too, we are able to compare the present situation with the data from the previous two studies. Along the way, we will
also try to understand the growing divergence between the Japan specialists who participate
in the specialists’ directory and survey, and the staff numbers reported by Japanese Studies
programs. The answer will help us understand the structural changes that are taking places
within Japanese Studies programs as they adapt to the constraints and opportunities in theirenvironment.

How We Measure Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions
There are two basic ways to gather data about the number of academic institutions withJapan specialists, and the number of Japan specialists at those academic institutions: by collecting data directly from the institutions; or by using rosters of individuals that list their
institutional affiliation. The 1970 data are from a roster of individuals, whose institutional
affiliations were re-calculated and presented in the 1977 study for comparison. The 1977 and1984 data are from questionnaires sent to institutions, with the same caveats about their relative completeness discussed earlier.
The 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012 study also collected data from institutions, but were able
to supplement it with information collected directly from Japan specialists whose institutions
did not submit a questionnaire. This procedure has provided a more comprehensive count ofinstitutions once Japanese Studies had expanded beyond being a small pool with clearly defined limits. However, it has the additional effect of increasing the count of institutions thathave only one or two Japan specialists, usually with no formal Japanese Studies program.
In 1995 the number of such institutions was further inflated because the data collection
procedures included sending an institutional questionnaire to a commercial list of all post-secondary academic institutions in the United States, in order to identify institutions that had either recently added something related to Japanese Studies or were planning to do so. This 1995
mass mailing had generated a very modest response. Although 7 percent of the institutions
dutifully returned blank questionnaires and 5.7% responded to the survey to report that they
did not have any program at present, only 1.8 percent of the institutions actually returned thesurvey and reported some Japanese Studies activity and therefore were included as program
entries in the 1995 directory. Still, 1.8 percent of a mailing list of 3,139 added 57 programs to
our list. All of these were coded as “minimal” programs, and virtually all were offering only
one or two Japanese language courses and perhaps a history course that covered Japan.
We did not repeat this mass mailing in the subsequent two studies. Although we did purchase a commercial mailing list of 2,890 academic institutions in the United States in 2005
in order to obtain various pieces of information to use for our analysis, the e-mail addresseson that list were for the top academic administrator at each institution. We concluded that wewould get even less response to an e-mail solicitation to these individuals in 2005 than we hadfrom the mass mailing in 1995 and that the benefits did not outweigh the costs.
Although previously the Association for Asian Studies provided us both a current membership list of individuals and their list of programs on Asia, this time they told us that our list

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

65

of Japanese Studies programs was probably much better than theirs. By this time we had a very
extensive list in our database of all the programs that had reported any trace of Japanese Studies activity in any of the previous studies, together with the data that had been included in theearlier directory studies. That list is much larger than the number of institutions that have actually responded to any of the surveys. In addition to including any institution that previously
participated in the study, it also includes an institution record for any institution that employeda Japan specialist who participated in the study, even if their institution did not. The new AAS
membership lists also provided information about where Japan specialists were located, whichallowed us to expand the list further. The staff worked from our existing list, using the Internet
to verify whether there was any trace of Japanese Studies activity, whether the same or a different person should be the initial contact, and making sure we had an e-mail address for theacademic unit or a contact person.
Throughout the data collection, we assessed the response rates for all academic institutions that had been represented with full entries in the previous directory. Using criteria fromthe earlier studies that classified programs by their degree of development, we soon had 100
percent participation from the largest programs, very high participation from the remainderof those with full programs, somewhat lower response from those with more limited areastudies programs in previous studies, and considerably weaker response from those that had
reported the smallest programs or simply the beginning of a Japanese Studies presence earlier.
Our staff then conducted another search of all the missing programs with at least “minimal”
Japanese Studies in 2005, in an attempt to find a more appropriate contact person. We verified
that many of those programs did still exist, and were able with more intensive follow-up to get
responses from many of them. At a later stage, we sent programs their old entries as pdf proofs
and threatened to publish them again, if they did not update the information. That produced aflurry of late responses that overloaded the staff in the final months of the study but definitely
increased the response rate. I ended up also collecting some data from program websites tomake sure we had reasonably current information for the directory from programs that had
failed to respond to all our entreaties but were large enough that they needed to be included.
The end result of this intensive follow-up was the addition of a substantial amount of
information about the expansion of small-to-medium-sized programs over the past decade,coupled with the possible systematic omission of some of the institutions with minimal Japanese Studies activity in earlier years. This potential bias must be kept in mind in evaluating the
program numbers we present below. The process also reinforced my conviction that even in
the Internet era, the Japan directory still serves an important function by presenting detailed
information about the broad array of academic Japanese programs available, in a single placeand in a systematic format.
This lengthy methodological discussion has been necessary so that we may interpret thecomparative data about academic institutions and the number of Japan specialists on theirstaffs. We still need to consider the growing discrepancies between our sources of data andhow we deal with them. In the 1970s, the counts the studies produced were probably virtuallycomplete in terms of both institutions and numbers of specialists, because the field was so
small at the time. That also means that for the earliest studies, the counts of specialists were
probably about the same regardless of how the data were collected. By contrast, for all of thestudies since the early 1980s, the counts of institutions and specialists are inevitably less thancomplete because the increasing scale and dispersion of the field limits our ability to keep trackof this expanding universe.
For the past four studies in which we have had data from both specialists and institutions,monograph.indb 65

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there is considerable discrepancy between the two sources. Not all Japan specialists respondto our invitation to be listed in the directory, so our count of specialists is certainly less thancomplete. Our attempts to survey institutions directly are also imperfect, so we supplement
the count of institutions with Japan specialists’ reports of their institutional affiliations. Even
institutions that do respond may not know how many Japan specialists they have and who they
are, especially if they do not have a well-established center or institute whose business it is tokeep track of them. Hence the counts of specialists at particular institutions derived from thespecialists’ own reports differ from the counts reported on institutional staff lists. We will look
more closely at the nature of the differences later in the study, but for the present purpose of locating Japanese Studies activity in institutions, our solution is simply to eliminate any overlap.
For this chapter, our procedure is to first count the number of institutions with program
entries in the directory. The count is for whole institutions, even if the larger ones may haveseveral different directory sub-entries for different components of their Japanese Studies programs. We supplement that information by adding the institutional affiliations reported by
Japan specialists whose institutions did not have a full entry in the institutional directory.
(These are listed as “Other Academic Institutions with Japan Specialist Staff” in the institutions directory).
The 2012 study includes full program entries for 248 academic institutions in the UnitedStates. We identified 163 other institutions in the United States that had at least one Japan
specialist who completed an entry for the specialists’ directory, for a total of 411 academic
institutions with some Japanese Studies presence. The total number of academic institutions
identified by these measures in 2012 is larger than the 184 full program entries plus 164 institutions identified through specialist entries in 2005 for a total of 348 institutions with someJapanese Studies presence. Both of these numbers are smaller than we obtained in 1995, but
the 2012 count is very close to the 1995 peak.
A clearer picture of these fluctuations can be obtained by examining the crossover between full directory entries and “other academic institutions with Japan specialist staff” between 2005 and 2012, compared with the crossover between 1995 and 2005, and between 1989
and 1995, as shown in Table 4.1. In each part of the table, read across (the rows) for the current
study numbers in each category, while the columns distribute them according to their placement in the previous study. In the crossover tables we produced for the two previous studies(the top two sections of the table), the cells for people who were not listed in either directory
are blank. However, when compiling the data for the current crossover table, I noticed thatsome of the programs that had not been included in either 2005 or the current study had beenin the 1995 directory, so I have included them in the cell for programs that were in neither of
the two most recent directories. This helps to provide a more complete assessment of what has
happened to the “bubble” programs from 1995.
We can now look more closely at the crossover patterns and what they tell us about thepresence of Japanese Studies throughout the United States over the past two decades. Becauseof the increased number of full program listings in 2012, only two thirds of the full entries had
also been full entries in 2005. By contrast, nearly 90 percent of those that had a full institutional entry in the 2005 study also had a full entry in the 1995 directory because of the disappearance of unsustainable minimal programs during that decade. Overall, we have evidenceof great stability among 135 institutions that have had a full program listing in the past three
directories, and some of them have a much longer history of Japanese Studies.
The situation with secondary directory listings is quite different. As we found in 1995 and2005, there is quite high turnover in these listings of “other academic programs with Japan

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

67

Table 4.1. Full and Secondary Directory Listings of Japanese Studies at American
Academic Institutions, 1989 to 1995; 1995 to 2005; 2005 to 2012*
Full Entry

Secondary List

Not Listed Directory Listing

#

%

#

%

#

%

Total #

1989 to 1995
Full Entry
Secondary Listing
No Listing
Total

98
3
7
108

(39.7)(1.6)(18.4)

43
114
31
188

(17.4)(59.1)(81.6)

106
76
–
182

(42.9)(39.4)

247
193
38
478

1995 to 2005
Full Entry
Secondary Listing
No Listing
Total

163
15
45
223

(88.6)(9.1)(35.2)

12
87
83
182

(6.5)
(53.0)(64.8)

9
62
–
71

(4.9)
(37.8)

184
164
128
476

2005 to 2012
Full Entry
Secondary Listing
No Listing

165
8
6

(66.5)
(4.9)
(5.8)

43
82
38

(17.3)(50.3)(36.9)

40
73[59](16.1)(44.8)[57.3]

248
163
103

Total

179

163

172

514

* Data for 1989 and 1995 in Part A of the table reproduced from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table
3.5, p. 51. Data for Parts A and B of the table reproduced from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 5.1, p. 97. Institutions counted with no listing in either 2005 or 2012 [in brackets] had
full listings in 1995.

specialist staff.” In each period only about half of the secondary listings came from institutions
with a secondary listing (i.e., a specialist at that institution) in the previous directory. However,in both 1995 and 2012, about 17 percent of the full directory entries came from programs that
had only a secondary listing in the previous directory, while the upgrade was only 6.5 percent
of entries in 2005. In 2012, 43 institutions moved from a secondary listing in 2005 based ona specialist’s institutional affiliation to a full directory listing in 2012. To some extent these
upgraded listings can be viewed as part of the general strengthening of Japanese Studies programs between 2005 and 2012, but in some cases the institution would have qualified for a fullentry in 2005 but did not contribute one.
In fact, the nearly 50 percent movement in such institution listings between studies does
not fully capture the extent of the fluctuations, because in many cases when the same institution is still listed, the current listing is derived from a different specialist. This suggests that
there is a fair amount of movement among institutions, and that when Japan specialists do
move, it is often to a program that has a bigger Japanese Studies presence. A major finding of
the 1995 study was that much of the expansion of Japanese Studies in the early 1990s necessarily involved new PhDs taking positions in smaller institutions without a Japanese Studies
program, often a “serendipitous” position that was not related to their expertise on Japan.
While that movement was interpreted as part of the “normalization” of Japanese Studies within American academics, it may also have been the result of limited academic job opportunities
for Japan specialists. The findings in 2005 and 2012 indicate that some of these highly trained

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68

specialists have been able to move to an institution with a Japanese Studies program, or havehelped their own institution develop one. In either case, they are making use of their JapaneseStudies expertise and also contributing to the expansion of Japanese Studies programs.
In sum, then, while the secondary listings do not absolutely mean that there is a JapaneseStudies program at an institution, or that the resident Japan specialist is able to offer courses
on Japan, we do know that there is a person with Japan expertise at those institutions, and thatsome of those institutions do have a Japanese Studies program that was not captured in our
regular program listings. We therefore use the broader measure when there is sufficient data
to enhance the analysis.

Scale of Japanese Studies Programs at Academic Institutions
Now let’s approach the problem from a different angle. Table 4.2 compares the numberof specialists reported in Japanese Studies programs in 2012 with those reported in all of theprevious studies from 1970 through 2005. For this measure we use the staff lists reported byparticipating institutions for our count of specialists, adding the counts of Japan specialists
from the specialist directory only for those institutions without a full institutional entry. This
procedure offers the largest unduplicated counts we can produce, but also tends to increase thecount of institutions with only one or two Japan specialists, for which we have no additional
information about actual Japanese Studies program activity. Unfortunately, a number of institutions that provided a directory entry did not list their staff. Hence pooling the staff lists withspecialist entries from “other” institutions produced 366 academic institutions in the UnitedStates for which we could count the number of Japan specialist staff. This is more than we wereable to count in 2005, but still slightly less than the count in 1995.
The most striking finding is the steady growth and increased scale of Japanese Studies
programs over time, which has continued in the 21st century. While there are slightly moreprograms with only one Japan specialist than were reported in 2005, the absolute number isstill less than the number of such one person programs we found in 1995. In 1995 nearly half ofall programs had only one Japan specialist, while in both 2005 and 2012 just under 40 percent
of all programs were in this minimal state. This underscores our view that the large increases
found in 1995 were at least partly a response to the Japanese Bubble economy that could not
be sustained. It should be noted that some of the expansion in the early 1990s was at two year
Table 4.2. Institutions with Japan Specialists, 1970–2012, by Number of Specialists*
1

2–3

Year

%

1970
1977
1984
1989
1995
2005
2012

56.1 (78)35.7 (70)33.0 (61)43.5 (127)47.7 (185)39.5 (136)39.9 (146)

#

4–7

18–11

12 or More

Total

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

24.5
29.1
30.3
23.3
23.7
22.1
21.0

(34)
(57)
(56)
(68)
(92)
(76)
(77)

12.2
21.9
24.8
17.8
16.2
14.6
16.9

(17)
(43)
(46)
(52)
(63)
(50)
(62)

2.9
5.6
4.9
6.2
5.2
11.6
12.3

(4)
(11)
(9)
(18)
(20)
(40)
(45)

4.3
7.7
7.0
9.2
7.2
12.2
9.8

(6)
(15)
(13)
(27)
(28)
(42)
(36)

100
100
100
100
100
100
99.9

(139)
(196)
(185)
(292)
(388)
(344)
(366)

* Data for 1970 to 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 50, Table 3.3. Reproduced with 2005
data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 5.2, p. 98.

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

69

colleges, which could meet student demand for Japanese language without needing the kind of
disciplinary specialists that would be required for Japanese Studies at a four year institution.
Today we find very few Japan specialist staff at two year colleges, but there are some at schoolsthat have upgraded from a two-year to a four year program as part of the reorganization ofhigher education in state systems.
There are tremendous variations among the 146 institutions that have only one Japan specialist staff member today; many of these staff hold quite stable positions at small colleges. At
nearly two-thirds of those institutions, the one Japan specialist is an associate or full professor
and generally has been there for some time. The one Japan specialist at 19 percent of the institutions is an assistant professor, who presumably has come to the institution just in the past few
years. The sole Japan specialist staff person at the remaining institutions holds a more tenuous
position; there are ten lecturers, nine instructors, five adjuncts, and two visitors. A programwith only one Japan specialist can remain stable, grow, or vanish. Programs with more than
one Japan specialist may remain stable or grow, but they are less in danger of disappearing
entirely.
Although we do not attempt to track individual programs over time, it is clear from theaggregate data over time that the trend is toward stability and growth. The percentage of institutions with two or three Japan specialist staff has been declining gradually since the late1980s, while the number of programs with four to seven staff members has remained roughly
in the same range since the late 1980s. We do not know how much movement there has been
between these categories for specific institutions—or indeed, how many two or three person
programs later shrank to one, or one-person programs grew to two or three between our directory studies.
What is clear is that the major increases are in the numbers and proportional representation of the largest programs. The absolute number of programs with eight to eleven Japan
specialists has doubled from 1995 to 2005, and has grown even larger since then, suggestingthat one reason for shrinkage in the number of programs with four to seven staff members
in 2005 is because they grew larger. The number of programs with twelve or more Japan
specialists barely changed between 1989 and 1995, but now has increased substantially. Even
more astonishing is the actual scale of the largest programs. There are now nineteen JapaneseStudies programs listing 20 or more staff members, and the five largest of those programs list
between 48 and 71 persons on their Japanese Studies staff. They are University of Michigan(71), Stanford University (64), University of Hawaii at Manoa (63), Harvard University (60),Columbia University (48).
Three important qualifications are necessary in interpreting these numbers. First, most of
the staff counts for programs of all sizes include persons below the rank of assistant professor,
primarily as language instructors. While such persons are generally excluded from the specialist directory at The Japan Foundation’s request, they in fact constitute an integral part ofJapanese Studies programs throughout the country. The fact that many institutions routinely
list such persons as staff members of their Japanese Studies programs makes this clear. In
well-developed Japanese Studies programs, such persons may be permanent faculty members
who participate fully in academic activities, while for fledgling programs they may be the firstpeople hired by modern language departments, to meet demand for introductory Japanese
language classes.
Second, there has been a major structural change in American academic institutions overthe past ten or fifteen years. In response to economic exigencies, institutions have been hiring
fewer full-time, tenure track faculty and instead employing many more part or full-time lec-monograph.indb 69

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70

Chapter 4

turers and adjunct faculty on a contract basis, a phenomenon that has been well-documented
by the American Association of University Professors in its studies of the state of academics
in the United States. Many of the individuals employed as lecturers or adjunct faculty work
full-time and they may be employed for many years, but they generally lack the long-term
job security of tenure. This means that many Japan specialists even with doctorates may be
employed in less secure academic positions because of the nature of the job market and not
because there is anything lacking in their academic credentials. Consequently, it is no longer
appropriate to use only the traditional definitions of faculty rank and permanent status to assess the size of Japanese programs.
The terms used for special statuses are ambiguous, often deliberately so. Adjunct professor may be a courtesy appointment for a senior colleague conferring some institutional privileges without salary, or it may be a marginal status for a person the institution pays for teaching
without offering any permanent position. In our staff listings at American academic institutions, there were 61 persons listed as adjunct. They included 11 adjunct assistant professors,
10 adjunct associate professors, and four listed as adjunct professor. In addition, there were 23
adjunct instructors or lecturers, two adjunct researchers, and two more only entitled adjunctwith no further description of status. “Visiting” also at one time meant a faculty member temporarily at one institution on leave from another, but now in some institutions it may be given
to a person who does not have another permanent affiliation, as another indicator of marginal
status and lack of formal institutional commitment. In our list of staff there were 13 persons“visiting” with academic rank (including nine visiting assistant professors), and eight visiting
instructors or lecturers. Persons with these designations comprised 4.6 percent of the overall
staff listings for academic institutions in the U.S., a substantial increase from 2005. These designations have “marginal” written all over them, but in the absence of any clear sense of what
precisely they imply, we have simply classified them according to whether they were accorded
professorial rank or listed as instructor or lecturer. We added the completely ambiguous ones
to the lecturer or instructor category, because the absence of professorial rank seemed to be amessage in its own right. For what it is worth, we also noted that two-thirds of those designatedadjunct were female, while visitors were evenly split by gender.
In addition, many programs list emeritus faculty on their staff lists. Such faculty may haveretired from their permanent positions, but they often continue to teach on a part-time basis
and to serve on graduate students’ committees. While we excluded them from the employment
analysis in the previous chapter, we include them in the count of Japan specialists at an institution if they appear on the staff list or as specialists at institutions without a program entry.
Third, while small Japanese Studies programs are usually administered as part of an existing department or broader program, the larger and more focused a Japanese Studies program
becomes, the more it develops an infrastructure that extends well beyond the core teachingfaculty. Typically, larger programs have program directors, who may be faculty but have very
reduced teaching loads; they may also have full time associate or assistant directors who holddoctorates in Japanese Studies fields. They may also employ professionally qualified Japan
specialists as program coordinators, outreach coordinators, and administrators of East Asia
National Resource Center grant programs. Large Japanese language programs are likely to behoused within a broader departmental structure, which may designate someone as the coordinator or director of the Japanese language program.
At institutions with major Japanese Studies programs there are also Japanese librarians,
who hold a critical place in the institutional infrastructure of Japanese Studies and are counted
among the Japan specialist staff. A few of them hold doctorates in a Japanese Studies field

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

71

in lieu of or in addition to a library degree, and they may also teach on occasion. The largest
libraries may have both Japanese bibliographers and Japanese cataloguers on their staff. In addition, the institutions with the largest Japanese Studies programs also support specialized research institutes related to Japanese Studies, often in professional fields. These programs havetheir own research and administrative staff who hold advanced degrees in Japanese Studies
fields. A few large programs have Japanese museums with professional curators on the staff.
And finally, there are now a number of postdoctoral programs for Japan specialists. Whilesome are basically research positions, others explicitly involve teaching courses about Japan at
the undergraduate level.
Since we have no way of investigating the nature of these positions beyond the titles givenon the staff lists, we have routinely counted all of these various types of positions if they appear on institutional staff lists. The only exceptions have been the exclusion of lower level
positions such as library assistant, office assistant, or staff assistant that appear to be formsof student employment. While it may appear that these inclusions disproportionately inflate
the size of the larger Japanese Studies programs, in fact small programs that operate underthe broader rubric of Asian Studies may have a different form of inflation when they include
in their staff lists persons who teach courses all or partially about Japan but are primarily
specialists on some other part of Asia. Where we could clearly identify these persons as not
being Japan specialists we have excluded them, but in many cases we did not have sufficient
information to do so.
Except for the documented increase in unstable adjunct or visiting positions, is difficult
to determine precisely the extent to which the staff lists of Japanese Studies programs in 2012
contain more of these inflationary factors today than they did in the earlier studies. Certainly
the studies in the 1970s systematically excluded most language instructors who did not holddoctorates. As the teaching of Japanese became more professionalized and these same language instructors became pedagogy specialists who wrote textbooks and experimented withnew ways of teaching language, the situation has gradually changed. Some institutions now
list them as Japan specialist staff, while others still do not. The earliest studies also did notinclude the many other categories of staff that we now include, largely because those positions
did not exist twenty or thirty years ago. They are products of both the expansion of JapaneseStudies since the early 1980s, and the more recent structural changes in American academics
in general. Hence they must be counted in Japanese Studies programs in 2012, even if this limits the comparability with earlier studies. And despite the fact that some part of the phenomenal growth in the size of the largest Japanese programs can be attributed to non-teaching positions, these same programs also have shown steady growth in the breadth and depth of theiracademic offerings, which we will explore in greater detail in Chapters 5 and 6. The expansion
in non-teaching positions is a direct result of the expansion of their academic offerings.
These factors also help to account for the divergence in the 2012 data between the numberof Japan specialists in the U.S. who were included in the specialist directory (1435) and thegrowing number of persons on academic staff lists (1982). The changing nature of the staff
lists at academic institutions is also a significant factor. The expansion of some non-faculty
occupational categories within academic Japanese Studies can be seen in both the specialist
directory and the staff lists, such as the growing number of educational administrators and thestrong representation of Japan specialist librarians. In addition, however, the institutional staff
lists also include large numbers of persons integral to academic Japanese Studies programs
who do not meet the narrower criteria for inclusion in the specialist directory.
Overall, the staff lists of academic institutions in 2012 were composed of two-thirds cur-monograph.indb 71

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72

Chapter 4rent faculty of professorial rank (65.6%), 6.1 percent emeritus or retired faculty, 18 percent
lecturers and instructors and 6.5 percent administrative and specialized positions including
library and museum staff. Persons in the lecturers and instructors category were generally
excluded from the specialist directory on the basis of The Japan Foundation’s criteria, althoughsome were included who met other criteria for inclusion. Some of those classified as administrative staff members were eligible for inclusion in the directory. Japan specialist librarians
and museum curators were included, as were administrators with doctorates in Japan-related
fields, but many other positions would not have met the criteria for inclusion in the specialists’directory.
In sum, although there is always fluidity among the smallest programs, most JapaneseStudies programs have become larger, stronger, and more complex over time. Their increased
scale and infrastructure suggest that they are now deeply embedded in their institutions andare here to stay, even though both large and small programs now employ more specialists inless permanent academic positions. This raises the question of where these Japanese Studies
program fall in the overall landscape of American higher education.

Level and Selectivity of Academic Institutions
For this analysis we will continue to use the combined dataset that includes both the 248
academic institutions with Japanese Studies programs that have full entries in the 2012 study,
and the list of 163 “other academic institutions with Japan specialist staff” that was constructed from entries to the specialists directory, for a total of 411 institutions. In order to place theacademic institutions that have some Japanese Studies presence into context, we use a list thatoffers a good representation of all post-secondary academic institutions in the United States.
We can use this list as a denominator, and by linking the two sources we can calculate theextent of penetration of Japanese Studies within all post-secondary institutions in the UnitedStates using particular characteristics for which we have data.
For the 1995 study we used such a list, purchased from a mailing list company, to send out
a mass mailing to all the institutions asking if they had any Japanese Studies activity at their
institutions. Although the return from that mass mailing was minimal, the list itself provided
a base with which to compare our Japanese Studies data. The list contained 3,139 institutions
and included a number of variables describing the characteristics of the institutions. We supplemented that information with additional data on several other variables related to academic
selectivity taken from the current editions of Peterson’s Guides to two and four year institutions, which were available for a high proportion of the institutions. We also used the samematerial for a comparative analysis of the 1989 data, because the information for the nationalbase fell between the dates of the two studies.
For this 2005 study we did not repeat the mass mailing, but we did purchase a similar list
from the successor to the earlier company that contained a similar array of more current variables about institutional characteristics. Additional variables on academic size and selectivity
were added from two different sources: data on undergraduate enrollments, number of faculty,
and degrees offered were taken from the 2004 edition of a college handbook produced by The
College Board, which provided a relatively complete listing of two and four-year institutions.
However, to maintain comparability with the 1995 study, we used the academic selectivity index in the 2004 edition of Peterson’s Guide to Four Year Colleges. No such listing of selectivity
was available for two year colleges. The national list for 2005 contained a slightly smaller set
of 2,890 institutions. Some institutions had merged or closed in the intervening decade, andmonograph.indb 72

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

73

some were simply not on the newer list. However, only seven institutions in our Japanese Studies list for 2005 were missing. Not all data were available for every institution, but there wassufficient data for the analysis.
For the 2012 study, we did not try to purchase another list, but instead had the staff use current published editions of the two college guides plus materials online from the same sources
and the websites of the institutions to update and clean the master list from 2005. The twocollege guides claim to cover all accredited four year colleges, so we are reasonably confident
that our list is comprehensive for the four year institutions that constitute the bulk of the study.
We found some consolidation, some upgrading of local two-year and four-year institutions into
state college or university networks, and a few institutions that had completely disappeared.
A very small number of Japanese Studies institutions were not on the basic 2012 list of 2,892
accredited American educational institutions, but some of the measures we use were not available for all institutions.
We begin our analysis by examining the levels of degrees offered by academic institutions.
Table 4.3 requires a bit of explanation. The columns for 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012 present
the number of institutions with some Japanese Studies presence at which academic degrees
at various levels were offered in each of the four study years. This is not an indication that
degrees in Japanese Studies were offered at those levels (an issue we will take up in a later
chapter). It simply means that the institutions were offering degrees at those levels and allows
us to examine how widely available instruction on Japan is within American higher education.
The percentages in these four time periods represent what percent of all the schools in the
United States offering degrees at that level had some presence of Japanese Studies. It is thus,
in demographic terms, the rate of Japanese Studies presence per 100 academic institutions at
each degree level. The institution columns at the right of the table give the number and percent
of academic institutions in the United States that offered degrees at those levels in 2012, withthe 2005 figures in parentheses for comparison. To avoid further clutter to the table, we have
Table 4.3. Rate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic Institutionsin 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012 by Level of Degree*
1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions Degree   Level

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

AA

63

3.8

129

7.7

88

4.7

114

7.0

BA

269

16.5

383

23.5

333

19.7

366

23.3

MA

224

21.6

314

30.2

272

24.8

299

29.2

PhD

153

45.5

181

53.8

174

42.6

189

53.5

All Inst.

296

9.4

440

14.0

348

12.0

405

14.0

#

%

1618
55.9
(1885) (65.2)
1570
54.3
(1690) (58.5)
1023
35.4
(1096) (37.9)
353
12.2(408) (14.1)
2892 100.0(2890) (100.0)* Data for 1989 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 3.6, ch. 3, p. 54; 2005 data
along with earlier data reproduced in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 5.3, p. 103. This table combines separate analyses of institutions for each level at which degrees are offered,
so there is considerable overlap between categories and the numbers cannot be summed vertically. Institution numbers
and percentages are given for 2012, with 2005 number in parentheses.

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Chapter 474omitted the 1989-1995 institutional total figures, but keep in mind that the base for those years
was about 8 percent larger, primarily because it included a larger number of two year institutions that would only have offered associate degrees.
The first thing to note is that most institutions offer degrees at more than one level, so thenumbers and percentages cannot be added vertically. All of the absolute numbers of degreegranting institutions with some Japanese Studies presence were larger in 1995 than before orsince, so as with other comparative statistics in this study, it is sometimes helpful to skip 1995
and compare 1989 with 2005 and 2012, which shows a smoother upward trajectory. The calculations are also affected by changes in the base. That is, although the total number of academic
institutions in the denominator is almost the same for 2005 and 2012, the actual number of
institutions offering degrees at each level is lower in 2012.
Even with these caveats, it is clear that Japanese Studies is more likely to be available atinstitutions that offer advanced degrees. There is some presence of Japanese Studies at nearly
30 percent of the academic institutions in the United States offering Master’s degrees, and atover half of those offering doctorates. This is particularly impressive given that overall, there
is only a Japanese Studies presence at 14 percent of all institutions of higher education.
Another way to examine these data is to remove the rate calculations showing the percentage of all U.S. institutions at each level that have some Japanese Studies presence, andask instead whether the internal distribution of Japanese Studies programs across the various
degree levels has changed over time. Table 4.4 gives this comparison, calculating the percentage distribution of institutions with some Japanese Studies presence that offer degrees at eachlevel. Once again the percentages exceed 100% because most institutions offer degrees at morethan one level. In other words, we use the same numbers as Table 4.3, but this time we simply
calculate what percentage of the total number of institutions with Japanese Studies presence
offer a degree at that level.
This comparison clarifies the anomalies of the 1995 data somewhat. In 1995 the pool of
institutions reporting some Japanese Studies presence was inflated by a large number of juniorcolleges that had begun offering elementary Japanese language courses. Since those institutions do not offer any four year or advanced degrees, this not only increased the percentage ofinstitutions offering associate degrees, but also reduced the percentage offering four year andadvanced degrees. In 2005 and 2012 the number of junior colleges in the sample is considerably smaller and more of the institutions counted as offering AA degrees are actually four year
institutions that also offer two year degrees. In the 2012 sample, 90% of the institutions thathave some Japanese Studies presence offer BA degrees; three quarters offer MA degrees, andTable 4.4. Percentage of Academic Institutions with Some Presence of Japanese Studies
in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Level of Degree offered by the Institution*
1989

1995

2005

2012

 Degree   Level

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

AA
BA
MA
PhD
All Inst.

63
269
224
153
296

12.1
90.9
75.7
51.7

129
383
314
181
440

29.3
87.0
71.4
41.1

88
333
272
174
348

25.3
95.7
78.2
50.0

114
366
299
189
405

28.1
90.4
73.8
46.7

* Percentages recalculated from numbers of institutions in Table 4.3 above.

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

75

about half offer doctorates. Again, this does not mean that they offer degrees in Japanese Studies at those levels; it is simply an indication of what kinds of academic institutions have somepresence of Japanese Studies.
A somewhat different measure of the location of institutions with some Japanese Studies presence in the overall landscape of American high education is a scale provided by thePeterson guides that indicates how difficult it is for students to enter. For 1989 and 1995 wewere able to use Peterson’s code for both two year and four year institutions, but for 2005 and2012 the two year guide did not offer this measure. In the four year Guide, the scale values
were obtained by self-report of the institutions (p. 2933) and fewer institutions reported theirlevel of difficulty of entrance. We were able to supplement the information in some cases if
the institution reported that it had open admissions. The results are shown in Table 4.5, whichshould be read in the same fashion as Table 4.3. The columns for 1989, 1995, 2005 and 2012
give the number of institutions in our sample at each level of difficulty, and the percentage
column gives the rate that this represents among all institutions at that level of difficulty. The
Institutions columns provide the numeric basis on which each percentage was calculated, plus
the percentage distribution of difficulty of entrance levels across all institutions reporting.
The number of institutions for which selectivity ratings were available is considerably
smaller for 2005 and 2012, but the discrepancy is concentrated at lower levels of selectivity.
These categories are still very small overall, and the two top categories constitute a small fraction of all institutions of higher education in the U.S. Given that, plus the fact that our sample
of institutions with some presence of Japanese Studies comprises only 21% of all the institutions for which selectivity levels were reported, the results are quite impressive.
There is some presence of Japanese Studies at 80 percent of the most difficult institutions
to enter, and at over half of those that are reported to be very difficult to enter. Just over half of
our Japanese Studies sample (53.6%) falls into the moderately difficult to enter category, where
they comprise 22 percent of the institutions reporting this level of difficulty. The only surprisein 2012 is the larger number of institutions falling into the open admission category.
The bulge in the 1995 sample is shown here quite clearly to fall disproportionately into thetwo lowest categories and the large “moderately difficult to enter” category. While in 1995 I
expressed great enthusiasm over the movement of Japanese Studies into these more accessible
Table 4.5. Rate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic Institutionsin 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Difficulty of Entrance
Year

1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions­entrance

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

None
MinimalModerate
Very diff.
Most diff.

13
7
163
66
23

1.3
2.0
16.0
46.5
62.1

43
16
233
84
27

4.3
4.5
22.9
59.2
73.0

13
4
185
80
40

2.4
2.2
19.0
54.4
81.6

60
8
217
81
39

11.0
4.4
22.3
55.1
79.6

545
182
975
147
49

28.7
9.6
51.4
7.7
2.6

Total*

272

10.8

403

15.9

322

17.0

405

21.3

1898

100.0

* Data for 1989 and 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table. 3.7, ch.3, p. 55. Entrance difficulty for 1989 and 1995 coded from Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges, 1995 ed. and Peterson’s Guide to Two-Year
Colleges, 1995 ed. Data were not available for 599 institutions, including 24 from the 1989 sample and 37 from the 1995
sample. Entrance difficulty for 2005 and 2012 coded from Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges, 2005, 34th ed. Data
were not available for 992 institutions, including 26 in our 2005 sample and 12 in our 2012 sample.

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Chapter 4

76

institutions as a measure of the “normalization” of Japanese Studies, it now appears to havebeen to some extent an artifact of the Japanese bubble. This time, I take comfort in noting thatthe presence of Japanese Studies is holding its own at the middle levels, where the bulk of the
programs are located, and is even more strongly represented among the smaller number of themost selective institutions.
The selectivity measure is also skewed by the fact that the most highly selective undergraduate institutions—the measure we are using here—tend to be quite small private institutions. Not only are there few institutions in that category, they also enroll relatively small
numbers of students. To get a better picture of where Japanese Studies is located in the overall
range of American academic institutions, we must also examine the distribution by size. However, something as simple as the size of an institution can be measured in different ways andwe will explore several of them.

Size of Institutions with Japanese Studies
We begin with total enrollment, again using our data representing all academic institutions in the United States to calculate the rate of penetration of Japanese Studies among institutions of a particular size range. As shown in Table 4.6, Japanese Studies presence was most
Table 4.6. Rate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic Institutionsin 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Total Enrollment
Total

1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions­Enrolled

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

<1,000

16

2.2

29

3.0

10

1.4

14

2.0

1,000–
1,999
2,000–
4,999
5,000–
9,999
10,000–14,99915,000–19,99920,000+

35

6.3

64

11.4

51

8.9

56

10.1

43

6.5

69

10.5

70

9.6

77

10.5

39

10.1

75

19.3

46

10.7

65

15.1

42

23.0

67

36.6

49

26.6

56

29.8

36

45.0

40

50.0

30

34.1

38

41.8

696
(695)
555
(570)
736
(732)
430
(428)
188
(184)
91 (88)

65

58.5

73

65.7

89

58.6

96

63.2

152
(152)

24.0
(26.5)
19.7(20.8)
25.3(24.4)
14.8(14.4)
6.4
(6.8)
3.0
(3.0)
5.3
(4.1)

276

10.2

417

15.5

345

12.1

405

14.2

2,848
(2,849)100.0(100.0)Total** Data for 1989 and 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 3.8, ch. 3, p. 57. Enrollment category assignments from Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges, 1995 ed. and Peterson’s Guide to Two-Year Colleges,
1995 ed. Data were not available for 446 institutions, including 20 with Japanese Studies in 1989 and 23 with JapaneseStudies in 1995. For 2005, total enrollment was derived from our national list source supplemented by data in The College Board College Handbook 2004. Data were not available for 41 institutions, 3 of which were in our Japanese Studies
institutional sample. http://www.petersons.com/college-search.aspx was the source for total enrollment for 2012. Data
were not available for 44 institutions, including 15 in our institutional sample.

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heavily concentrated in the largest academic institutions, those with total enrollment of over
20,000 students, where it was available at 63% of institutions. It scales down systematically toa smaller percentage of each successive size category.
This pattern differs substantially from the overall size distribution of academic institutions in the United States, which is skewed in the opposite direction. Japanese Studies wasleast likely to be available at institutions with an enrollment of less than 1,000 (2.0% in 2012)
although institutions of that small size comprised nearly a quarter of all institutions of higher
education in the United States. The pattern is roughly similar for all four studies. The most basic explanation for the disproportionate representation of Japanese Studies at larger institutions
is that they are more able to support the specialized faculty and courses that Japanese Studies
entails, because they have a larger student market and a larger faculty. The largest institutions
that are most likely to have some presence of Japanese Studies are also most likely to be comprehensive research institutions offering graduate programs, although some are simply verylarge undergraduate institutions.
We know that Japanese Studies began initially at graduate institutions and served primarily graduate students. This has changed substantially in the past two decades. Now it is typically through exposure to Japan and to Japanese language at the undergraduate level (or even
earlier) that students decide to move more deeply into Japanese Studies. Looking only at undergraduate enrollment therefore provides a clearer picture of the extent of availability of Japanese Studies to American undergraduates, as shown in Table 4.7. The number of institutions
Table 4.7. Rate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Academic Institutionsin 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Undergraduate Enrollment
1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions

Undergrad.
Enrollment

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

<1,000

19

2.7

35

5.0

10

2.0

10

2.0

1,000–
1,999
2,000–
4,999
5,000–
9,999
10,000–14,99915,000+

42

7.4

70

12.4

52

9.8

57

10.7

53

8.4

86

13.5

79

12.2

92

14.2

46

12.5

76

20.7

60

15.9

81

20.9

47

30.3

64

41.3

37

25.5

41

27.3

64

46.7

74

54.0

93

48.4

103

52.8

506
(503)
533
(529)
650
(649)
388
(378)
150
(145)
195
(192)

21.0
(27.6)
22.1(22.0)
27.1(24.8)
15.8(14.3)
6.1
(6.0)
8.0
(5.3)

Total*

271

10.5

405

15.7

331

13.8

384

15.9

2,422
(2,396)100.0(100.0)* Data for 1989 and 1995 from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 3.9, ch. 3, p. 58. Enrollment category assignments from Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges, 1995 ed. and Peterson’s Guide to Two-Year Colleges,
1995 ed. Data were not available for 568 institutions, including 25 with Japanese Studies in 1989 and 35 with JapaneseStudies in 1995. Enrollment category assignments for 2005 from The College Board Handbook 2004. Undergraduate enrollment data for 2005 was not available for 494 institutions, including 17 with Japanese Studies. http://www​.­petersons​.com/college-search.aspx was the source for enrollment figures for 2012. Undergraduate enrollment data for 2012 was
not available for 470 institutions, including 33 with Japanese Studies.

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Chapter 478

with some Japanese Studies presence in each size category of undergraduate enrollment has
fluctuated considerably over the four studies, and the reported total number of institutions with
undergraduate enrollment in each size category has also fluctuated, largely due to incomplete
data. Despite this, the overall pattern remains quite clear and stable: Japanese Studies has somepresence at about half of academic institutions with undergraduate enrollment of over 15,000
students, and a quarter of those with 10,000 to 14,999 undergraduates. Thus, even though theoverall penetration of Japanese Studies reaches less than 16 percent of all academic institutions, its reach is more extensive because of its much higher relative availability at institutions
with large numbers of undergraduates. Many of the institutions with the largest undergraduate
enrollments are public institutions, usually at least partially state-supported.
However, to stop there would provide a somewhat misleading picture of the situation. Institutions with 10,000 or more undergraduates make up only a small fraction of all academic
institutions in the United States, which is why the penetration of Japanese Studies appears tobe so high at that level. In fact, over sixty percent of the Japanese Studies presence is at institutions with less than 10,000 undergraduates. As we have noted since 1995, supporting JapaneseStudies in a large number of smaller institutions poses challenges quite different from theneeds at large research institutions.

Geographic and Regional Distribution of Japanese Studies
Using our broadest count of 411 academic institutions with some presence of JapaneseStudies, such institutions can now be found in all 50 states. In four states there is no academic
institution with a full entry in the institutions directory, but these states have Japan specialists
with entries in the specialist directory who list an academic affiliation. Conversely, twelve
institutions did not have anyone on the list of Other academic institutions with Japan specialist staff, but there was at least one institution with a full entry in each of those states. We can
explore their distribution further with the regional categories we used earlier for Japan specialists, as shown in Table 4.8. The number and regional percentage distribution of Japan specialists from the specialists directory have been added for comparison.
Overall, Japanese Studies was most prevalent at academic institutions in the Midwest,
Northeast, and Pacific regions. These three regions also had higher concentrations of programs
Table 4.8 Distribution of Academic Institutions and Specialists, by Region, 2012*
Full Entry

Secondary List

A ll Institutions

Specialists  R egion

#

%

#

%

#

% Dist.

#%Northeast
Mid-AtlanticSouth
MidwestSouthwestMountain
Pacific

45
33
33
66

18.1
13.3
13.3
26.6

34
23
24
43

20.9
14.1
14.7
26.4

79
56
57
109

19.2
13.6
13.9
26.5

314
198
107
344

22.2
14.0
7.6
24.3

22
49

8.9
19.8

14
25

8.6
15.3

36
74

8.8
18.0

101
352

7.1
24.9

Total

248

100.0

163

100.0

411

100.0

1416

100.1

* Percents for institutions and specialists slightly off due to rounding. Southwest and Mountain regions combined.

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

79

with full directory entries, but the differences are not that great. However, there is a significant
discrepancy between the distribution of specialists and the distribution of academic institutions. This is only partially caused by the non-academic employment of Japan specialists. It
also reflects the fact that in the Northeast and Pacific regions there are larger academic programs employing more Japan specialists, while in the South and Southwest-Mountain regions
the Japanese Studies programs tend to be smaller in scale.
We can now compare the overall distribution of Japanese Studies at academic institutionsin the United States in 2012 with the distribution found in previous studies, as shown in Table
4.9, below. The Midwest region contains the largest percentage of academic institutions withsome Japanese Studies presence, at around 25 percent, which has held steady through all fourstudies. The Pacific region has steadily lost ground compared to the Northeast. The percentages allow us to make a relative comparison of the distribution of Japanese Studies institutions
over the four study periods, but they do not account for the varying sizes of the regions, whichare, after all, simply collections of states with greatly varying populations and thus different
numbers of academic institutions.
The situation may be clarified further by examining the rates of penetration by region, using our national database. This analysis controls for the differing number of academic institutions in each region. The results are shown below in Table 4.10. below. This table reveals that
the Northeast and Pacific regions have comparable rates of penetration of Japanese Studies,with some level of Japanese Studies available at 20 to 22 percent of all post-secondary academic institutions in the region, or about one in five. The high percentage distribution in the
Midwest region is now shown to be simply a function of the much larger number of academic
institutions in that region. The rate of penetration in the Midwest is at the same level as the
Mid-Atlantic region, at 13 to 15 percent or one in six. The South and the Southwest-Mountainregions now have penetration rates of eight to nine percent, which is a substantial increase
from just six years ago.
These regional findings can be further clarified if we look at the regional distribution of
institutions offering different levels of academic degrees. As indicated earlier, institutions ofTable 4.9. Regional Distribution of Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions,
1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1989

1995

2005

2012

  R egion

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Northeast
Mid-AtlanticSouth
MidwestSouthwestMountain
Pacific
Total

61
40
30
72

20.6
13.5
10.1
24.3

76
69
48
113

17.3
15.7
10.9
25.7

75
50
41
87

21.6
14.4
11.8
25.0

79
56
57
109

19.2
13.6
13.9
26.5

22
71
296

7.4
24.0
99.9

42
92
440

9.5
20.9
100.0

28
67
348

8.0
19.3
100.1

36
74
411

8.8
18.0
100.0

* Data for 1989 and 1995 recalculated from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 3.11, ch. 3, p. 61.
Southwest and Mountain regions have been combined because of the relatively small number of cases. Data for 2005 andall previous years taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table
5.10 p. 110.

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Chapter 4

80

Table 4.10. Rate of Penetration of Japanese Studies at American Academic Institutionsin 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012, by Geographic Region*
1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions

Total Enrolled

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Northeast

61

14.5

76

18.0

75

19.0

79

20.0

Mid-Atlantic

40

8.8

69

15.1

50

12.0

56

13.5

South

30

4.5

48

7.1

41

6.7

57

9.3

Midwest

72

9.3

113

14.7

87

12.1

109

15.2

SouthwestMountain
Pacific

22

4.6

42

8.8

28

6.8

36

8.8

71

17.8

92

23.1

67

19.7

74

22.6

611
21.1
(611) (21.4)718
24.8(717) (24.6)
411
14.2(411) (15.2)328
11.8(340) (12.7)
2,879 100.0(2,890) (100.0)
340
11.8

Total

296

9.4

440

14.0

348

12.0

411

14.3

2,890

100.0

* Data for 1989 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 3.11, ch. 3, p. 61. Southwest
and Mountain regions have been combined because of the relatively low number of cases. Data for 2005 and all previous
years from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 5.11, p. 110.

Table 4.11. Rate of Availability of Japanese Studies at American Institutions in 2012,
by Region and Level of Degree Offered*
Associate

Bachelor’s

M aster’sDoctorate  R egion

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Northeast
Mid-AtlanticSouth
MidwestSouthwestMountain
Pacific

19
17
20
32

9.9
7.9
5.8
7.7

76
51
54
98

29.9
21.1
17.2
23.7

64
38
51
68

36.2
24.8
26.8
28.8

35
26
33
42

63.6
54.2
49.3
60.0

9
13

3.5
6.8

33
49

17.1
33.3

29
45

40.8
37.2

24
27

38.1
56.3

All Regions

110

6.8

361

23.1

295

28.9

187

53.3

* Rates calculated separately for each region and degree level, so the cell numbers and rates cannot be summed.

fer degrees at multiple levels and the rates are calculated against the base of all institutions
that offer the specified degree level in that region, hence the percentages or rates cannot besummed. In addition, the calculation simply indicates whether there is some presence of Japanese Studies at an institution that offers a particular level of degree; it does not indicate that aJapanese Studies degree is actually available.
As shown in Table 4.11, at the bachelor’s degree level the Pacific has the highest rate ofpenetration with some presence of Japanese Studies at one-third of all institutions offering theBA, followed by the Northeast at about 30 percent. At the MA level the Northeast and Pacificmonograph.indb 80

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Japanese Studies at Academic Institutions

81

are both above one-third, and the small Southwest-Mountain region is even higher, presumably because of a small total number of institutions. The other three areas are not far behindwith some presence of Japanese Studies at over a quarter of all institutions offering the MA.
The results are most dramatic at the doctoral level, where more than half of all institutions
that offer PhD degrees in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Pacific regions have somepresence of Japanese Studies. The South and Southwest-Mountain regions are lower, but still
very respectable.

Limits of These Measures
We have gone as far as we can using our broadest measure, in which we combine academic
institutions with full entries in the directory of Japanese Studies with additional academic
institutions that were identified through the affiliations of Japan specialists listed in the specialists’ directory. While this has allowed us to examine in very general terms where there issome presence of Japanese Studies both geographically and in terms of different structural
aspects of academic institutions, and has helped to clear up the discrepancy between staff lists
and entries in the specialist directory, it does not really tell us much about the actual academic
programs in Japanese Studies that these people and institutions represent. For that, we mustturn to the data provided by institutions about their Japanese Studies programs, supplemented
with what Japan specialists have told us in their survey about their experiences in these programs. We begin with academic courses, which are not only the most basic building blocks ofacademic study of Japan in the United States, but also offer the most complete and reliable data
we have been able to collect about academic programs in Japanese Studies.

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5Academic Courses on Japan

In this chapter and the next one we will examine the array of opportunities to learn about
Japan that are currently offered by and through academic institutions in the United States, using the information collected through our directory questionnaire and the additional surveys
to both Japanese Studies institutions and Japan specialists.
We will focus on individual instructional course offerings in this chapter, since these are
the basic building blocks of instruction in the American higher educational system. In our
survey, the course offerings are also the most comprehensive and reliable form of data we wereable to collect about academic programs in Japanese Studies. Although the specific courses
may change somewhat from year to year, they offer a very detailed picture of the range andnature of the options available to students at a particular institution. They also are the vehicle
by which students who are not Japanese Studies majors may sample the field, so they represent
the broadest way that Japanese Studies is offered at an academic institution.
Most courses are available to all students who meet the basic prerequisites, regardless ofwhether they are enrolled in a degree program in that field or not. In fact, more than half ofthe course credits that students must acquire in order to obtain an undergraduate degree are
either used to fulfill general education requirements across several disciplines, or are electives
that the student can choose. General education requirements typically include a basic foreign
language requirement, and some students may meet this requirement with Japanese language
courses. Students may also take Japan-related area courses as electives.
As noted in the introduction, the American higher education system is distinctive in that
only a relatively small proportion of all the courses that a student takes, perhaps a quarter, arecounted as part of an academic major or minor. A distinction is often made between lower
division courses that students normally take in their first two years to fulfill general education
requirements, and upper division courses that students take as juniors or seniors to meet therequirements of their major or as electives. We will also look at graduate courses as part ofthis assessment, since graduate education is an intrinsic part of Japanese Studies in American
higher education. Even at the graduate level, students may take both language and area courses
and seminars on Japan that are independent of their specific degree program.
In chapter 4 we used an expanded data set to examine staffing, by combining the 248
programs with entries in the 2012 directory with a secondary list of 163 institutions that haveat least one Japan specialist on their staff, whether or not they have an academic program82

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Academic Courses on Japan83

related to Japan. We now must abandon that strategy and look only at the data we have collected directly from institutions. Even then, things are not straightforward because our data areinevitably incomplete. Although we have 248 entries in the directory, we did not have staffing
information from all of them and we also do not have course information for all of those programs. We will look both at Japanese language courses and at academic courses that are all orpartly about Japan, using the maximum number of cases available for each analysis.
Our online data collection system presented institutional respondents with a list of thecourses their program had reported in 2005, and asked them to indicate on the form whether
the course was still being offered as before, had been changed, or had been dropped. We thenasked them to add any new courses. The information we requested theoretically allows us to
examine quite directly what has happened to Japanese Studies courses over the past decade,because we retained considerable data from the old courses. As was true in 2005, twice as
many new courses have been added as have been dropped. Of the 1,702 new courses, twothirds (1151) were area courses while the rest were language courses. One-fifth (340) of the
new courses were from 29 institutions that had only a secondary entry in the directory in 2005.
The remaining 80 percent of the new courses came from institutions that had a full entry in
the 2005 directory. Needless to say, we only know about courses that were dropped if the program had an entry in the 2005 directory. Of the 792 courses dropped since 2005, 80 percent(635) were area courses and the remaining 20 percent were language courses. If we omit the
programs that did not have courses reported for the 2005 directory, there is still a 72 percent
increase in new courses at the institutions that did have a program entry in 2005. A word ofcaution is in order here. We are only looking at whether courses were listed as “new” as opposed to those that previously existed at the institution. This is not a measure of the overall
increase in courses, but only indicates that there is a fair amount of curricular revision taking
place. That is normal in the American academic world, where individual faculty members canusually create new courses quite easily within their department, unlike the situation in Japan
where such courses have to be approved at much higher administrative levels. This flexibility
allows Japanese Studies programs to respond to student demand fairly quickly.
The basic course unit that institutions report is either a semester with two semesters per
academic year, or the quarter, with three quarters per academic year. The majority of institutions use the semester system, but a substantial minority use quarters. Most academic courses
change some part of their identifier if they continue for more than one quarter or semester, andin that case we would have separate records for each unit. A few institutions reported only one
entry for each year level of their Japanese language courses. We have made some adjustments
to regularize the course data, and we believe any remaining anomalies in the three types ofcourses balance out so that the number of courses can be thought of as roughly corresponding
to the number of semester courses offered.
There were 248 academic institutions in the United States with program entries in the2005 directory, but only 231 reported any courses. Of these, 21 reported only language and noarea courses, while 17 others reported only area courses and no Japanese language instruction.
These 231 institutions reported a total of 6, 205 current course offerings with some coverageof Japan, including both language and area offerings. The total number of courses reported increased by 13 percent over the number reported in 2005, as shown in Table 5.1, which includes
both language and area courses. The increase is found across the board: it occurs at all levels
and both for courses exclusively on Japan and for multinational courses that include someJapan content. This is very clear evidence that instruction on Japan has continued to broaden
and deepen. The increase is slightly greater (14.8%) in upper division courses, where advanced

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Chapter 5

84

Table 5.1. Courses Related to Japan, by Course Level and Extent of Content on Japan,
1995, 2005, and 2012*
Level
Content

Lower Division

Upper Division

Graduate

Total

Year

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Exclusively on
Japan

1995
2005
2012

1,260
1,355
1,580

35.2
31.8
33.0

1,695
2,245
2,585

47.3
52.7
53.9

629
661
628

17.6
15.5
13.1

3,584
4,261
4,793

79.5
77.6
77.2

Multinationalwith Japan

1995
2005
2012

285
411
467

30.9
33.5
33.1

474
629
713

51.4
51.2
50.5

163
188
232

17.7
15.3
16.4

922
1,228

20.5
22.4
20.7

Total on Japan

1995
2005
2012

1,545
1,766
2,047

34.3
32.2
33.0

2,169
2,873
3.298

48.1
52.4
53.2

792
848
860

17.6
15.5
13.9

4,506
5,489
6.205

100.0
100.0
100.0

% Increase in 2012

+13.9

+14.8

+1.4

+13.0

* Data from 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.1, Chapter 7, page 168. Data for2005 and data for 1995 reproduced in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.1, p. 114.

language courses and specialized area courses are generally offered as compared to lower
division basic courses. There is only a slight increase at the graduate level, in part probably
because many advanced language courses are now offered to upper-division undergraduates.
Over three-quarters of the courses are exclusively on Japan. The counts are somewhat
confounded by the fact that large Japanese Studies programs tend not to report their multinational courses, while small programs report them even if the Japan content is relatively small.
Our counts are always incomplete; consequently, the number of courses that we have documented here should really be considered a very conservative estimate of the actual number ofcourses related to Japan that are currently being offered in the United States.
As in previous studies, we used each institution’s course numbering system, department
and course title to code the courses according to the same disciplinary categories used by
Japan specialists in the study to identify their own disciplines. The courses were distributed
across 52 disciplines, four more than in 2005, plus 162 courses that could not be classified andwere coded as “other.” These “other” courses were primarily directed readings or other forms
of independent work that programs offer to accommodate individual circumstances. They areincluded in our tallies because the institutions included them in their course listings, and they
do represent additional opportunities for students to do individualized work related to Japan.
The additional disciplines are partly a coding artifact. Our coding system for disciplines
gets expanded when specialists want to add new disciplines, when in fact some of these may
have been incorporated in a more traditional discipline in the past. They reflect the fluidityof disciplinary categories in general, and we take note of them because they are indicators of
how the field is changing over time. However in some cases we recombine them into older categories in order to make comparisons with earlier data. For example, the category of political
economy has been available as a discipline for some time, as has international relations, but inearlier studies we may have coded such courses as political science. When this causes anomalies in the comparisons, we combine the categories. Similarly, we have distinguished courses

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Academic Courses on Japan85

on translation and those on second language acquisition because they are increasingly being
recognized as separate disciplinary categories. However, previously these courses might justhave been coded as language or literature courses. The one clear case where a new category
does not easily fit into old ones is popular culture. It is a clear manifestation of the ascendanceof the cultural studies paradigm in American Japanese Studies.
In the following sections we will examine in more detail first Japanese language courses
and then area courses that contain Japan content. Whenever possible we will make comparisons with data from earlier studies in order to examine the long-term trajectory of academic
instruction on Japan in the United States, adapting the coding as needed.

Japanese Language Courses
By far the largest single group of courses is 1,994 Japanese language courses, which comprise over 30 percent (32.1%) of all Japan-related courses. This is a 15.6 percent increase in
the number of Japanese language courses using the same criteria as in 2005. However, thisfigure does not include 199 literature courses and 66 linguistics courses taught in Japanese,
plus smaller numbers in other disciplines that are either taught in Japanese or rely heavily on
Japanese language materials. All graduate level courses and seminars taught primarily in Japanese were coded in their respective disciplines, although they were also identified as requiring Japanese language. If we include all of these additional courses that are essentially taught
using Japanese language, a total of 2,425 courses involve teaching or using Japanese language.
These courses now account for nearly 40 percent (39.1%) of the total of 6,205 courses withJapan content.
Of the 2,425 Japanese language courses and disciplinary courses that use Japanese language materials, we have coded 17.8 percent, or 431 courses, in disciplines outside of regular
language departments and programs. This is an increase of 51 percent over the 2005 number.
These include advanced courses reading original Japanese materials that are offered in various
departments, plus linguistics courses analyzing aspects of the Japanese language, second language acquisition courses dealing with Japanese language pedagogy at an advanced level, andspecialized courses in technical Japanese for fields as diverse as law and engineering. Table 5.2
shows the distribution of all courses that use Japanese language materials, with percentages
also calculated only for those coded as disciplinary offerings.
We have been able to code most of these 2,425 courses into nine categories of language
courses. The categories include the basic levels of language instruction, plus a variety of specialized offerings such as accelerated courses, courses that teach Japanese language needed
for particular professional and technical fields such as business, law, and engineering, andadvanced courses that develop Japanese skills for communicating orally and in writing, andfor reading materials in various genres. The categories encompass the full range of Japanese
courses and seminars available, but they do not fall as neatly into an ordered sequence as one
might expect.
The first four categories represent basic years of language instruction, which normally
include all four language skills. However, many smaller programs offer three levels of regular
language courses and then offer more specialized courses at the fourth level. Hence there issome inevitable overlap between these two categories. Accelerated courses are normally offered to compress the basics of first and second year Japanese into one year, or to offer a year’s
work or more in one intensive summer session. They thus overlap with the offerings in firstand second year Japanese, but need to be counted separately. In addition, some of the larger

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Chapter 5

86

Table 5.2. Disciplines Offering Courses Using Japanese Language Materials,
2005 and 2012
# of Courses Using
Japanese% of A ll Language
Courses% of Courses Outside
Language Program  Discipline

2005

2012

2005

2012

2005

2012

Anthropology
History
Linguistics
Literature
Political Science
Religion-Philosophy
Performing Arts
Film Studies
Women’s Studies
Culture-Civilization
Japanese Lang. Program
2nd Language Acquisition
Translation
Other

1
8
53
134
3
2
1
8
3
22
1725

0.0
0.4
2.6
6.7
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.4
0.1
1.1
85.8

2.4

0.0
0.4
2.7
8.2
0.1
0.2
0.2
0.5
0.1
1.5
82.2
0.3
0.7
2.8

0.4
2.8
18.6
47.0
1.1
0.7
0.4
2.8
1.1
7.7
–

50

0
9
66
199
2
6
4
12
1
37
1994
8
18
69

17.5

0.0
2.1
15.3
46.2
0.5
1.4
0.9
2.8
0.2
8.6
–
1.9
4.2
16.0

Total

2010

2425

100%

100%

285

431

* Data for 2005 from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.2, p.
116.

programs now offer additional tracks at the first and even second year level to accommodate
students who have some prior Japanese language exposure or training but are not ready for thehigher level offerings. These have been counted within the respective language levels.
Classical Japanese or kambun courses are normally offered only to students who havecompleted three or four years of regular Japanese courses, whereas the specialized courses for
professional and technical fields may be offered at lower levels, as alternatives to the regularsequence of language courses. However, some of these courses are offered at higher levels
to develop specialized vocabulary and reading skills to students who already have a strong
foundation in Japanese. Most of the disciplinary courses that use Japanese materials have beencoded either as advanced reading courses or as courses for specialized professional needs.
Table 5.3 shows the number of courses of each type, and the number of institutions offeringcourses of that type. The base is all programs that offer Japanese language, omitting the small
number of seventeen programs that offer only area courses and not language. Just under forty
percent of all Japanese language courses are basic courses at the first and second year level,
and the addition of the accelerated offerings only raises this slightly. The number of courses is
actually slightly higher in the second year, because of offerings that accommodate students withsome background. Nearly thirty percent of the courses are listed as regular Japanese courses at
the third and fourth year levels. That still leaves another 30 percent of the Japanese classes that
represent some sort of specialized training, either as advanced reading or conversation courses,
Japanese for a specialized field, or work on an individualized project under the guidance of an
instructor. The broad distribution of course offerings indicates that Japanese language training

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Academic Courses on Japan

87

Table 5.3. Japanese Language Courses by Type, and Number and Percent of Institutions
Offering Each Type, 2012, with 2005 Comparison of Number of Institutions
Institutions
Offering Courses

Language Courses   Course Type#%# 2012(# 2005)

2012 %*First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Fourth Year, Advanced
Advanced Reading or Conversation
Classical, Kambun
Accelerated
Specialized Field
Individual, Tutorial

493
458
404
294
313
98
56
173
136

20.3
18.9
16.7
12.1
12.9
4.0
2.3
7.1
5.6

214
201
167
120
79
37
26
67
65

(172)
(167)
(138)
(92)
(65)
(35)
(22)
(41)
(56)

100.0
93.9
78.0
56.1
36.9
17.3
12.0
31.3
30.4

2,425

100.0

214

(174)

Total

* Percents in this column cannot be added together. Data for 2005 from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.3 p.117.

in the U.S. has matured into a complex enterprise that handles diverse needs and skill levels.
However, counting courses inevitably shifts the balance toward the introductory level offeringsand obscures the reach of the more advanced and specialized options.
Looking at the number of institutions that offer each type of Japanese language course
provides another perspective, one that emphasizes how widely these various types of offerings
are available. Overall, 214 of the 231 academic institutions with program entries in the directory of Japanese Studies institutions that reported their courses offer first year Japanese. The
other seventeen offer no Japanese language instruction. The number of institutions drops off
only slightly for the second year. Nearly four out of five (78 %) of the institutions offering Japanese language now offer at least three years of basic instruction, and over half (56.1%) offer
fourth year regular Japanese courses. Over a third (36.9%) offer advanced reading or conversation courses, and 17 percent offer classical Japanese or kambun courses. Nearly a third (30.4%)
offer separate courses for students in professional and technical fields.
Another way of examining language offerings and making comparisons over time is to ask
what is the highest level of Japanese language courses available as on-campus, in-classroom
instruction at each institution. Previous studies have been tracking this since the 1970s, so we
can add our 2012 data to the series. These statistics combine offerings at the fourth year or
higher, thus avoiding some of the ambiguity in our more detailed classification. The comparisons are shown in Table 5.4, below. The data demonstrate dramatically the increased depth andstrength that Japanese language programs have achieved in less than a decade. Only a handfulof programs offer just one year of Japanese in 2012, and a relatively small percentage (14.0%)
stop at two years. The same number (39) stop at three years as in 2005, but they constitute a
smaller percentage of the total in 2012. The most dramatic changes in Japanese language instruction are at the top end of the scale. The number of programs offering four or more years ofJapanese has grown by 25 percent, and just over 60 percent of all Japanese language programs
offer four years or more of classroom language instruction. This is clear evidence that JapaneseStudies programs in the United States are steadily becoming stronger, broader, and deeper.

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Chapter 5

88

Table 5.4. Highest Level of Japanese Language Courses Available at Schools Offering
On-Campus, In-Classroom Language Instruction, 1977, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
Highest Level
of Japanese

1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Fourth Year or
higherNot Clear

30
22
23

27.8
20.4
21.3

29
34
34

19.0
22.2
22.2

31
59
46

14.8
28.2
22.0

5
26
39

2.9
14.9
22.4

12
30
39

5.6
14.0
18.2

33
–

30.6
–

33
23

21.6
15.0

73
–

34.9
–

104

59.8

131

61.2

Total

108

100.1

153

100.0

209

99.9

174

100.0

214

99.0

* 1977 data from 1977 CULCON Report, Table 4, p. 17; 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 18, p. 38.
Data for 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.12, Chapter 7, page185. Data from 2005 and earlier data republished in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities andOpportunities, Table 6.4, p. 118.

Enrollment data are available for only about 20 percent of the language courses reported
to the study. The results are shown in Table 5.5, with corresponding figures for 1995 and 2005.
Although the number of institutions reporting language course enrollments is lower, the actual
number of enrollments reported is still 90 percent of the total enrollment reported in 2005,
which suggests that the unreported actual enrollment must be substantially more. We stillneed to take the numbers with a grain of salt because they represent a smaller proportion of thetotal. Yet the change in the proportional distribution of enrollments within each study over the
past 18 years is quite astonishing. In 1995, first and second year Japanese accounted for overthree quarters of all Japanese language enrollments reported. By 2005 this had dropped to
two-thirds of all Japanese language course enrollments. Now in 2012, this has dropped further
to less than half of all the reported enrollments! The data also show clearly that this increasein higher level Japanese language courses has taken place in the context of steadily increasing
number of courses at the basic levels.
It has been a truism in Japanese Studies that Japanese language enrollments drop substantially after the first year, and then fall steadily at higher levels. Our findings in 2005 showed nodrop at all in the number of courses offered at the first and second year, but enrollment in thesecond year dropped to about half the first year level. This year the pattern was similar exceptthat average enrollments in second year courses was abnormally high, which may be an artifactof the smaller sample size. What is more remarkable is that average enrollments remain higher
than in previous studies at the third, fourth, and higher levels. It is these solid enrollments thatallow Japanese language programs to continue offering higher level language courses and todiversify their advanced offerings. At the third year level, the decrease of only eight percent
in numbers of courses and about 40 percent in enrollments indicates that substantial numbersof students continue through the third year. In fact, the number of third year Japanese courses
reported in 2012 is about the same as the number of second year courses offered in 2005. Substantially more courses are offered at the fourth year level in 2012. There is only a 40 percent
decrease in the number of Japanese language courses from the first year to the fourth, and theaverage enrollment at the fourth year level is still very solid, although the number of courses
for which enrollment data was available is rather small. The number of programs offering amonograph.indb 88

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Table 5.5. Japanese Language Courses and Course Enrollments for 1995, 2005, and2012, by Course Level or Type*
Courses

Enrollment
% of

% of

# with

Total

Mean

enrollments

Level and Year#coursesenrollment

enrollment

enrollment

1995
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Fourth Year
Advanced, Special
Classical
Accelerated
Business, Technical
Directed Reading

459
385
270
146
79
46
58
90
47

29.1
24.4
17.1
9.2
5.0
2.9
3.7
5.7
3.0

268
205
129
80
28
20
33
37
16

17,748
7,740
3,830
1,290
392
257
356
588
146

66.2
37.8
29.7
16.2
14.0
12.9
10.8
15.9
9.1

55.0
23.9
11.9
4.0
1.2
0.8
1.1
1.8
0.5

1,580

100.1

816

32,347

39.6

100.2

400
409
330
202
237
87
68
140
121

20.1
20.5
16.5
10.1
11.9
4.4
3.4
7.0
6.1

188
181
149
103
153
51
42
88
60

7,547
3,881
2,070
1,572
877
204
352
525
78

40.1
21.4
13.9
16.3
5.7
4.0
8.4
6.0
1.3

44.1
22.7
12.1
9.2
5.1
1.2
2.1
3.1
0.5

1,995

100.0

1,015

17,106

16.6

100.1

493
458
404
294
313
98
56
173
136

20.3
18.9
16.7
12.1
12.9
4.0
2.3
7.1
5.6

115
102
84
54
44
11
5
33
17

7,041
4,079
2,019
972
500
120
55
457
162

24.7
39.99
24.04
18.0
11.36
10.91
11.0
13.85
9.53

24.7
21.9
18.1
11.6
9.5
2.4
1.1
7.1
3.7

2,425

100.0

465

15,405

33.13

100.0

Total
2005
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Fourth Year
Advanced, Special
Classical
Accelerated
Business, Technical
Directed Reading
Total
2012
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Fourth Year
Advanced, Special
Classical
Accelerated
Business, Technical
Directed Reading
Total* Enrollments for 1995 based on number of courses for which institutions reported enrollment figures for 1992-93
academic year. Enrollments for 2005 based on number of courses for which institutions reported enrollment figures forthe 2003-2004 academic year. Data for 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.13,
Chapter 7, page 186 and reported in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities,
Table 6.5 p. 119.

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90

Chapter 5fourth level of regular Japanese instruction has grown by about 45 percent, but in addition,
there has been a proliferation of specialized courses at even more advanced levels.
The number of courses coded as advanced and specialized had tripled from the 79 reported in 1995 to 237 reported in 2005, and is even higher in 2012 at 313. while the number ofcourses in classical Japanese has nearly doubled, from 46 to 87. Even courses in business andtechnical Japanese, which one might have expected would fade after the Japan boom ended,
are up by more than 50 percent, from 90 reported in 1995 to 140 in 2005. In many cases, thisalso represents an expansion of the offerings in business or technical Japanese to provide moreadvanced training. Whereas in 1995 there may have been one or two semesters offered, now
there may be three or four levels available. Although the mean enrollment figures for thesecourses appear to be quite low, at most institutions even higher level and specialized language
courses must meet institutional enrollment quotas or face elimination. It is likely that some of
the more specialized courses are offered once every one or two years, rather than every semester. The demand for higher levels of Japanese language instruction also translates into moredemand for individualized instruction so that students can work on independent projects andtheses under faculty guidance. This is reflected in a 157 percent increase in the number of suchofferings, from 47 in 1995 to 121 in 2005 and 136 in 2012. The clear implication is that there
are more students now in American institutions who have acquired sufficient Japanese language ability to read natural language materials and to do independent work using Japanese.
Other evidence indicates that many of those now enrolled in higher level Japanese courses
are students who entered college Japanese classes with prior exposure to the language. Our
surveys in 1995 and 2005 asked institutions to estimate the percent of students entering theircollege level Japanese language classes who had prior exposure to Japanese from five sources,
each of which constituted a separate question so the totals may add up to more than 100 percent. In general, the response rate for this set of questions is fairly low because the questionnaires are often completed by persons who do not have direct experience with the institution’s
lower level language courses. The smaller sample in 2005 reported essentially the same percentages of entering Japanese language students who grew up in Japan and small increases in
the percentage who had used Japanese at home with a native-speaking parent or had studied
it at another college or university. There was a 25% decrease in the percentage of students
who were reported as having lived in Japan for a year or more. Since the question asked about
students entering college Japanese classes, this would presumably refer to students who participated in exchange programs during high school or had lived in Japan with their families at
an earlier age. It would not include most students who participate in college level study abroad
programs after they have taken some Japanese at the institution. The most impressive finding,however, was a 40% increase in the percentage of students who had studied Japanese in highschool, which now accounts for more than one in eight entering Japanese language students.
The comparisons for 2012 with these earlier findings are shown below in Table 5.6.
Clearly, part of the dramatic increase in higher levels of Japanese courses at the college levelis attributable to the increased availability of Japanese language courses at the high school levelin the United States. That number now stands at 15 percent. Although our study does not attempt
to track this phenomenon directly, other organizations have been monitoring and developing
Japanese language instruction at the K-12 levels for some time. Their efforts have been so successful that an advanced placement exam is now available for Japanese. High school students
who take Japanese courses meeting certain content standards and who score well on the AP
exam can receive college credit for their achievements in high school Japanese language classes,
just as they can do for advanced work in other academic fields and in European languages. Japa-

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Academic Courses on Japan

91

Table 5.6. Estimated Percentage of Students Entering Japanese Language Programs
Who Have Prior Japanese Language Exposure*
1995
Type of Prior Exposure to
Japanese

Grew up in Japan,
learned as a child
Use at home, nativespeaking parent
Studied at another college or university
Lived in Japan one year
or moreStudied Japanese inhigh school

2005

2012

# of
Institutions% ofStudents# ofInstitutions% ofStudents# ofInstitutions% ofStudents

100

3.37

35

3.34

52

2.4

114

4.78

45

5.80

69

3.9

110

6.44

54

7.00

73

10.7

123

7.39

54

5.59

81

6.0

118

9.21

59

12.93

90

15.4

* Percentage given is the average of percentages reported by all institutions (# of Institutions) responding to the question. Each question is separate, so neither numbers nor percentages can be added. Data for 1995 taken from JapaneseStudies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.14, Chapter 7, page 188. Reported in Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table.6.6, p.120.

nese is now the fourth most commonly taught language in the United States, in both high school
and college (and ahead of Chinese). This is in large measure because of these developments at
the high school level and their impact on enrollments in college courses in Japanese.
By every measure, then, the language component of Japanese Studies programs in the
United States has grown deeper and richer over the past decade. The strength of the language
offerings provides a strong base for the area courses in Japanese Studies. We turn now to acloser examination of those courses.

Area Courses with Japan Content
In this section our analysis will exclude the formal Japanese language courses offered bylanguage programs and look more closely at area courses exclusively on Japan and multinational courses that include content on Japan. We retain for this analysis the higher level courses
using Japanese materials that are classified in a discipline such as literature, linguistics, or history. We also retain a substantial number of non-language courses that are offered by Japanese
language programs but taught in English. These include not only Japanese literature and film
courses, but also some courses on Japanese culture and society or language and society. Ifthey are offered within a language and literature or language and culture department, we havegenerally coded them as Japanese studies or sociolinguistics courses, unless they are taught
by a social scientist. As noted above, courses related to Japan are now being offered in 52
disciplines. Table 5.7 shows only those disciplines in which 25 or more courses are offered, bycourse level. They are listed in descending order by number of courses.
There have been several changes in the rank ordering of the courses by discipline over the
past decade, as well as some new entries. The top six disciplines remain the same as in 2005,
with even larger numbers of courses, but Linguistics has now dropped below Buddhist Studies
and Film Studies. Anthropology has also dropped below Linguistics.

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92

Table 5.7. Japanese Area Courses in Disciplines with 25 or More Courses,
by Course Level, 2012*

Course Level
Discipline

Lower Division

Upper Division

Graduate%
Change

Total

since

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

2005

History
Literature
Art History
Japanese Studies
Political Science
Religion
Buddhist Studies
Film Studies
Linguistics
Anthropology
East Asian Studies
Popular Culture
Asian Studies
Performing Arts
Second Lang.
­Acquis.
Philosophy
Sociology
Economics
Japanese Lang.
Women’s Studies
Music
Business Mgmt.
Geography
Architecture
All Other

227
136
100
105
36
77
44
52
11
21
36
37
24
10

21.3
12.8
9.4
9.9
3.4
7.2
4.1
4.9
1.0
2.0
3.4
3.5
2.3
0.9

432
404
170
168
162
100
92
99
72
76
53
43
34
34

18.1
16.9
7.1
7.0
6.8
4.2
3.9
4.1
3.0
3.2
2.2
1.8
1.4
1.4

79
144
40
35
48
28
29
12
78
31
19
5
4
12

10.4
23.3
5.3
4.6
6.3
3.7
3.8
1.6
10.3
4.1
1.3
0.7
0.5
1.6

738
684
310
308
246
205
165
163
161
128
108
85
62
56

17.5
16.2
7.4
7.3
5.8
4.9
3.9
3.9
3.8
3.0
2.6
2.0
1.5
1.3

+2.5
11.2
+6.2
+7.7
-12.5
+15.8
+10.0
+48.2
-5.8
+6.7
+24.1
new
+82.4
+9.8

1
22
15
8
10
5
17
4
4
3
59

0.1
2.1
1.4
0.8
0.9
0.5
1.6
0.4
0.4
0.3
5.5

20
22
29
29
29
34
23
16
18
17
212

0.8
0.9
1.2
1.2
1.2
1.4
1.0
0.7
0.8
0.7
8.9

33
9
8
10
7
4
3
20
5
5
91

4.3
1.2
1.1
1.3
0.9
0.5
0.4
2.6
0.7
0.7
12.0

54
53
52
47
46
43
43
40
27
25
362

1.3
1.3
1.2
1.1
1.3
1.0
1.0
0.9
0.6
0.6
8.6

+80.0
+3.9
+15.6
-28.8
+43.7
-12.2
+13.2
-16.7
-3.6
new
+43.0

Total

1064

100.0

2388

99.9

759

100

4211

101

+11.9

* This table excludes Japanese language courses, but includes all area courses either on Japan exclusively or including
coverage of Japan in a multinational course. It also includes disciplinary courses that use Japanese language materials.
Disciplines are ordered by number of courses reported.

The column showing percent change since 2005 sheds further light on what has happened
over the past several years. Two new disciplines are represented with 25 courses or more
(Popular Culture and Architecture), in addition to three of the four new ones in 2005 (East
Asian Studies, non-language courses offered in Japanese language programs, and Second
Language Acquisition). One of the new entries in 2005, Law, has now dropped below the 25
course threshold. If such courses had existed earlier, they would have been lumped into the“all other category” but despite all the new categories with 25 or more courses, the number
in “all other” has also increased. Overall, there are big increases in Film Studies, East Asianmonograph.indb 92

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Academic Courses on Japan

93

Studies, and the new category of Popular Culture. A cluster of language-related fields also
shows considerable growth, including Second-Language Acquisition,and the courses offeredby Japanese language programs that are not language-skill courses. History remains in firstplace but with a modest rate of increase. Several smaller fields have shown growth of morethan 20 percent, but all of these also reflect the relatively small number of courses reported
previously.
These changes make sense in the context of the overall paradigm shift in Japanese Studies
in the United States that we have sketched out in chapter one. The growth in Japanese Studies and East Asian Studies courses reflects the expansion and in some cases the reorganization of programs and the accompanying development of topical or thematic courses that cut
across traditional disciplinary boundaries. In our coding, we placed courses within a standard
disciplinary category if we could discern one. This time, we found a much greater number ofcourses that were offered by Japanese Language and Culture, Japanese Studies, or East AsianStudies programs, but could not be readily reassigned to a discipline.
There have always been interdisciplinary foundational courses in the study of Asia in
American institutions that cut across history, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts tointroduce students to a new part of the world. What is different now is that these approaches
have been reinforced and reinvigorated under the rubric of cultural studies, which also brings
with it an interest in a much broader range of cultural representations that the old high culture
approach to civilizations under the Language and Area Studies paradigm would have ignored.
Hence the dramatic increase in courses in film and cinema studies must be regarded as part ofthe same phenomenon, and in fact many of the new film courses are offered by language andculture or language and civilizations programs. While the names “Japanese Studies” and “EastAsian Studies” may seem to perpetuate the older area studies tradition, that model encouraged
the development of courses about an area from the perspective of a particular discipline. Even
if courses were offered under the Japanese Studies, Asian Studies, or East Asian Studies namefor institutional convenience, most courses beyond the basic foundation offerings were easily
recognizable as belonging to another discipline and in fact were often offered by faculty in a
discipline and cross-listed. Some of that can still be seen, but the dramatic increase in coursesthat cannot be assigned to any traditional discipline that we first noted in 2005 points to something new and different.
The slower increase and in some cases actual decrease in the number of courses in somesocial sciences and in the professions can be seen as the counterpart of this paradigm shift,
and represents the waning of the economic competition paradigm that was so prominent in the
1990s. Within Japanese Studies, the heightened interest in Japan and dominance of the economic competition paradigm during the early 1990s obscured for a while both the emergenceof cultural studies and the impact of the intellectual attack on area studies that arose concurrently. The rejection of area studies was most severe in the social sciences, and produced boththe hostility and indifference that social scientists in Japanese Studies reported from theirdisciplines and a strong resistance by departments to replacing Japan specialists in the social
sciences when they retired. It is also more difficult to accommodate social scientists and social
science training within Japanese Studies and East Asian Studies programs, although cultural
studies does borrow freely from social science theories and apply them in its research. The end
result is that if the social science disciplines are not willing to hire Japan specialists and letthem teach courses about Japan, those courses either get transformed into topics that can betaught by persons who are not social scientists, or they begin to disappear from the JapaneseStudies curriculum.

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94

Chapter 5

Traditionally, anthropology and sociology have offered courses on Japanese culture or
Japanese society within social science departments, taught by Japan specialists who weretrained as anthropologists and sociologists. Within Japanese Studies these fields are very
similar; however, the disciplines themselves remain reasonably distinct in training and orientation, although at many smaller institutions the departments are combined. The numberof courses on Japanese culture or society offered in these social science departments has increased somewhat this time, but there are also more courses offered within Japanese language
and literature, or Japanese language and culture departments with titles such as “Japanese
language and society,” or “Japanese language and culture.” Since these courses are primarilytaught by persons with credentials in Japanese language and linguistics or in the humanities,
we have treated them according to the department in which they are offered and have notcoded them as Anthropology or Sociology unless they are taught by persons with training in
those disciplines.
The overall increase in the cluster of language-related disciplines can be understood asa parallel and partially independent process. Most basically, as the teaching of Japanese has
expanded and become more firmly integrated into academic programs in the United States, thecredentials needed for full academic appointments have increased. While Japanese language
programs may still employ graduate assistants, lecturers, and instructors to teach basic skill
classes and drill sessions, they also need faculty with doctorates to oversee the programs, teachmore advanced language courses, and offer related academic courses.
The credentials for these faculty members most commonly are doctorates in literature,
linguistics, or language pedagogy (or second language acquisition). These are research degrees
and research level academic appointments, so the persons who hold them not only expect
to teach courses in their field, but also must conduct research in order to meet requirements
for tenure and promotion. The larger programs that offer graduate degrees also must offer
advanced training to the next generation of professionals in these same fields. All of thesepressures lead to additional course offerings not only in Japanese literature, but also in Japanese linguistics and in language pedagogy, particularly at the graduate level. Similarly, theincreased demand for Japanese language teachers for secondary schools has also led to thedevelopment of new courses in Japanese language pedagogy at the upper division undergraduate level, to train and certify prospective high school Japanese language teachers. Our coding
placed courses explicitly listed as linguistics into the linguistics disciplinary category. Courses
offered through second language acquisition programs remained in that category, but somelanguage pedagogy courses offered by Japanese language programs were left within the Japanese language category and were treated as language courses.
One further factor that influences a quantitative assessment of area courses in JapaneseStudies must also be noted. At the most basic level, a program adds one course on Japan toits offerings, or perhaps one at the undergraduate and one at the graduate level, taught by thesame person. However there is considerable variation between disciplines in terms of the potential for expansion beyond that level. In humanities disciplines, the study of Japan is readily
sub-divided by genre or historical period, and specialists become expert in specific genres orhistorical periods. It therefore is relatively easy to argue for expanding the Japanese offerings
through dividing them by genre or historical period, and adding courses or new specialists
who can cover these variations. In the social sciences, some fields do recognize geographic or
cultural divisions, while others do not. In either case, the primary subdivisions within the disciplines are based on conceptual categories that theoretically can be applied to any geographic
area. In hiring a Japan specialist, a social science discipline is also bringing in a person withmonograph.indb 94

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Academic Courses on Japan95

expertise in one or more of the conceptually defined subfields of the discipline, who can alsoteach courses about the geographic and cultural area of Japan. Only in a very large department, or one with an unusually strong emphasis on Asia, would the disciplinary logic encourage the hiring of more than one specialist on Japan, or having one specialist teach a variety ofdifferent courses about Japan. Hence courses about Japan are most likely to proliferate withina language and literature or language and culture program that specializes in Japan or East
Asia, and are next most likely to do so where the discipline’s internal categories recognize
geographic units and then historical periods or genres within them.
How Much Japan Content is in the Course?
With this understanding of the overall changes in the distribution of courses with Japan
content and their implications over the past decade, we now take a closer look at whether there
are different patterns in the array of courses exclusively about Japan, as opposed to multinational courses that contain Japan content. Surveys have been counting courses exclusively on
Japan since 1977, so in order to extend the longitudinal analysis we first tried to use the same
categories that have been used for the past three decades. This provides a reasonable picture of
the major disciplines that have remained important in Japanese Studies for the past three dec­ades, but it obscures important changes that fall outside this realm. The same problem arosewith the evaluation of multinational courses with Japan content when we used the disciplinary
categories from the earliest study that measured such courses, the 1984 study. Clearly, using
the old disciplinary categories alone is not a useful way to analyze these data.
What we most want to know now is how each discipline’s courses are divided between exclusively Japan and multinational courses, which will provide a clear measure of the intensitywith which Japan is studied in each discipline. A more effective approach to analyzing our current data on these two types of courses is to use the list of disciplines with 25 or more coursesthat we constructed for Table 5.7, and examine the internal distribution of these courses bywhether they are exclusively on Japan or not. These results are shown in Table 5.8, below. Because our interest now is whether the courses are more likely to be exclusively on Japan or only
partially on Japan, we present the percentages so they total to 100 for each discipline. However,
the total column gives the percentage distribution that each discipline contributes to the whole,as in the previous Table 5.7.
Overall, two thirds of all the area courses are on Japan exclusively, and only one third are
multinational in content. Within that general division, this table reveals great variations between disciplines in the intensity of their focus on Japan. Some disciplines that have 25 or morecourses with Japan content actually have very few courses that are exclusively on Japan. While
there is certainly merit to studying Japan within a larger context, six of the disciplines on thelist have fewer than 25 courses that are exclusively on Japan. East Asian Studies catapulted
into the middle of the ranking with only two courses exclusively on Japan, and Asian Studies
had only three. This makes sense in terms of the mission of Asian Studies and East Asian Studies programs, but it also dilutes the emphasis on Japan. To clarify the situation, we include acolumn in Table 5.8 that gives the ranking of disciplines based on courses that are exclusively
on Japan, omitting the “other” category and eliminating disciplines with less than 25 courses
exclusively on Japan. The top six disciplines remain in the top ten, but Buddhist Studies drops
out and Popular Culture leaps into ninth place.
In order to reconcile the current situation with the categories from previous studies so that
we can look at change over time in the distribution of courses, we have developed a compromise
solution. We will retain the specific categories used for previous studies, which included somemonograph.indb 95

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96

Table 5.8. Japanese Area Courses in Disciplines with 25 or More Courses,
by Whether Content is Exclusively on Japan or Multinational, 2012*
Exclusively on Japan
Discipline

Multinationalwith Japan

Total

#

%

#

%

#

%

History
Literature
Art History
Japanese Studies
Political Science
Religion
Buddhist Studies
Film Studies
Linguistics
Anthropology
East Asian Studies
Popular Culture
Asian Studies
Performing Arts
Second Lang. Acquis.
Sociology
Philosophy
Economics
Japanese Lang.**
Music
Women’s Studies
Business Mgmt.
Geography
Architecture
All Other

524
597
184
289
106
103
62
128
144
70
2
79
3
39
41
29
16
21
43
23
29
19
9
16
233

71.0
87.3
59.4
93.8
42.9
50.2
37.6
78.5
89.4
63.1
1.9
92.9
5.1
69.6
75.9
55.8
32.0
44.7
93.5
53.5
67.4
47.5
33.3
64.0
60.5

214
87
126
19
141
102
103
35
17
41
105
6
56
17
13
23
34
26
3
20
14
21
18
9
152

29.0
12.7
40.6
6.2
57.1
49.8
62.4
21.5
10.6
36.9
98.1
7.1
94.9
30.4
24.1
44.2
68.0
55.3
6.5
46.5
32.6
52.5
66.7
36.0
39.5

738
684
310
308
247
205
165
163
161
111
107
85
59
56
54
52
50
47
46
43
43
40
27
25
385

17.5
16.2
7.4
7.3
5.9
4.8
3.9
3.9
3.8
2.6
2.5
2.0
1.4
1.3
1.3
1.2
1.2
1.1
1.1
1.0
1.0
0.9
0.6
0.6
9.1

Total

2809

66.7

1402

33.3

4211

100.0

R ank
Japan
Only

1
2
4
3
7
8
11
6
5
10
24
9
23
14
13
15
20
18
12
17
15
19
22
20

* This table excludes Japanese language courses, but includes all area courses either on Japan exclusively or including
coverage of Japan in a multinational course. It also includes disciplinary courses that use Japanese language materials.
Disciplines are ordered by total number of courses reported, but ranking column shows order of courses exclusively on
Japan..
** non-language skill courses offered by Japanese language program.

logical combined categories that the lists in Table 5.7 and Table 5.8 have separated, such as
combining music into the performing arts category, combining Buddhist Studies with religion
and philosophy, and combining international management with business. We omit Asian Studies from the culture and civilization category entirely, since its entries are too broad, but weretain both East Asian Studies and Japanese Studies, even though one is primarily composedof multinational courses and the other has primarily courses that are exclusively on Japan. We
relegate geography back to the Other category, but separate out the new disciplines that havecome to occupy a much larger share of courses related to Japan: Linguistics, Film Studies, andmonograph.indb 96

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Academic Courses on Japan

97

Women’s Studies. This reduces the “other” category to a more manageable level, and allows us
to preserve data from the long sequence of prior studies while still looking forward.
Table 5.9 shows the comparative data for courses exclusively on Japan in 1977, 1984, 1995,
2005, and 2012. We have ordered them in decreasing rank order for 2012. While we include theactual numbers of courses reported in each study, our comparison focuses on changes in thepercent distributions to overcome the large size discrepancies between the samples. Unfortunately, this only provides the relative position of each discipline, so we also need to look at theactual numbers to anchor our analysis further. The first point to note is that the number of area
courses exclusively on Japan is 11 percent greater in 2012 than it was in 2005, and 40 percent
larger than it was in 1995. Hence the pie is growing, and there is room for new disciplines toemerge without producing a corresponding decline in others.
History and literature each comprise about a fifth of all the area courses exclusively on Japan, so their combined impact is 40 percent of the total). The two disciplines together comprisea somewhat smaller fraction of the total than they did in in each of the previous studies. More
important is that History’s share has been declining and Literature’s has been growing slowly
but steadily during the past three decades. The four social sciences represented, AnthropolTable 5.9. Area Courses Focusing Exclusively on Japan in 1977, 1984, 1995, 2005, and2012, by Discipline*
1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

Discipline

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Literature
History
Culture, Civiliz.
Art, Art History
Relig.-Philosophy
Linguistics
Film Studies
Political Science
Popular Culture
Anthropology
Performing Arts
Gender and­Women’s Studies
Sociology
Economics
Business
Other

168
292
–
81
61
–
–
87
–
23
39

16.8
29.3
–
8.2
6.1
–
–
8.7
–
2.3
3.9

167
282
46
97
55
–
–
71
–
24
44

18.6
31.3
5.1
10.8
6.1
–
–
7.9
–
2.7
4.9

391
435
153
179
131
–
–
90
–
72
90

19.5
21.7
7.6
8.9
6.5
–
–
4.5
–
3.6
4.5

556
532
262
174
158
155
88
125
–
75
55

21.9
21.0
10.3
6.9
6.2
6.1
3.5
4.9
–
3.0
2.2

597
524
294
184
181
144
128
106
79
70
62

21.3
18.7
10.5
6.6
6.4
5.1
4.6
3.7
2.8
2.5
1.3

–
24
33
6
184

–
2.4
3.3
0.6
18.4

–
14
20
–
80

–
1.6
2.2
–
8.9

–
53
40
37
333

–
2.6
2.0
1.8
16.6

35
30
33
25
230

1.4
1.2
1.3
1.0
9.1

37
29
21
19
210

0.8
1.0
0.7
0.7
7.2

Total

998

100.0

900

100.1

2004

99.8

2533 100.02809 100.0* 1977 figures from 1977 CULCON Report, Table 5, p. 23; 1984 figures from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 15,
p. 35. Percentages for 1984 were recalculated and rounded to the first decimal place. Data for 1977 include only institutions for which enrollments were reported, so this may slightly undercount courses. Disciplines without enrollment data
were included in other in 1977, 1984, and 1995 if there were any courses. Data from 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken fromJapanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.3, Chapter 7, p. 172, and republished with 2005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.9, p. 127.

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Chapter 5ogy, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology, have small enough individual percentages
that the patterns are not striking. However, if we combine their percentages the impact is veryclear: together these four disciplines accounted for 16.7 percent of area courses exclusively on
Japan in 1977, 14.4 percent of such courses in 1984, 12.7 percent in 1995, 10.4 percent in 2005,
and are reduced to under 8 percent of the total in 2012. In contrast, the Culture and Civilization category that first emerged in 1984 with 5.1 percent of the area courses exclusively on
Japan, has now doubled to account for 10.5 percent. This is greater than all the social science
disciplines combined. If we view the Culture and Civilization category in conjunction with the
new Film Studies category and the increase in Literature, the impact of the Cultural Studies
paradigm becomes very clear.
Recall our earlier characterization of the Cultural Studies paradigm as emphasizing thestudy of cultural representations within their cultural, social, economic, and political context,
but accepting as legitimate the study of any genre of cultural representation from any part ofthe society. This is combined with a strong effort to explore subcultures, subgroups, and minorities in Japanese society as elements of a rich, multi-faceted and multi-layered culture thatis anything but homogeneous. In History and to some extent the social sciences, this leads also
to explorations of Japan’s colonial history, and to topical and thematic exploration of historical subjects that combine the actual lives of real people with the cultural representations theygenerated or that were generated about them.
The evidence of the Cultural Studies paradigm becomes even more striking when we look
qualitatively at the titles of the new courses in these fields. There are 135 courses on Japanesefilm, some of which use film to teach language or history. There are also 83 courses on popular
culture, some of which are explicitly on anime. Many of the popular culture courses are offered in language and culture programs as vehicles for language study. Although many of thecourses related to women and gender were coded under Literature, the course titles clearly reflect the Cultural Studies paradigm through titles such as: “Construction of Gender in Modern
Japanese Women’s Writing,”, “Japanese Literature in the Feminine Domain,”“Gender and Intertextuality in the Tale of Genji,” “History of Gender and Sexuality in Japan,” and “Japanese
Film and Gender Theory.”
In 2005 I noted the traces of Cultural Studies in new offerings in history and politicalscience and noted that while calling a course simply “The Samurai” may be pandering to theundergraduate imagination, titles such as “The Samurai Warrior in History, Myth, and Reality” and “Constructing the Samurai” display their Cultural Studies orientations very clearly.
This time, in addition to the many courses called Japanese Popular Culture, I was struck by
new titles reflecting popular culture themes: “The Gothic and the Supernational in Japanese
Literature,” Mystery and Crime Fiction in Japan,” “Genji to Godzilla: Adaptations of the Classics,” and “Japanese Ghosts.”
In 1995 our study documented that Japan specialists in the United States were beginningto do research on new topics that we would now identify as having a cultural studies orientation. Course topics now demonstrate the deep penetration of that orientation. To some extent
the livelier titles and more focused nature of these new courses also suggests an effort by Japan
specialists to attract a broader range of undergraduate students to their courses. The flip side ofthis is the well-known fact that American youth, just like young people all over the world, havegrown up with globalized Japanese popular culture as part of their own daily experience. It isclear from our data that it is anime and manga that are attracting young people to the study ofJapanese language and culture today, just as zen did in the 1970s and the prospect of economic
gain did in the 1980s. Yet reaching such students through Japanese popular culture and courses

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Academic Courses on Japan99

on the samurai is not quite the same as attracting them with zen or with the Japanese economic
miracle a generation ago. Japan has already come into their own living rooms through its
popular culture. For these young people, the study of Japan has indeed become normalized in
American culture. To young people who grew up on Japanese anime and manga even if it was
subtitled dubbed, or translated, the sound patterns of Japanese, the visual conventions of manga, and even the body language of everyday Japanese social interaction are already familiar.
To balance our analysis of area courses, we use the same analytical strategy to examine
multinational courses with coverage of Japan, comparing the data from previous studies using
the same set of disciplinary categories plus additional ones that reflect the emergence of new
directions in Japanese Studies. One methodological problem affecting the data on multinational courses with Japan content is that many of the largest Japanese Studies programs do notreport such courses, while the smallest programs do. Bearing this distortion in mind, we can
examine the changes over time in the distribution of multinational courses with Japan content
in Table 5.10. Again, the disciplines are arranged in 2012 rank order. Overall, there was a 14
percent increase from 2005 to 2012 in multinational courses with coverage of Japan. The increase has been steady since 1984 and reflects increased general interest in Japan that encourages its inclusion in broader courses, as well as the more specific increase in student interestin Japan. As noted earlier, multinational courses with some Japanese content are typicallythe way that fledgling programs can begin to offer some content on Japan even if they do not
Table 5.10 Multinational Courses with Coverage of Japan in 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012,by Discipline*
1984

1995

2005

2012

  Discipline

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Religion-Philosophy
History
Culture & Civilization
Political Science
Art, Art History
Literature
Film Studies
Anthropology
Performing Arts
Economics
Women’s Studies
Sociology
Business
Linguistics
Other

172
169
59
114
66
49
–
29
25
28
–
11
–
–
140

20.0
19.6
6.8
13.2
7.7
5.7
–
3.4
2.9
3.2
–
1.3
–
–
16.2

187
156
86
105
80
39
–
31
28
28
–
23
–
–
159

20.3
16.9
9.3
11.4
8.7
4.2
–
3.4
3.0
3.0
–
2.5
–
–
17.2

220
187
111
156
133
59
22
45
34
33
14
15
37
16
149

17.9
15.3
9.0
12.7
10.8
4.8
1.8
3.7
2.8
2.7
1.1
1.2
3.0
1.3
12.1

239
214
180
141
126
87
46
41
37
26
25
23
21
17
108

17.0
15.3
12.8
10.1
9.0
6.2
3.3
2.9
2.6
1.9
1.8
1.6
1.5
1.2
7.7

Total

862

100.0

922

99.9

1231

100.2

1402

100.0

* 1984 figures from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 16, p. 36. Percentages were recalculated and rounded to thefirst decimal place. Data for 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.5,
Chapter 7, page 175. Business, Linguistics, Film Studies, and Women’s Studies were included in “other” in 1984 and1995 if courses existed. International Relations combined with Political Science.

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100

Chapter 5have the resources to offer courses exclusively about Japan or to mount a Japanese language
program.
The disciplinary pattern in Table 5.10 is quite different from that of courses exclusively on
Japan, but consistent with the pattern in earlier studies. Religion-Philosophy leads, as it has consistently since multinational courses with Japan content were first analyzed in the 1984 study.
History is second, with a steadily declining percentage of the courses. Culture and Civilizationis next, which here is represented largely by East Asian Studies courses. The impact of Cultural
Studies is increasing a bit in this distribution, while the combined set of social science disciplines is declining. Overall, the pattern in the multinational course distribution suggests a more
traditional area studies approach, in which art, religion, and history courses present aspects ofsomething unknown that is broadly conceptualized as Asian or East Asian civilization.
It is also noteworthy that the new disciplines that we have added to the distribution for2005 and 2012 have considerably smaller representation in multinational courses. This further
reinforces the notion that the pattern we see in the multinational courses stems from different
factors than those that are producing the current distribution of courses exclusively on Japan.
Some part of the difference may simply result from the difference in scale of programs. We
will explore this possibility further after first looking at the two basic types of courses on Japan
from some different angles: their enrollments, and the range of institutions that offer them.
Enrollments in Area Courses on Japan
Enrollment data were provided for only a quarter of the area courses with Japan content,
including 26.6 percent of the courses exclusively on Japan and only 14.4 percent of multinational courses. One likely reason for the discrepancy is that the multinational courses may nothave been taught by Japan specialists, and the Japan program may not know their enrollment
numbers. For a clearer look at the enrollment figures we need to separate out the courses exclusively on Japan from the multinational ones with some Japan content. Given the relatively
small numbers, we cannot further divide this into graduate and undergraduate courses. Table
5.11 shows these comparisons. It is difficult to interpret these numbers given the disparity
in the number of courses of the two types included. The safest number is probably the meanenrollment, since it controls for the number of courses offered. For courses exclusively on
Japan, for which the sample is more representative, the mean enrollment is highest for Art
History courses, which are typically taught in an auditorium setting where slides of art can beshown. Film Studies courses that also would involve viewing films, have the second highest
mean enrollment at 35.0. Courses on Anthropology, Political Science, History, and Culture
and Civilization all average between 25 and 30 students, while those in other disciplines are
smaller. Of course actual enrollments in specific courses may diverge widely from these averages. By contrast, enrollments in many of the multinational courses are higher. MultinationalFilm Studies courses have the highest mean enrollment, followed by Culture and Civilization,
and Religion and Philosophy, all of which have mean enrollments above 50. This suggeststhat these are introductory level courses offered as part of general education requirements for
freshmen and sophomores.
The evidence from all of this detailed data shows unequivocally that the number of bothlanguage courses and area courses about Japan has been increasing solidly. Because students
in American higher education institutions have great freedom to enroll in language and area
courses based on their own interest, this expansion is only possible because there is strong
student demand for the courses. While in the past institutions could offer basic Japanese language courses even if the number of students enrolled was small, that logic would not permit

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Academic Courses on Japan

101

Table 5.11. Enrollments in Courses with Japan Coverage in 2012,by Discipline and Course Type*
Exclusively on Japan
Discipline

Course # Enroll. #Multinational with japan

Mean
Enroll.

% Dist.

Course # Enroll. #Mean
Enroll.

% Dist.

Art History
Literature
Performing Arts
Religion-Philosophy
Anthropology
Economics
History
Polit. Science
Sociology
Business
Culture-Civilization
Linguistics
Film Studies
Women’s Studies
Other

19
82
1
10
9
–
82
6
5
3
54
6
17
1

1122
1620
15
238
266
–
2140
164
96
41
1608
79
595
15

59.01
19.8
15.0
23.8
29.6
–
26.1
27.3
19.2
13.7
29.8
13.2
35.0
15.0

3.7
5.3
0.0
0.7
0.9
–
7.0
0.5
0.3
0.1
5.2
0.3
1.9
0.0

6
16
2
10
7
2
36
11
2
1
27
5
7
1

225
381
40
511
316
87
1232
314
22
20
1539
57
625
15

37.5
23.8
20.0
51.1
45.1
43.5
24.2
28.6
11.0
20.0
57.0
11.4
89.2
15.0

0.7
1.2
0.1
1.6
1.0
0.3
4.0
1.0
0.1
0.1
5.0
0.2
2.0
0.0

Total

748

23245

31.1

76.1

202

7313

36.2

23.9

* Based on all courses for which enrollment data were provided.

the expansion of language programs to higher levels, nor would it allow the proliferation ofarea courses solely about Japan if there was no student demand. We therefore need to consider
what is driving this high student demand for both Japanese language and for area courses
about Japan.
Who Is Attracted to Study Japan?
I contend that except for the short period dominated by the economic competition paradigm when some students entered Japanese Studies for instrumental and economic reasons,most people come to Japanese Studies because they have gotten hooked on Japan. Students
get hooked through a combination of attraction to some aspect of Japanese culture, and direct
exposure to Japan. Those elements lead them to study Japan. The choice of how to direct thatstudy and whether there is any practical outcome arise later, after the student has alreadygravitated toward studying something about Japan. This has been true throughout the postwar
history of Japanese Studies in the United States. My hunch is that it may be stronger for Japanese Studies than for other area studies, although there is probably some component of attraction and exposure in all of them. I suspect that it is true for Japanese Studies in other countries
as well, but it probably points to a significant difference in motivations between non-Japanese
who study Japan, and Japanese nationals who do so. It is this combination of cultural attractionand exposure that brings people to Japanese Studies and keeps them there, and provides partof the answer to why the rise of China and Chinese Studies is not a threat to Japanese Studies.
The attractions that have brought students to Japanese Studies and the nature of theirmonograph.indb 101

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Chapter 5

direct exposure have changed over the past several decades, but these two factors continue toexplain the staying power of Japanese Studies. In the early years the field was dominated bythose with prior exposure to Japan, whether it was military service in Japan or growing up in a
missionary family that lived in Japan. Those without such direct exposure (and of course manyof those who were exposed) were attracted by some aspect of Japanese culture, whether it was
Zen Buddhism or Genji Monogatari or Japanese art. The attraction may have been specific,
but it was also fundamentally an attraction to something that was different and exotic. Over
time Japan became more accessible, and students might be exposed to Japan through a study
abroad experience or having lived in Japan because of a parent’s employment, and the natureof the attractions also widened.
Today Japan is much more accessible. For Americans, there are high school student exchanges as well as college study abroad experiences, and the JET program has provided asteady stream of graduate students into Japanese Studies, although only about 10 percent of
the program’s participants go on to further study of Japan. Students who have early direct exposure to Japan are likely to return to the U.S. with observations and questions about contemporary Japanese society, which may lead them into either the social sciences or the humanities.
Some of these students also have entered the specialized training programs that were createdduring the economic competition paradigm, but their commitment to Japan and Japanese Studies is not just instrumental.
The distinction between these students with direct exposure and others who entered Japanese Studies during the 1990s for instrumental reasons also points indirectly to another aspectof the mistaken perception that people are leaving Japanese Studies to flock to Chinese Studies. Chinese Studies today is experiencing the same sort of economic competition paradigm
that Japan went through in the 1980s and 1990s, and I believe it is attracting many students
who view the study of China as an economically valuable credential that will help them get
professional employment. There is nothing wrong with that, but I submit that precisely because
it reflects a rational economic approach to the decision, it is fundamentally different from thefactors that motivate most students to come to Japanese Studies. It is unlikely to deflect thegreat majority of students who get hooked on Japan through a combination of cultural attraction and exposure and then decide to study it more deeply. In short, this is not a zero-sum gamebut rather reflects different kinds of motivations.
I think we all know that the major attraction that is bringing students into Japanese Studies
today is globalized Japanese popular culture. From the perspective of analyzing the nature of
the cultural attraction, this is interesting because it is not like the older attraction to things thatwere exotic and unfamiliar and to a language perceived as extremely difficult. The essential
feature of globalized Japanese popular culture is the fact that children in the United States
and throughout the world have grown up with it. They watch it on television, play games with
its characters, and acquire all sorts of commercial products representing the same characters.
Some embodiments of Japanese popular culture are as familiar to them as Mickey Mouse and
Big Bird. Japanese popular culture is familiar and yet sufficiently different to be intriguing,
not only because of the characteristic Japanese drawing style, but also because of the complex
story lines. It is also increasingly accessible online with English support. Yet even if they arewatching anime dubbed or subtitled in English, or are reading manga translated into English,
foreign fans of Japanese popular culture are exposed to bits of Japanese language: Japanesecharacter names, spoken Japanese in a soundtrack while they read the subtitles, or Japanesecharacters embedded in a manga drawing outside the translated text. All of this makes theJapanese language seem more familiar, approachable, and accessible than in the past.

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This success is due in no small measure to the cultural studies paradigm and the Japan
specialists trained within it who now teach in American Japanese Studies programs. It is not
simply that Japanese popular culture attracted students who then wanted to study Japan. The
cultural studies paradigm resonated with the attractiveness of popular culture for students. It
made Japanese popular culture a legitimate subject of academic study, and it provided newtools for such study. From its quiet introduction in the 1990s, it has led to the development of
a new generation of Japanese Studies faculty who could embrace the students’ interests andbuild on them for academic purposes. I noted some evidence of this in 2005, but the traces
are clear throughout the data in the new study. At the broadest level, it has led to 24 programs
that are now named or renamed as “language and culture programs” with a holistic approachthat encompasses language, literature, history, and other aspects of Japanese culture. Suchprograms look similar to European programs in Japanology, but they are relatively new to theAmerican scene and they are clearly different from the older language and area studies paradigm that emphasized the placement of faculty into disciplinary departments.
Traces of the cultural studies paradigm can also be found in course names and course
themes. An amazing number of Japanese history courses have been renamed “Samurai andGeisha” or “The Age of the Samurai.” As noted earlier, there are also a number of courses
about Japanese ghosts and Japanese monsters. Some themes stand out even more in the data. In
the current study there are 135 courses related to film, 110 on women and gender, 53 on popular
culture, and 30 specifically on anime and manga. In addition there are courses on minorities inJapan, including both ethnic and lifestyle minorities.
To some extent courses on women and on minorities reflect structural changes in American higher education, based on deliberate national policy decisions that promote diversity bothin faculty hiring and in student admissions. This has led to higher educational institutions that
resemble the diversity within American society to a much greater degree than was true in thepast. The first big demographic change that affected Japanese Studies was the steady increase
in women, first as graduate students in the 1970s and 1980s and then lagging about a decade
behind, as faculty members. The 1970 study consistently referred to Japan specialists as “men”
although over 10 percent of those included were women. By 1995 the overall sample was about
30 percent female, and in 2005 that had increased to 37.6 percent. In each of those two studies
younger age cohorts were much closer to parity. In the current study, 39.percent of Japan specialists are female, but those appearing in the directory for the first time are 41 percent female
and overall the younger age cohorts are over 40% female.
The increased number of women academics in the field legitimized studies of Japanesewomen, but this was also helped by the introduction of feminist theories and cultural studies
more broadly, which focused attention on different subgroups within Japan and provided new
intellectual tools for studying them. In each directory study we have had to add more subject
categories related to women as respondents wrote in new ones to reflect a specific focus on
women in different subject areas. While we do not collect data on the ethnicity of Japan specialists, the American preoccupation with race and ethnicity has also led to research since the1990s on various minority populations in Japan. I believe that this, too, can be seen as a resultof the combined effect of the cultural studies paradigm and the cultural context of American
higher education.
In sum, the infusion of the cultural studies paradigm into Japanese Studies over the past
two decades coincided with the growing popularity of globalized Japanese popular culture
among American youth. This has produced a generation of Japan specialists with the intellectual tools to examine not only popular culture but also many other facets of contemporary

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104

Japan by focusing on subgroups and their cultural products, examined within their specificcultural context. They are able to offer a wide array of courses about Japan that respond to
students’ interests and build on what students find attractive and intriguing about Japaneseculture. The same forces have driven increased enrollments in Japanese language courses, including the incorporation of Japanese popular culture into language learning. The loose structure of American higher education with its combination of general education, basic foreign
language requirements, plus a major, all calculated in terms of course credits, has encouraged
and supported these developments. Critical financial decisions for academic departments are
driven partly by student course enrollments that are largely voluntary decisions by individual
students; hence the increased demand for Japan courses, whether they are part of a major ornot, enhances and stabilizes Japanese Studies programs and stabilizes employment for thefaculty who teach in them.
This complex package is likely to sustain Japanese Studies in the United States for at least
the next few years, and it has nothing to do with whatever may be happening to Chinese Studies. The wide availability of Japanese at high schools and colleges suggests that while the numbers of students and courses could decrease, they are unlikely to suddenly dry up. Similarly,
Japan will continue to be accessible through student exchanges and study abroad programs,
as well as through the JET program and other English teaching opportunities in Japan. And
finally, Japanese popular culture is likely to continue to attract young people for some time.
When that attraction wanes, some other new aspect of Japan will capture the imagination ofanother generation of students.

Teaching Conditions
The conditions that make it possible for American academics to offer courses that meet
student demand suggest that Japan specialists are likely to feel some satisfaction with what
they teach, but we can look more closely at other aspects of satisfaction with teaching conditions. In the past three surveys, Japan specialists have been asked to report their level ofsatisfaction with the amount of teaching they do about Japan. Table 5.12 shows the results forour current study, compared with responses in 1984, 1995, and 2005. In all four surveys, very
few respondents complained that they teach more courses about Japan than they would like.
The majority have always been relatively satisfied with the amount of teaching they do on Japan, and that sense is even stronger in 2005 and 2012, with two-thirds of respondents sayingthat they teach about as many courses as they would like. Less than a third are teaching fewer
Table 5.12. Survey Respondents’ Satisfaction with Teaching About Japan,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*     Teaching Satisfaction

1984 %

1995 %

2005 %

2012 %

Teaching more courses than would like
About as many courses as would likeFewer courses than would like
N of Respondents

  3
56
41
676

5.0
59.7
35.1
794

3.2
67.6
29.2
571

3.8
65.7
30.6
612

* 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 10, p. 31. Data from 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies
in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.15, Chapter 7, page 190. These data were reproduced along with 2005 data inJapanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.18, p. 137.

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Academic Courses on Japan105

courses about Japan than they would like to, about the same as in 2005. Within the context of
our findings about the increased number of courses now being offered on Japan, the responses
seem to confirm that there is sufficient demand for courses about Japan that specialists are able
to offer them as frequently as they want to, and that they enjoy their teaching about Japan anddo not feel overly burdened by it. This of course also implies that as the demand has risen, institutions have increased faculty, which we will examine in Chapter 7 when we look at staffing.
However, we still need to explore why nearly 30 percent of respondents say that theyteach less than they would like about Japan. This, too, has been asked since 1984, so we can
add our new data to this series. Since this question is only asked of those who reported thatthey taught less than they would like, the number of respondents is reduced, but still large
enough to analyze. The results are shown in Table 5.13. The most common reason for teaching fewer courses about Japan than respondents would like remains the same as for the past
two decades: other demands on their time. Non-faculty cited the fact that they did not have an
academic appointment. In comparison with respondents in previous surveys, the 2012 sample
was less likely to cite lack of resources or insufficient interest among students, colleagues oradministrators.
Of the 488 survey respondents who reported that they are currently teaching a course
about Japan or have done so in the past two years, more than half (55.0 %) reported that theyalso have to teach other courses that are not about Japan. Both their Japan-related courses andtheir non-Japan courses are offered through a wide range of disciplines. Their courses on Japan
were offered at all levels, and the mean enrollments this sample of Japan specialists reported
was very similar to the mean enrollments reported by institutions for their courses on Japan.
About a quarter of those currently teaching reported that they require some Japanese language materials in their courses. Those in humanities were far more likely to require Japanese
language materials than those in the social sciences. One reason for this discrepancy is thatthose in the humanities are far more likely to offer courses in which enrollment is legitimately
limited to students who have the necessary Japanese language skills. Their courses are specifically designed for students specializing in Japan in a particular discipline, in order to develop
their Japanese language skills for research purposes. In contrast, in the social sciences evengraduate courses exclusively on Japan are generally open to a wide range of students, many ofTable 5.13. Reasons for Teaching Fewer Courses About Japan Than Respondent
Would Like, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*     R eason Given

1984 %

1995 %

2005 %

2012 %

Other demands on time
Insufficient student interest
Insufficient administration interest
Lack of resources
Insufficient interest among colleagues
Other**
N of Respondents

59
45
36
25
24
  8
284

58.8
15.0
23.7
29.9
14.2
23.7
274

63.2
23.0
20.1
23.9
13.9
17.2
209

51.9
19.3
18.7
20.8
11.8
15.5
187

* 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 10, p. 31. Data from 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.16, chapter 7, page 191. Data for 2005 from Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 6.18, p. 134. Data for all years limited to those who reported
teaching fewer courses on Japan than they would like.
** For 2005 and 2012, “no academic appointment” was the alternative possible response.

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Chapter 5106

whom would not have Japanese language skills because they are not specializing in the studyof Japan. Such seminars emphasize mastery of the relevant English-language literature on
Japan, although faculty may encourage students who do have Japanese language skills to usethem in their research papers.
Respondents were also asked for their evaluation of the adequacy of teaching materials
on Japan and the results are shown in Table 5.14 with previous study results for comparison. The distribution of responses for 2012 is remarkably similar to that of previous studies.
The majority of respondents think that teaching materials for the field as a whole are good,
but they are slightly less positive about materials in their own discipline, and only a third
think teaching materials for Japanese language are good. For both the field as a whole andone’s own discipline, the second most common response was “fair.” However, for Japanese
language there was a much higher “not sure” response, suggesting that faculty who are notthemselves language teachers are either unfamiliar with the materials currently used for Japanese language teaching, or do not feel competent to judge the adequacy of the materials. As
a result, the mean response for one’s own discipline and the field in general was 2.7, meaning
between fair and good, but for language teaching materials the mean was only 1.9, or between
fair and poor.
The overall picture is that Japan specialists are relatively happy both with the teaching they
do about Japan and the materials they use for that teaching, and that the majority also teachcourses that are not about Japan. They also need to feel appreciated and recognized for what
they do as teachers and scholars. In that context, their evaluation that students today are more
knowledgeable about Japan surely contributes to the satisfaction specialists derive from teaching
those students.
The fact that most Japan specialists also teach other courses that are not about Japan, combinedwith their general satisfaction with the amount of Japan-related teaching they do, reminds us thatfor most Japan specialists, teaching courses about Japan is a voluntary and satisfying experience.
If it were not, in most cases they could teach other courses in their discipline without penalty. The
Japan specialists in our sample are where they are because they have chosen to make the study ofJapan an important part of their lives. If they sense some hostility or indifference from their discipline, they are in many cases able to counterbalance that through satisfying relations with other
Table 5.14. Adequacy of Teaching Materials for Japanese Studies,by Subject, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1984 %

1995 %

2005 %

2012 %

Evaluation

Lang.

Gen.

Lang.

Own
Disc.

Gen.

Lang.

Own
Disc.

Gen.

Lang.

Own
Disc.

Gen.

Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Not sure
Base N

14
35
20
8
23
569

10
45
32
9
5
673

13.6
36.0
19.8
7.5
23.0
469

21.5
45.8
32.5
9.1
1.1
661

7.8
54.3
27.2
5.1
5.6
591

12.8
34.9
13.5
2.5
36.3
281

12.6
48.1
30.5
7.6
1.2
341

11.5
56.3
24.8
4.0
3.4
323

15.0
37.3
13.4
2.2
32.8
354

17.7
48.6
26.1
5.8
1.8
399

13.9
55.0
22.8
3.1
5.2
382

* 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 19, p. 39. Percentages were reported as rounded whole number.
Data for 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 7.17, Chapter 7, page 192.
Republished with 2005 data in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada, Table 6.19 p. 138.

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107

Japan specialists and with Japanese scholars, as well as with their students. The arrangements thathave been created to promote, coordinate, and manage Japanese Studies at academic institutions
play an important role in sustaining the positive working environment for Japan specialists. We will
examine the instructional and non-instructional aspects of these arrangements in the subsequent
chapters, beginning with how individual courses are aggregated into Japanese Studies programs.

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6Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

Our aim in this chapter is to see how the language and area courses we looked at in Chapter 5 become organized into degree programs in Japanese Studies at the undergraduate andgraduate level. We will use some standard criteria to measure the strength of these programs,
and then we will look at their products at the graduate level, and at the patterns of staffing thatmake the programs possible on a day to day basis.
Since 1984, surveys of Japanese Studies have asked institutions how their Japanese Studies programs are organized. Larger programs may have more than one form of institutionalorganization, so programs are encouraged to list all of the forms of organization that apply.
Unfortunately, for the current study as in the previous one, many of the persons responding on
behalf of their institution had difficulty thinking beyond the confines of their own organizational unit. We have responses to the question about program organization for 202 of the 248
programs included in the directory (231 with courses and/or staff), and a few of the largest programs responded only on behalf of their non-teaching center or their own department, rather
than reporting on behalf of the institution as a whole. The data we are able to report therefore
undercount the real picture, but we offer them in Table 6.1. We use the number of programs
responding as the base, so the percentages total more than 100 because of multiple responses
to the question.
Previous studies have tracked a shift towards the creation of distinct institutional units
for Japan or East Asia. They may be established for Japanese or East Asian Studies, or for
Language and Literature, Language and Civilization, or Language and Culture specificallyfor either Japanese or East Asian languages. Our data show that this trend continues and now
just over half of the reported programs have this character. The responses show that there has
been a substantial increase in the number of departments that explicitly carry either Japaneseor East Asian in their names. We have combined them here to match the data presentations
from previous studies, but we found that they were 64 language and literature departments and
41 programs encompassing some form of “studies” or “civilization” or “culture” beyond thescope of language and literature alone.
However, many programs develop and thrive without this sort of institutional separation.
This time we found slightly more than half of respondents reporting that they have an interdisciplinary program that is not a department, and some programs have both a department and aseparate interdisciplinary program. At most academic institutions in the United States, adding
108

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

109

Table 6.1. Organization of Instruction about Japan at Academic Institutions,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*1984  Organization

1995

2005

2012

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Japanese, E.Asia Lang/Area Dept.
Interdisc. Degree Program
Non-degree with minor offered
Coordinating Committee
Course List but no formal links
No Coordination between depts.
Courses only in one department
Professional Program
Professional Degree
Other Organiz.
[Other Organiz. including Profs.]
Not applicable

36
46
9
22
51
33
30
24
[24]
4

16
21
4
10
23
15
14
11
[11]
-

56
66
29
21
44
20
38
11
8
7
[26]
7

28.4
33.5
14.7
10.7
22.3
10.2
19.3
5.6
4.1
3.6
[13.3]
-

53
47
15
11
21
5
4
6
5
13

50.0
44.3
14.2
10.4
19.8
4.7
3.8
5.7
4.7
12.3

105
108
37
14
38
14
32
7
5
21

52.0
53.5
18.3
6.9
18.8
6.9
15.8
3.5
2.5
10.4

3

2.8

8

4.0

Total N

220

106

202

197

* 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 8, p. 28. Data for 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in
the United States: The 1990s, Table 8.1, chapter 8, page 196. These data reproduced and 2005 data reported in JapaneseStudies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.1, p. 141.

a new course is a relatively simple matter, but adding a new program or department is a major
undertaking that can take years to accomplish. And while Japanese Studies programs may
aspire to become separate units with greater institutional visibility and fiscal security, institutional pressures may work against those aims. Sometimes the politics is not that the Japaneseor East Asia component is too small to warrant separate status, but rather that it is too large,
and the smaller programs that ride on the coattails of Japan or East Asia fight to keep it undera broader umbrella.
The write-in responses described additional forms of organization that are not easily captured by the categories that have been in use for the series of studies of Japanese Studies in the
United States. The problem here is that in offering descriptions of the sorts of arrangementsthat the most highly developed programs might have, such as a separate department of East
Asian or Japanese Studies, or East Asian or Japanese Language and Literature, we fail tocapture the institutional reality of programs that are embedded in broader institutional frameworks, such as a general language department that houses the Japanese language program,or an Asian Studies program that houses a Japanese Studies program. We have expanded ourcoding to capture these cases, and they are reported as “other organization.” We found 21 programs with these characteristics, a substantial increase from the past two studies.
In sum, this time the data show continuation of the trend toward creating named departments for Japan or East Asian programs, whether in language and literature or in a broader
area or culture framework. There is also a steady, substantial increase in the percentage reporting an interdisciplinary degree program that is not a formal department. This suggests thatJapanese programs are getting more formalized even when they operate through cooperation
among faculty housed in different departments. The number of institutions with courses only
in one department was larger than in 2005 but on a par with earlier studies. If we view themonograph.indb 109

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110

Chapter 62005 absence of such programs as a result of the disappearance of the bubble programs of the
1990s, then this suggests that for various reasons more very small programs are once again
emerging. As we have noted repeatedly, these programs are more unstable, but some of them
do grow over time.
The data we obtain describing actual degree programs revealed a similar problem withquality. Although we had many more responses describing specific degree programs than for
the initial question about how Japanese Studies is organized, we found that while some institutions had scrupulously entered every program variation, others had combined many options
into one description, or had simply noted that degrees were available in many disciplines. We
have used the program descriptions in the directory entries of institutions, and for that purpose
they are perfectly adequate. However, because we did not have the time or information required to restructure all of the program data into a format that would give us reliable counts of
the actual numbers of programs of different types, we offer only a very brief overview of theseincomplete data: we found 46 undergraduate certificate programs, 153 undergraduate minors,
and 231 undergraduate majors. At the graduate level, 13 graduate or professional certificate
programs were reported, 59 interdisciplinary MA programs, 42 disciplinary MA programs,
20 interdisciplinary doctoral programs, and 70 disciplinary PhD programs. The latter is anundercount because large programs do not report all the different disciplines within which one
could specialize in Japan. These numbers are better evaluated from the analysis of doctoralcandidates.
Quite independent of how academic institutions organize and name their Japanese Studies
programs and degree options, surveys of Japanese Studies since the 1970s have attempted todevelop and apply some standard criteria to evaluate the scale of Japanese Studies programs
and follow their progress over time. They have necessarily distinguished between undergraduate and graduate programs, although of course there is considerable overlap in terms of institutions that offer both. As we have noted earlier, Japanese Studies was initially developed afterWorld War II primarily at large, elite academic institutions that already had some infrastructure such as a library collection of Japanese materials and a few faculty members. Those institutions offered undergraduate courses, but much of their focus was on developing graduate
programs to train people who would then take their skills to other institutions. Hence initiallythere was nearly complete overlap between graduate and undergraduate institutions involved
in Japanese Studies, except for a few programs at small private colleges. Over the ensuing
five decades the number of institutions involved in Japanese Studies at both the graduate andundergraduate levels grew, but undergraduate expansion has greatly outpaced graduate expansion for fairly obvious reasons having to do with the numbers of institutions of both types.
We therefore will examine undergraduate and graduate programs separately, before taking up
issues of the staffing of programs, which necessarily involves both levels.

Undergraduate Programs
We begin with undergraduate programs, since they now form the broad base on which
the smaller number of graduate programs rests. We quote here from the 1995 study, which
reviewed the developments in creating and applying criteria for undergraduate programs inJapanese Studies up to that point.
The 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report listed 61 American institutions with
“undergraduate area programs” in Japanese Studies, but did not report criteria

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

111

for inclusion or make any further distinction among programs.1 Subsequently
Elizabeth Massey and Joseph A. Massey, authors of the 1977 CULCON
Report on Japanese Studies at Colleges and Universities in the United Statesin the Mid-1970s2 developed a categorization scheme for undergraduate
programs concerned with Japan that was based on four factors: the availabilityof Japanese language instruction, the number of disciplines in which courses
wholly about Japan are offered, the size of the faculty specializing in Japan,
and whether an undergraduate major offering study of Japan is available.
Utilizing various combinations of these criteria, they established four
program levels: minimal undergraduate program, limited undergraduate
program, undergraduate area program, and full undergraduate program.3
They applied this scheme to the 1977 study data. The 1984 SSRC-Japan Foundation study
made some minor improvements to the criteria and applied it to their data. The criteria as
modified and used in 1984 are as follows:…a minimal undergraduate program offers either disciplinary
courses or language courses, or one year of language and only one disciplinary
course. A limited undergraduate program offers either courses exclusively
on Japan in several disciplines but only one year of language, or several
years of language but only one disciplinary course, or two years of language
and several disciplinary courses, but fewer than two faculty specialists on
Japan. The difference between the first two categories is that a minimal
program generally offers either language or area courses, but not both. A
limited program offers both, but only one in depth. An undergraduate area
program offers courses exclusively on Japan in two disciplines and two years
of Japanese language, and has a minimum of two faculty Japan specialists.
A full undergraduate program offers courses exclusively on Japan in threeor more disciplines and at least three years of Japanese language instruction,and regularly offers a BA for work on Japan, through an undergraduate major
in Japanese or East Asian Studies, or by offering a major on Japan as partof an interdisciplinary program (such as international studies). Institutions
qualifying for this category also have more than two faculty Japan specialists.4
The 1995 study applied the same criteria, and also reported statistics from the two previous studies that used these criteria in 1977 and 1984. We have done essentially the same in2005 and in the current study. However, in applying the criteria in 2005 and the present study
to the data provided by institutions for this study, we had to make minor modifications. In the
1995 study, institutions were encouraged to send program brochures and other materials to theproject office, and project staff entered the data, being careful to include all degree programs.
Since them we have relied on the institutions to enter the data themselves, through our online
data collection system. As we have explained earlier, the response was incomplete. Although
we tried to get responses from all the different academic programs related to Japan at each institution, in practice we were lucky to get a response from one of the programs. Consequently,
1 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, Appendix 21, p. 107.
2 CULCON Report, pp. 29-31.
3 Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p 197.
4 Ibid, pp. 197-198.

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Chapter 6

112

we believe that even the information on academic degree programs in Japanese Studies thatwas provided by institutions responding to the survey is probably incomplete. This has affected our ability to apply two of the criteria.
The 1984 criteria for a “full undergraduate program” include the presence of a major inJapanese offered through a Japanese or East Asian Studies language or area program, or amajor in Japanese offered through an interdisciplinary program. Many institutions could meetthat requirement, some of them with two or three different majors offered through a Japanese
language department and an interdisciplinary program. However, other institutions have large
numbers of courses exclusively on Japan in several disciplines, offer four or more years ofJapanese language, and have three or more Japan specialist faculty of professorial rank. The
information available to us may describe a major in Asian Studies and perhaps a minor or astrong language requirement that would produce a strong concentration on Japan, but not amajor explicitly labeled Japanese or East Asian Studies.
It seemed inappropriate to designate these programs as “undergraduate area programs”
rather than “full undergraduate programs” when it was patently clear that a student could easily obtain the equivalent of a major in Japanese Studies at that institution. Indeed, there may
even be such an institutionally recognized Japanese major or major track at those institutions,but we simply did not have the information. We have therefore added to the list of “full undergraduate programs” those in which the institution’s resources clearly exceeded all of the otherrequirements, even if we could not verify the existence of a major with the name “Japanese”
attached to it. As long as there was an institutional framework for an area major such as AsianStudies or International Studies available and there were sufficient courses to meet the othercriteria, we treated the program as offering a major with concentration on Japan.
In addition, for the 2012 study there were programs that clearly had more than enoughcourses and levels of language instruction to meet the criteria, but they had neglected to submit
a staff list, so we could not apply the criterion of having 2 or more Japan specialist staff. For
this we used common sense. If the number of courses was very limited and the program would
only have met one of the lower levels on that basis, we scored on the basis of the actual staff
listed, which meant that they could not go above the “limited” level. However, if there were a
Table 6.2. Classification of Undergraduate Programs in Japanese Studies,
1977, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

Program

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

MinimalLimited
Area
Full

64
37
24
31

41.0
23.7
15.4
19.9

91
46
22
38

46.2
23.4
11.2
19.3

98
25
37
81

40.7
10.4
15.4
33.6

29
20
36
97

15.9
11.0
19.8
53.2

23
39
30
139

10.0
16.9
13.0
60.2

Total

156

100.0

197

100.1

241

100.1

182

99.9

231

100.1

* Sources: 1977 figures taken from 1977 CULCON report p. 30 and reprinted in 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 13,
p. 33 based on data for 1974-75 academic year. The latter is also the source for the 1984 data, which is based on the 1981-82
academic year. Percentages recalculated for 1977 and 1984 data. 1995 data based on reports for the 1992-93 academic year.
Data for 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 8.2, Chapter 8, p. 198.
Data reproduced and 2005 data taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.2, p. 144.

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113

great many courses and three or four years of Japanese language offered, we assumed that theymust have sufficient academic staff to offer that program.
Table 6.2 shows the distribution of undergraduate programs in 2012, with the comparative
data from 1977, 1984, 199, and 2005. In addition, Appendix B lists the institutions with various
levels of undergraduate programs. These lists have been included in all the previous studies,and have proven to be invaluable in tracing the history of specific programs over time. Of the
248 academic institutions with entries in the 2012 directory, all but 17 could be classified into
one of the four levels of undergraduate programs. The others had not entered staff or course
data and thus could not be evaluated. Following the procedures used in the previous studies,
the percentages are based on the total number of programs in the four levels, omitting thosethat were not classified.
Our classification shows a solid increase in the number of full undergraduate programs,
but one that is in line with previous increases. This is the largest number of full undergraduate programs we have ever recorded, but it is consistent with the staffing and course increases
we have reported in earlier chapters. Table 6.2 compares the distributions of programs as they
were classified in each study, but it does not provide any information about whether programs
were classified at the same level in two successive studies, had moved up or down, or dropped
off the list completely. In order to see that process more clearly we use a series of turnovertables. We could see part of the picture just by cross-tabulating the cases in the 2012 study andseeing where those programs were in 2005. However, that would not give us any idea about
the programs that were in the 1995 study or the 2005 but were not in the current study. To capture the full picture of the turnover between studies, we use the procedure we developed firstfor the 1995 study, by putting our data for academic institutions with Japanese programs into
the broader context of all academic institutions in the United States. Bear with me while I go
through the methodological details, since reporting them in each study is what enables us toreconstruct the comparable tables for each successive study.
The list we used in 1995 contained 3,135 institutions. In addition to the classifications ofundergraduate programs we developed for the 1995 study, we entered the data that was available from the 1984 study with the earlier classification of the program at each academic institution. That procedure allowed us to account for institutions that appeared in one study andnot the other, and also gave us the residual number of institutions that had no undergraduate
Japanese program in either study year. That turnover table from the 1995 study is reproduced
in its entirety below as Table 6.3, for comparative purposes. The number in brackets in the upper left cell indicates that there was no Japanese Studies program recorded in either the 1984 or
the 1995 study for 2,793 of the 3,135 academic institutions in the base population. That number
is omitted from the calculation of the remaining percentages for clarity. Table 6.3 shows that
although 148 programs were considered for classification in the 1995 study and 142 of themwere classified into one of the four undergraduate program levels, 93 programs that had beenclassified by the same criteria in 1984 were missing in 1995. Most of those had been classified
as minimal in 1984. At the other end of the scale, there was considerable stability in programs
that were classified as full undergraduate programs in both 1984 and 1995, but there was also
an appreciable amount of movement between categories. Of the 8 programs that the 1995
study determined did not meet the criteria for an undergraduate program, two had been in the1984 study, one classified as an undergraduate area program and one as a full undergraduate
program.
This information served as a backdrop to our analysis of the turnover between 1995 and2005. About the same amount of time had passed between the 1984 and 1995 study data andmonograph.indb 113

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114

Table 6.3. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 1984 and 1995*

1995 Program Status

Not Included
No Program
Minimal Program
Limited Program
Undergrad Area
Program
Full Undergrad
Total% Lost to Followup

Not
Included in
1984[2,793]6(4.1%)
90(60.8%)
19(12.8%)
15(10.1%)
18(12.2%)
148(100%)

MinimalProgramin 1984

Limited
Programin 1984

Undergrad
A rea Prog.
in 1984

Full
Undergradin 198467(78.6%)

18(40.0%)–
7(7.7%)
3(3.3%)
5(5.5%)
9(9.9%)–
1(2.2%)
2(4.4%)
11(24.4%)
13(28.9%)

4(19.0%)
1(4.8%)

4(10.8%)
1(2.7%)–
1(4.8%)
4(19.0%)
11(52.4%)––
2(5.4%)
30(81.1%)

93(27.2%)
8(2.3%)
98(28.7%)
25(7.3%)
37(10.8%)
81(23.7%)

91(100%)

45(99.9%)

21(100%)

37(100%)

342(100%)

67(72.0%)

18(19.4%)

4(4.3%)

4(4.3%)

93(100%)

Total

for 1984* 1984 program classifications taken from 1984 Japan Foundation Report. Appendix 5, pp. 125-129. 1995 classifications from the present study. Both sets of classifications were added to date on 3,135 academic institutions in the UnitedStates, from which the table was generated. Percent of programs lost from 1984 to 1995 added as “% lost to follow-up”
to facilitate comparison with 2005 data.

the 1995 study and the 2005 study, so this gave us a reasonable base for comparing how much
Japanese Studies programs had shifted over a decade. However, as noted earlier, the national
list of academic institutions that we were able to obtain for the 2005 study contained a smaller
total number of institutions. Fortunately, very few of the institutions with Japanese Studies
programs were missing, and we were able to recover sufficient data to include them all. Our
total number of academic institutions in the United States for 2005 was 2,890. For the turnover analysis we analyze the data on all the Japanese Studies programs that were classified in
1995 and compared it with the classifications for 2005. That turnover table is shown below, as
Table 6.4.
The results are directly comparable to the equivalent cells in Table 6.3. Out of our base of
2,890 academic institutions for 2005, 2,631 did not have a Japanese Studies program reported
to either the 1995 study or the 2005 study. In 2005, we picked up 25 new Japanese Studies
programs, but lost 75. Nearly all of the losses were classified as minimal programs in 1995.
Although both tables have the percentages running vertically to show the distribution withineach 1995 program classification, we have added a row at the bottom of each table with the percentages calculated horizontally, to show the distribution of the programs that were lost fromthe first study to the second, which is commonly called the loss to follow-up. The numbers are
the same as the top “not included” row of each table, but the percentages are calculated to show
the percent of each program classification from the earlier study that was not included in thesubsequent study. This permits us to compare the data from the two different turnover tables
directly. Comparison of the two loss-to-follow-up distributions reveals that nearly 95 percent

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Table 6.4. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 1995 and 2005*

2005 Program Status

Not Included
Not Ranked
Minimal Program
Limited Program
Undergrad Area
Program
Full Undergrad
Total% Lost to Follow-up

Not
Included in
1995

MinimalProgramin 1995

Limited
Programin 1995

Undergrad
A rea Prog.
in 1995

Full
Undergradin 19951(4.2%)
1(4.2%)
6(25.0%)
5(20.8%)
6(25.0%)
5(20.8%)

1(3.0%)

2(2.4%)–
7(28.0%)
1(4.0%)
6(24.0%)
11(44.0%)

71(74.7%)
1(1.1%)
14(14.7%)
6(6.3%)
2(2.1%)
1(1.1%)–
2(6.1 %)
6(18.2%)
13(39.4%)
11(33.3%)––
2(2.4%)
9(11.0%)
69(84.1%)

75(29.0%)
2(0.8%)
29(11.2%)
20(7.7%)
36(13.9%)
97(37.5%)

25(100%)

95(100%)

24(100%)

33(100%)

82(99.9%)

259(100.1%)

71(94.7%)

1(1.3%)

1(1.3%)

2(2.7%)

75(100%)[2,631]

Total

for 1995* Data for 1995 taken from 1995 study as recorded in matrix of 3,135 academic institutions in the United States at thattime. These data were transferred to the comparable table of 2,890 academic institutions in the United States used as thenational base for the current study.

of the programs lost to the 2005 study had been classified as minimal undergraduate programsin 1995, whereas just fewer than three-quarters of the programs that were lost-to-follow-up
in the 1995 study had been coded as minimal in 1984. In addition, both of the programs that
could not meet the minimal classification standards in 2005 had been classified as minimal or
limited in 1995.
What does this part of the comparison tell us? First, that we should not grieve over theloss of 71 programs that had been classified as minimal in 1995 or blame it completely on the
bursting of the Japan bubble, because there had been a substantial loss of minimal programs
the decade before that, when interest in Japan was rising. As we have pointed out, these fledgling Japanese Studies programs, which consist of only a couple of area courses and maybe ayear or two of Japanese language, are highly vulnerable to the vagaries of faculty movement or
arbitrary institutional decisions. Some of the missing programs may indeed have disappeared,
as we have been able to verify for 23 of those missing in 2005. The rest may still exist, but wecould not find the right person or they declined to participate in the study this time around.
What is perhaps more significant is that virtually all of the programs lost between 1995 and2005 were at the minimal level; only two full undergraduate programs and one each at thelimited and undergraduate area level were not included in the 2005 study. This gives greater
credibility to the rest of the turnover table, because we are indeed tracing the movement of
virtually all of the programs that were classified above the minimal level a decade earlier.
Reading the diagonal cells of the table shows us which programs have stayed at the samelevel for the past decade. We already know that we have lost three quarters of those that wereclassified as minimal in 1995, but the table shows us that only 14 (14.7%) of those classified as

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minimal in 1995 are still classified at that same level in 2005. The rest that have remained active have expanded, mostly into the next level up, as limited undergraduate programs. Three,however, expanded more substantially over a decade and were classified as undergraduate area
programs or full undergraduate programs in 2005. At the other extreme, 69 (84.1%) of the 82
programs that were classified as full undergraduate programs in 1995 remain full undergraduate programs a decade later. This is very close to the 81.1 percent stability rate for full undergraduate programs between 1984 and 1995.
Not surprisingly, most of the movement occurred in the two intervening classifications,limited and undergraduate area program. It is worth remembering that this system of classification was developed in 1977, at a time when Japanese Studies programs overall were much
more modest in scale than they are today. The difference necessary to move from one category
to another may involve one or two faculty members offering area courses in different disciplines, or the same one or two faculty members lost to the institution because they relocatedelsewhere or retired. A program can also move up in the ranking because one more year isadded to the language program.
Yet it is not simply that minor fluctuations are shifting programs from one level to another;in 1977 and 1984, as we saw in Table 6.2, only one in five undergraduate programs could meetthe standards for classification as full undergraduate programs. The percentage had grown toa third by 1995, and by 2005 slightly more than half of all undergraduate programs met thatstandard. One might conclude that the standards are too low and ought to be revised, but thatwould miss the point. Ideally, every undergraduate Japanese Studies program ought to bestrong enough to offer a major, either in Japanese Studies or Japanese language and literature,or both. While we probably cannot achieve that at every institution, there is still plenty of work
to be done to strengthen the programs that are not yet at that level.
We can now add a third turnover table to the analysis, comparing the placement of undergraduate programs in 2005 and 2012. Although less than a full decade intervened between
these two studies, there has still been substantial movement, as demonstrated by the fact thatsixty percent are now classified as full undergraduate programs. Our base national data for2012 is very similar to the list used in 2005, and was simply an in-house updating that foundsome consolidation of institutions plus some upgrading of two year colleges into four year
institutions, particularly in public state systems. The full list this time had 2892 institutions.
Reading on the main diagonal reveals how undergraduate programs have expanded just in
the past six years. Twenty-eight programs that were coded as area programs in 2005 have beenclassified as full undergraduate programs in 2012; six moved up from limited undergraduate
to undergraduate area program; nine advanced from minimal to limited; and sixteen programs
that were not included at all in 2005 now have minimal programs. The numbers above the main
diagonal reveal that only four programs actually dropped in their classification between 2005
and 2012. Hence this is most definitely a story of steady growth and development of undergraduate programs in the 21st century, with about 60 percent of undergraduate programs now
classified as full programs.
What this analysis does not show for the programs that were already classified as fullundergraduate programs is the extent to which so many of them exceeded the threshold of
supporting an undergraduate major. Table 6.6 provides some evidence of how strong undergraduate programs have become. It shows the average number of disciplines in which courses
were offered by the various classifications of undergraduate programs, plus the mean numberof Japanese semester courses offered by each program type and the mean number of facultyof professorial rank (excluding instructors and lecturers). The measure for area courses is notmonograph.indb 116

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117

Table 6.5. Turnover Table for Undergraduate Programs as Classified in 2005 and 2012*
Not
Included in
2005

MinimalProgramin 2005

Limited
Programin 2005

Undergrad
A rea Prog.
in 2005

Full
Undergradin 2005

Not Included[2551]

Not Ranked
Minimal Program–
16(23.2%)
25(36.2%)
13(18.8%)
15(21.7%)

4(17.4%)–
4(17.4%)
9(39.1%)
4(17.4%)
2(8.7%)

2(11.1%)–
2(11.1%)
4(22.2%)
6(33.3%)
4(22.2%)

3(8.3%)–
001(1.1%)–
1(1.1%)
05(13.9%)
28(77.8%)

1(1.1%)
92(96.8%)

10(4.1.%)–
23(9.5%)
38(15.8%)
29(12.0%)
141(58.5%)

69(99.9%)

23(100%)

18(99.9%)

36(100%)

95(100.1%)241(99.9%)

4
(40%)

2
(20%)

3
(30%)

1
(10%)

10
(100%)

2012 Program Status

Limited Program
Undergrad Area
Program
Full Undergrad
Total% Lost to Follow-up

Total

for 2012* There are 2892 institutions on the list we used. In addition to the 241 that appear in this turnover table, 17 institutions
that submitted program entries did not provide either courses or staff. An additional 83 programs were being tracked
because they were listed as “other institutions with Japan specialist staff. The 10 programs listed as lost to follow-up
were on that list but had submitted program entries in 2005. Another 43 programs that were on the “other institutions
with Japan specialist staff” in 2005 had entries this time.

the number of courses, but the number of different academic disciplines (aside from Japanese
language) in which courses of the two types are offered; it is thus a measure of breadth of the
program rather than depth within individual disciplines.
The minimal programs have limited area courses, but they do offer an average of foursemesters or two years of Japanese language courses and have one faculty member of professional rank. Limited undergraduate programs have an average of two disciplines offering area
courses, an average of 4.8 semesters or two years of Japanese language instruction, and 1.7
faculty members of professional rank. However, for these two classifications, the averages may
obscure the unevenness that has kept particular programs in the lowest classifications. The
undergraduate area programs offer area courses in an average of 3.5 disciplines, and on average offer more than the six semester courses that equates to three years of Japanese language.
On average, they also have 2.5 faculty members, just a bit above the required level. On all ofthese dimensions the averages for 2012 are slightly lower than those for 2005. However, it isamong the full graduate programs that we see solid growth. Full undergraduate programs now
offer area courses in an average of 7.9 disciplines, and an average of 14.2 language courses,
meaning that they offer four years of Japanese plus more specialized courses. Only the average
number of faculty of professional rank is lower than in 2005, at 7.8. The difference between undergraduate area programs and full undergraduate programs is clear from these mean figures.
The full undergraduate programs clearly offer both depth and breadth in courses, language
training, and faculty.
These full undergraduate programs are not strong simply because those institutions havemonograph.indb 117

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118

Table 6.6. Mean number of Disciplinaries and Mean Number of Language Courses
Offered by Japanese Studies Programs, and Mean Number of Professorial Rank
Faculty, by Undergraduate Program Classification, 2005 and 2012*
Program Type2005 Mean #­Disciplines

2012 Mean #­Disciplines

2005 Mean #­Language

2012 Mean #­Language

2005 Mean #­Faculty

2012 Mean #­Faculty

MinimalLimitedArea
Full Undergrad

1.0/1/1
2.9/1.5
4.1/3.8
7.9/5.4

1.0
2.1
3.5
9.7

4.6
6.7
7.9
12.9

1.7
4.8
7.2
14.2

1.5
2.0
3.4
10.3

1.1
1.7
2.5
7.8

Total Sample

5.4/3.9

6.8

10.2

10.5

6.6

5.5

* Data for 2005 from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.5 p.
148; Data for 2012 provide a single average for number of disciplines, without dividing into those offering courses on
Japan and those offering only multinational courses. Faculty numbers for 2012 based on 195 institutions for which staff
levels were available.

graduate programs in Japanese Studies: in fact just over half of them do not have graduate
programs. They are simply robust undergraduate programs in Japanese Studies. This in turnprovides an answer to why the average number of faculty is lower. There is a huge differencein the average number of faculty of professional rank between programs that have a graduate
program in any of our three classifications (11.7) and those that do not have a classified graduate program (3.5). What we are seeing here in 2012 is that the continuing expansion of JapaneseStudies programs is proceeding largely at the undergraduate level to four year colleges that do
not offer graduate education. As we will see below, expansion at the graduate level develops
much more slowly because of the higher requirements and the more limited number of institutions involved in graduate education. With this in mind, we turn now to look more closely at
the graduate programs, using the same analytic strategy.

Graduate Programs
The 1977 study conducted by Elizabeth and Joseph Massey for CULCON also developed
a classification for graduate programs in Japanese Studies, using a similar set of factors. We
quote from the 1995 study’s description of the classifications.
They distinguished three categories of graduate program: MA program,
limited PhD program, and complete graduate program. These are best
understood in descending order. An institution with a complete graduate
program has Japanese language library holdings of 25,000 volumes ofmore; offers courses exclusively on Japan in four or more disciplines; hasa minimum of eight faculty specialists on Japan; offers Japanese language
instruction at all levels; and demonstrates a commitment to Japanese Studies
from at least four disciplines in addition to those offering courses exclusively
on Japan. The last criterion presumably means four departments in addition
to the requisite minimum of four, and would therefore not apply to institutions
that already offer courses exclusively on Japan in eight or more disciplines.
Such a program regularly offers both MA and PhD degrees in which there isconcentration on Japan.

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119

An institution with a limited PhD program offers the PhD regularly inseveral disciplines, or else offers an interdisciplinary PhD with concentration
on Japan. It is distinguished from a complete graduate program by its relative
weakness in one or more of the following areas: less than 25,000 volumes inJapanese in its library collection; Japanese language offered only throughthe second or third year; courses exclusively on Japan in three or fewer
departments; or less than eight Japan specialists on its faculty. An institution
is classified as having an MA program if it regularly offers an MA degree forwork on Japan; has faculty Japan specialists in at least four disciplines; offers
courses exclusively on Japan in at least two disciplines; and offers at least two
years of Japanese language.5
These criteria were first applied in 1977, and then applied in 1995 without modification,
but unfortunately the 1984 study did not explicitly apply the criteria. Instead, it simply notedchanges in the specific institutions that reported having graduate programs in Japanese Studies. We have used these criteria for the present study, but with the same caveat as for the application of the undergraduate program standards. As with the 2005 study, our data for the2012 study do not reliably report all graduate programs, particularly those offered in various
disciplines that involve substantial concentration on Japan. The data are reasonably complete
for graduate degrees offered by Japanese language programs and for MA degrees offered inJapanese Studies either as interdisciplinary degrees or by a freestanding department with either Japanese or East Asian in its name. The data are substantially weaker for doctorates thatare administered and awarded through an academic discipline, but which involve research andtraining in Japanese Studies. We have therefore relied less on whether we have an explicit report of the existence of a doctoral program in a particular discipline, and more on the tangible
existence of graduate level courses and doctoral students who are included in our study, in addition to the more easily measured criteria of faculty numbers, disciplinary courses exclusively
on Japan, advanced Japanese language courses, and library resources.
Table 6.7 shows the classification of institutions with graduate programs in 2012, compared with the distribution in 1977, 1995, and 2005. Because the 1984 study did not actually
apply the graduate program criteria but simply reported changes since 1997 in the total number of programs, the 1995 study adopted the convention of measuring the change in numberof graduate programs from the base in 1977. Thus although the number of graduate programs
classified in 1995 and 2005 are both lower than the number reported in 1984, both show anincrease from the 45 programs identified in the 1977 CULCON report. The point of this comparison was to highlight the fact that a relatively small number of institutions have maintained
their position as the major providers of doctoral level training in Japanese Studies, despite all
the changes in the field at other levels. Now, however, we can see some new developments thatcomplicate the picture.
In the first four studies, about a third of the sample was classified at the MA program level.
It is well to remember that this classification is not based solely on whether the institution
presents itself as providing Japanese Studies degrees at the MA level; instead, it is based onwhether the institution meets the MA threshold in terms of number of Japan specialist faculty,
range of disciplines in which courses are offered, and level of Japanese language instruction
offered, in addition to regularly offering an MA degree in Japanese Studies. In fact, most fullundergraduate programs in Japanese Studies meet or exceed the faculty and course require5 Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, pp. 202-203.

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120

Table 6.7. Classification of Institutions with Graduate Programsin 1977, 1984, 1995, and 2005 Studies*
1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

Program

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

MA Program
Limited PhD
Complete Program

16
14
15

35.6
31.3
33.3

–
–
–

–
–
–

17
15
19

33.3
29.4
37.3

17
6
29

32.7
11.5
55.8

12
17
24

22.6
32.1
45.3

Total

45

100.2

57

100.0

51

100.0

52

100.0

53

100.0

Change from 1977

–

–

+12

+26.7

+6

+13.3

+7

+15.5%+8+17.5%* Sources: 1977 data summarized from 1977 CULCON Report, Appendix K, pp. 112-114; 1984 data from 1984 JapanFoundation Report, Appendix 6, p. 130. Data for 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States:
The 1990s, Table 8.4, chapter 8, page 204. Data reproduced and 2005 data taken from Japanese Studies in the UnitedStates and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.6, p. 150.

ments for the MA classification, but many are located at undergraduate institutions without
graduate programs. In 2012 the number classified as MA programs in down substantially andnow comprises less than a quarter of the graduate programs, compared to a third in the previous studies. This has occurred basically because more programs meet the requirements of alimited PhD program.
The major change between the 1995 study and 2005 was the shift of many programs fromthe limited PhD classification to having what is defined as a complete graduate program. As
we noted in 1995, most of the programs in the limited PhD category already met the faculty,
discipline, and language program levels for a complete graduate program, but were held backbecause they did not have the requisite library resource of 25,000 volumes in Japanese. Manyof those programs were getting close, and in the intervening decade, despite the economic
barriers to collection development, they had Japanese collections of at least 25,000 volumes
by 2005. Of course, during that same time period the programs that had the largest collections
have also grown steadily, so the new entrants were still not competitive with the top libraries,
but they do have substantial Japanese language holdings. Ironically, even as the demands on
Japanese librarians have increased, our analysis indicates that the research interests of many
Japan specialists (and the types of materials they need) make traditional Japanese library collections in the United States less critical to scholarship than they were two or three decadesago. We will take up this issue in greater depth in the next chapter. However, what we havefound in 2012 is that some of these programs with the requisite level of library resources nolonger meet the criteria of having eight Japan specialists on their faculty, so they have been
moved back into the limited PhD program category. Overall, then, the distributed has shifted
considerably from the even split into thirds of 1977. In 2012 we have less than a quarter ofgraduate programs at the MA level, a third at the limited PhD level, and 45percent at the fullgraduate program level.
Table 6.8 shows the relative strength of graduate programs at each level in terms of thenumbers of disciplines in which area courses are offered, the number of Japanese language
courses offered, and the number of faculty of professorial rank. We present means for eachcategory, which may obscure some individual unevenness that affected the classifications. All
graduate programs have higher means than those without graduate programs. The differences
between MA level and limited PhD are not that great when viewed as averages, but there still

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121

Table 6.8 Mean Number of Disciplines Offering Area Courses with Japan Content,
Mean Number of Japanese Language Courses, and Mean Number of Professorial
Faculty, by Graduate Program Classification, 2005 and 2012*

ProgramMean # Disciplines
2005
2012
2012 mean # courses
Mean # Lang. Courses
2005
2012
Mean # Prof. Faculty
2005
2012
2012 w/emeritus

MA Program

Limited PhD
ProgramComplete
Graduate­Program

Totals

3.7/3.0
5.1
9.0

6.8/3.6
7.0
15.9

7.2/4.8
10.1
24.9

11.9/8.3
17.3
55.1

5.4/3/9
7.1
15.4

7.5
7.5

12.6
13.5

13.3
17.2

19.0
28.5

10.2
1.2

3.8
3.3
3.4

7.8
5.1
5.7

8.8
7.5
8.1

17.9
16.8
20.3

3.8
5.2
5.8

No Graduate
Program* Data for 2005 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.7,
p. 151. Data for 2012 based on 209 academic programs for which professorial staff data were available.

is a measurable difference in each of the criteria. The real leap is from the MA or Limited
PhD level to the Complete Graduate Program level, where the averages are all substantiallyhigher. It must be emphasized that the metric here for area courses is not individual courses,
but academic disciplines in which courses of those types are offered. This is a measure of thebreadth of the program in terms of the perspectives of different disciplines. The actual numberof courses is even higher and we show these averages for 2012.
The course measure here is semesters, and the very high number for Japanese language
courses indicates that the programs offer a rich array of advanced courses beyond the eight semesters that would constitute four full years of basic Japanese language. The average levels for2012 are higher than for 2005 for every measure except mean number of professorial faculty.
While the overall average is higher because of the increased number of programs at the undergraduate level, the average number of professorial faculty is down from 2005 at each level ofgraduate program. However, these programs also have 113 emeritus faculty listed. If we add
emeritus faculty to each category, the average for complete graduate programs and the overall
average exceed the 2005 level, but the averages for all of the other categories remain below the2005 levels. This is because 73 percent of the emeritus faculty members are located at the 24complete graduate programs. These are primarily the oldest and largest programs, which haveexperienced the most generational turnover over the past decade or so.
It should also be pointed out that these criteria were developed when Japanese Studies was
guided by the language and area studies paradigm, which emphasized the placement of facultyin different disciplines and the provision of an interdisciplinary program through exposure to
the study of Japan in different disciplines. The economic competition paradigm did not fundamentally alter that vision, but instead increased focus on professional schools and social science disciplines that could provide economically useful knowledge about contemporary Japan.
However, in contrast, the currently dominant cultural studies paradigm de-emphasizes thissort of disciplinary dispersion and instead aims to cluster faculty within a broader language

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122language and culture program in which the disciplinary identity of both faculty and courses
may be obscured. That affects our ability to “count” people and courses according to standard disciplinary categories, but in the long-run, it also tends to reduce the actual disciplinary
range of Japanese Studies. As noted earlier, this has a particular impact on the social science
disciplines, because such programs consume social science concepts very effectively, but aremuch less likely to produce scholars with disciplinary credentials that will be recognized bysocial science disciplines. That in turn has an impact on hiring practices in the social sciencesthat may reshape potential offerings at Japanese Studies programs in the future. Of course
academic disciplines themselves are constructed and reconstructed over time, and in the future
our criteria for evaluating Japanese Studies programs may well need to be re-examined. At
present, however, having such criteria not only allow us to track what is happening in Japanese Studies programs, but also still aligns with the dominance of disciplinary departments in
American academia in general.
We have already noted that there is considerable overlap between undergraduate and graduate programs. Table 6.9 shows graduate program classification by undergraduate program
classification for 2012. As the table illustrates clearly, graduate programs are nested as a subsetof those programs classified as full undergraduate programs, since the standards even for thelowest graduate classification, MA level, are higher than for the full undergraduate program
classification in terms of number of faculty and number of disciplines offering courses on
Japan. The MA standard of two years of Japanese language seems a bit outdated, but in fact
all programs exceed it, so the low threshold does not have any material effect. More significant is the fact that fully three quarters of Japanese Studies programs in the United States are
now undergraduate programs, and that well over half of all full undergraduate programs areat institutions without a graduate program. This is the greatest proportion of undergraduate
programs of any study of Japanese Studies in the United States.
Many of these strong undergraduate Japanese Studies programs are located at liberal arts
colleges with no aspiration to add graduate programs; others are located at institutions thathave well-developed graduate programs in other fields, and thus have the potential to expand
into the graduate level in Japanese Studies. Graduate programs are attractive to potential faculty, and they utilize resources in which the institution has already made a substantial investment. The pattern we have seen through this study indicates that well-established Japanese
Table 6.9. Graduate Program Status by Undergraduate Program Classification, 2012
Undergrad
MinimalLimited­Undergrad

A rea

Full

Total

None

22

38

29

MA level100Limited Doctoral

0

0

0

Complete Graduate

0

0

0

89
(63.1%)
11(7.8%)
17(12.1%)
24(17.0%)

178(77.1%)
12(5.2%)
17(7.4%)
24(10.4%)

Total

23

38

29

141

231
(100.1%)

Program Statusmonograph.indb 122

None

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

123

Studies programs are becoming broader and deeper. We have already seen considerable expansion at the graduate level, and there is likely to be some more in the future. However, it seems
likely that undergraduate programs in Japanese Studies will continue to grow much fasterthan graduate programs, in part because of the relatively greater saturation of Japanese Studies graduate programs at higher ranked graduate institutions. We will revisit this issue in thenext chapter when we consider infrastructural considerations for Japanese Studies programs.
We have detected evidence of Japanese Studies programs becoming stronger at both theundergraduate and graduate levels, and we have documented some movement among categories. In all the studies since the 1970s there has been remarkable stability in the major graduate
programs. Since the same classification of graduate programs was used in the 1995 study andthe two subsequent ones, we can use turnover tables to examine more precisely how stable thegraduate programs have been. The table was constructed in the same fashion as the undergraduate program turnover tables, by placing our data on the classification of graduate programs inJapanese Studies into the list of academic institutions in the United States and comparing thelevels of graduate programs in each study year. This enables us to see both gains and losses
between the two studies, as well as changes in the internal configuration of programs that participated in two consecutive studies.
Table 6.10 shows the turnover of graduate programs between 1995 and 2005, underscoring
the stability of the older complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies. It takes a great dealof time and institutional investment to create a Japanese Studies program of that scale. Once
it is in place, it can be damaged by mismanagement or lack of funding, but it also grows rootsin the institution that help it survive and flourish. In 1995 we recognized 15 complete graduate programs that had persisted since the 1970s, and identified four new ones that had crossed
the threshold to join them. A decade later, those same 19 programs were still thriving, and ten
additional programs had met all of the 1977 criteria for complete graduate program status.
Hence there was very high stability in the core, but there was also steady expansion as more
institutions developed Japanese Studies programs that were strong enough to support graduate
training and took the steps necessary to establish graduate level degree programs.
Note that none of the six graduate programs that were present in 1995 and absent in 2005
Table 6.10. Turnover Table of Institutions with Graduate Programs in 1995 and 2005*
2005 Program Status

Not Included
in 1995

MA in 1995

Not Included[2832]

MA6(85.7%)
1(14.3%)
05(29.4%)
1(64.7%)
1(5.9%)
07(100%)

17(100%)

Limited PhD
Complete Graduate
Total

Limited PhD
in 19951(6.7%)

Complete Prog.
In 1995

0

Total

0
4
(26.7%)
10(66.7%)

19(100.0%)6(10.3%)
17(29.3%)
6(10.3%)
29(50.0%)

15(100.0%)19(100.0%)58(99.9%)

00* 1995 study data applied to the base of academic institutions in the United States being used for the 2005 study for thisanalysis.

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Chapter 6

124

Table 6.11. Turnover Table of Institutions with Graduate Programs in 2005 and 2012*2005 Program Status

Not IncludedMA
Limited PhD
Complete Graduate
Total

Limited PhD
in 2005

Complete­Graduate Pro gram I n 1995

Total

2

1

0

3

9
6
0
17

2
3
1
7

0
6
23
29

12
17
24
56

No Graduate
MA Program in
Program in 2005
2005

1
2
0
3

* 2005 study data applied to the base of academic institutions in the United States being used for the 2012 study for thisanalysis.

were full graduate programs, and five of the six were MA programs. The same was true of theseven programs that were new in 2005: six of those were MA programs and one was a limited
PhD program. In short, the 19 oldest complete graduate programs were stable, and the fluctuation was among less complete programs, primarily MA programs. The 2005 to 2012 graduate
turnover table shown in Table 6.11 completes the picture.
This time there are 23 complete graduate programs that have been stable for the past
two studies. These are the 19 programs that had been stable in the 1995 and 2005 studies,
plus four of the ten new ones added in 2005. Once again, there are three graduate programsnew to the 2012 study, plus three that had dropped off the radar after 2005, and none of thosewere complete graduate programs. Moreover, most of the classification changes between thetwo studies were between MA programs and Limited PhD programs. However, this time theother six new programs classified as complete graduate programs in 2005 have slipped backto Limited PhD Programs (their status in 1995). All of them have sufficient library resources,
offer area ­courses in eight or more disciplines, and also offer four or more years of Japanese,but they no longer have the required number of professorial staff. None of the six have any
emeritus faculty listed, implying that these losses are due to faculty who have left the programand moved elsewhere.
There are real questions about whether there are sufficient resources to support this manyfull graduate programs in Japanese Studies at anything like the levels that the older programs
have developed and maintained. We will take up this question later. First, however, we need to
examine what all these graduate programs are producing.

Production of Doctorates in Japanese Studies
The fact that programs are classified as complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies
does not necessarily tell us everything about the production of PhD level Japan specialists in
the United States. As we have seen in the past, the volume of PhDs produced by these programs differs widely. Moreover, a substantial number of PhDs with expertise on Japan anddissertations related to Japan are being trained at programs that are not classified as complete
graduate programs in Japanese Studies. This is partly due to the nature of graduate educationin the United States. Except for degrees in Japanese literature and linguistics, most doctorates
are awarded through a discipline where students have a doctoral committee that is not primarily composed of Japan specialists. Hence as long as the student has guidance from a Japan spe-monograph.indb 124

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

125

cialist in the discipline, the rest of the committee may be composed of disciplinary specialists
who do not know anything about Japan. Their disciplinary credentials are essential for getting
an academic position, since they are unlikely to find a position that is specifically seeking a
Japan specialist in their discipline.
Since we collect information about doctoral candidates from both the programs and individual Japan specialists, we also are aware of doctoral candidates working on Japan who arebeing trained at institutions that do not have Japanese Studies program to speak of. A related
factor is that students increasingly come to doctoral programs with sufficient background thatthey do not need further language training, either because they are native speakers of Japanese,or because they have already developed a high level of Japanese language ability elsewhere
and are not dependent on the Japanese language program at their doctoral institution. A further
factor contributing to the divergence between institutions with complete graduate program inJapanese Studies and the list of doctoral candidates doing dissertations on Japan is that under
the dominant cultural studies paradigm and in the age of the Internet, students are no longer
dependent on the Japanese libraries resources of their institution to obtain essential researchmaterials. In fact institutions with complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies still produce the great majority of the new PhDs in Japanese Studies. It is just that they no longer define
the outer limits of doctoral level work on Japan.
Let us now look at how many doctoral students in Japanese Studies have been reported tothe study at each institution. As described in Chapter 2, the four Japan directory studies have
tried to keep track of doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies by asking both Japanese Studies
programs and Japan specialists to report doctoral students in Japanese Studies. We have usedthat information to produce listings for the directories, and also to try to follow these graduate
students over time. Here we use the information to examine the contribution that each institution makes to the overall pool of current doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies. We havealready pointed out that “program” is now a generic term covering all of the various academic
disciplines and interdisciplinary arrangements through which students can earn a doctorate atthese institutions for work on Japan. For 2012, we do not even really know how many different
possibilities exist at specific academic institutions, because of uneven reporting. Large institutions are no longer able to keep track of all students who are doing doctoral work related toJapan in different disciplines.
Despite this, we feel that our triangulation procedure gives us reasonably good estimatesof the number of doctoral students working on Japan at each institution. Typically, faculty
report many more students than the institutions do, but many students are reported by only
one of the sources. For the 2005 and 2012 studies, graduate students could also register on
the project website, although fewer students did so this time. Table 6.12 shows the number ofdoctoral students reported at each institution that had five or more doctoral students, ranked indescending order based on their 2012 numbers. The table shows the percentage of the total andthe cumulative percentage, making it easier to see the degree of concentration in the largest
doctoral programs. The left side of the table gives the rank order for 2012, with the comparable
rankings for the three previous studies that used the same methodology.
The data are remarkable in several respects. First, 31 institutions have reported five or
more doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies. Although this is a little smaller than the 35 institutions with five or more doctoral candidates in 2005, six institutions have joined the list for the
first time. The absence of a ranking for 1989, 1995, or 2005 quickly reveals the new additions.
Nine additional institutions that ranked in previous studies have dropped out of the rankings
this time because they reported less than five doctoral students, but we have kept them on

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126

Chapter 6

the list so that the rankings for all three studies are complete. Second, there is somewhat lessconcentration of doctoral students at a few institutions than there was in previous decades. In
1995 the top six institutions accounted for half of all the doctoral students in Japanese Studies
and the top twelve accounted for three-quarters of the students. In 2005, it took the combined
doctoral students of the top nine institutions to reach the 50 percent mark, and 19 institutions
to account for three-quarters of the students. In 2012, the top eight institutions reported half ofthe doctoral students, and sixteen are training three-quarters of the students. This is somewhat
greater concentration than was reported in 2005, but still more dispersion than in the earlier
studies.
What is the relationship between this list of institutions that are producing doctorates inJapanese Studies and the criteria we have used to classify Japanese Studies programs? The
classifications have been added to Table 6.12 as asterisks following the institution’s name inorder to examine this question. Three asterisks means the institution is classified as having acomplete graduate program in 2012. Two asterisks indicate that it has a limited PhD program,and one asterisk means it was coded as meeting the MA level criteria. Of the 24 institutions weclassified as having a complete graduate program in Japanese Studies, institutions, 23 (95.8%),
appear in Table 6.12 as having more than five doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies. Viewed
another way, 85 percent of all doctoral students in Japanese Studies are studying at one of
the 23 institutions with a complete graduate program in Japanese Studies. The remaining 15
percent are studying at 54 other institutions: this is a curve with high concentration at one end
and a very long tail at the other.
There is thus quite a close correlation between having a strong Japanese Studies programand producing PhDs in areas related to Japan, but not an absolute match. Five programs withfive or more doctoral students do not meet any of the criteria we use to identify Japanese Studies graduate programs. However, we hasten to add that an institution with good graduate programs in academic disciplines and a Japan specialist in a particular discipline could certainly
provide excellent doctoral training and guidance for a student in that discipline, even if the
program as a whole did not have sufficient faculty, area courses, or library resources to meetthe established general standards. This is true not only for programs classified at the limited
PhD level, which may only lack sufficient library resources in Japanese, but also for programs
that may have fewer faculty and thus meet only the MA level criteria. The broad dispersion ofJapan specialist faculty results in the situation where some institutions without a strong undergraduate program in Japanese Studies may in fact have the specialized resources to support
doctoral students in particular disciplines. What is remarkable is that so many of the newest
institutions to be classified as having strong graduate programs in Japanese Studies are alreadyactively producing PhDs in the field.
Equally significant is the fact that nearly all of the institutions listed above as offering
doctorates in Japanese Studies, and all of those with complete graduate programs, have beenclassified as doctoral institutions with very high research activity by the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching, which is the gold standard for high quality graduate education in the United States.6 The classification system was changed in 2005, but the institutions
with complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies consistently fall into the top category of
research institutions in both the old and new systems. In the new system, all of the 23 institutions with complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies are ranked as Research Universi6 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, The Carnegie classification of institutions ofhigher education. Menlo Park, CA, now accessible through the foundation’s website at http://classifications​.carnegiefoundation.org/lookup_listings/.

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Table 6.12. Rank Order of Institutions by Number of Doctoral Students in JapaneseStudies in 2012, with Number and Percentage of Students, Cumulative Percentage, and1989, 1995, and 2005 Rankings*
R anking
2012

2005

1989

1995

Institutions#%

Cum. %

1
2
3
4
5
6
6
8
9
10
11
12
12
14
15
16
17
17
19
19
19
19
23
23
23
26
26
26
26
30
30
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–

2
13
10
1
22
5
8
3
10
7
12
4
18
16
30
6
–
22
24
21
20
16
–
29
14
–
–
28
–
18
9
14
16
18
20
16
32
9
12
22

1
8
2
7
–
6
5
3
17
–
10
9
16
11
–
4
–
–
–
–
13
15
–
–
14
–
–
–
–
19
12
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–

1
3
7
7
–
4
6
2
12
14
11
16
18
10
–
5
–
19
–
19
17
23
–
–
12
–
–
–
–
15
9
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–

University of Hawaii***
Cornell University***
University of Michigan***Harvard University***
University of Southern California***
University of California at Berkeley***
Yale University***
Columbia University***
Ohio State University***
University of Pittsburgh***
University of Washington***Princeton University***
University of Pennsylvania***
University of Chicago***University of California Santa Barbara***Stanford University***
Pepperdine University
University of California at San Diego***University of Oregon***Duke University***
University of Wisconsin***
University of Kansas***
Northwestern University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Indiana University***
Boston University**
Michigan State University
Temple University
University of Colorado**
University of Illinois***University of California, Los Angeles***Florida International University*
Purdue University**
University of California, Irvine**
University of North Carolina**
Georgia State University
The University of Iowa**
Boston College
University of California, Santa Cruz
Brandeis University
27 institutions with less than 5 students

59
50
48
43
42
35
35
30
24
21
20
19
19
15
14
12
9
9
8
8
8
8
7
7
7
6
6
6
6
5
5
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
48

9.2
7.8
7.5
6.7
6.6
5.5
5.5
4.7
3.8
3.3
3.1
3.0
3.0
2.3
2.2
1.9
1.4
1.4
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.1
1.1
1.1
0.9
0.9
0.9
0.9
0.8
0.8
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
7.5

9.2
17.0
24.5
31.2
37.8
43.3
48.8
53.5
57.3
60.6
63.7
66.7
69.7
72.0
74.2
76.1
77.5
78.9
80.2
81.5
82.8
84.1
85.2
86.3
87.4
88.3
89.2
90.1
91.0
91.8
92.6
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
100.1

* Number reported is based on students who were reported by programs or faculty or who registered with the project
themselves. Ranks for 1989, 1995, and 2005 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continities
and Opportnities, Table 7.10 p. 155.
** institutions has limited doctoral program***institutions has complete graduate program

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128

Chapter 6

ties with Very High Research Activity, the top category of 108 doctoral institutions. Eight
additional institutions that have five or more doctoral students in Japanese Studies also appear
on that top list of 108 doctoral institutions with Very High Research Activity. In short, theprograms that are training doctoral students in Japanese Studies are all counted among the top
graduate research and training academic institutions in the United States. Their graduate programs in Japanese Studies are built upon a very broad and sturdy academic base: their faculty
and academic programs must meet rigorous institutional standards, completely independent of
their status as programs in Japanese Studies. Graduate training in Japanese Studies is in good
hands.
The findings in Table 6.12 indicate that the high concentration of doctoral education in
Japanese Studies in a small number of institutions is now broadening out to some extent. However, we still need to put that finding into context. Even if it is now changing, doctoral levelstudy in Japanese Studies has long been concentrated in a relatively small number of programs.
This has implications for the field that have been examined in all the previous studies. The
previous studies have used two rather distinct methods to analyze the extent of concentration,and sometimes the two approaches have been combined. We need to understand what each one
is measuring before we can make sense of the data from this long series of studies.
One approach counts the number of students doing doctoral research on Japan at each
institution that has a doctoral program in Japanese Studies, which we have just done. Thisapproach tracks the current production of doctorates in Japanese Studies at the time of eachsurvey. It provides a current and prospective measure of how institutions are contributing to
the pool of Japan specialists, but this measure is also imperfect. Institutions may over-count byreporting students who are not yet at the dissertation stage but are in doctoral programs related
to Japan, or they may undercount because they are unaware of students who are working on
Japan-related dissertations in various departments. There is also a fair amount of attrition in
graduate programs even at the dissertation writing stage, so the fact that students are reported
to be writing a dissertation on Japan does not mean that they will complete it and will join theranks of Japan specialist scholars in the future. Moreover, in the present situation it does notnecessarily mean that these new PhDs will be entering academic careers in the United States.
The second approach is to ask where Japan specialists currently working in the UnitedStates obtained their doctorates. The assumption is that Japan specialists were trained at theinstitutions offering graduate level programs in Japanese, but that is only partially true; weknow that some Japan specialists did not do their dissertation on Japan and came to the field bysome other route. Nonetheless, every survey of the field has looked at the array of institutions
from which the respondents obtained their doctorates, as a way of understanding the long-term
impact of the concentration of graduate level training in Japanese Studies at a small number of
institutions. This measure is retrospective and cumulative, so the effect of a small number of
institutions thirty to forty years ago still has an impact on the field today. By counting the doctorates of people who are defined by their participation in each survey as the currently active
pool of Japan specialists, this measure inevitably includes some people who did not get theirdegrees in Japan-related fields, and it omits those who may have relevant doctoral degrees but
are not captured in the survey for one reason or another.
We use both approaches, but we need to try to keep them clearly distinguished, especiallywhen we combine the reports into a single table. It is not always clear which measure was being
reported in the earliest studies, which further blurs the distinction. Actually, the diifference
between the two approaches was less relevant through the 1970s, when the field was smaller
and both approaches were counting essentially the same people. In the more recent studies themonograph.indb 128

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

129

two approaches have begun to offer rather different perspectives on the state of the field.
In order to appreciate the findings of the current study, we first review the earlier studies,
beginning with a quote from the 1995 study’s summary of the earlier studies.
By 1970, eight institutions had each awarded ten or more doctorates toJapan specialists, and another four institutions had awarded between five andseven doctorates related to Japan. The institutions that had awarded ten or
more degrees accounted for 70 percent of all Japan specialists in the UnitedStates. Adding the slightly smaller programs that had awarded 5-9 degrees
brought the total up to 79.3 percent.7
The eight institutions that had awarded ten or more doctorates to Japanese specialists by
1970 were Harvard University (54), the University of Michigan (47), Columbia University(46), the University of California at Berkeley (37), Stanford University (19), the Universityof Washington (17), Yale University (15), and the University of Wisconsin (11). The four
additional institutions that had awarded 5-9 doctorates to Japan specialists by 1970 were theUniversity of Chicago (8), the University of Pennsylvania (8), Indiana University (8), andNew York University (6). It is worth noting that the original eight universities were evenly
divided between public and private institutions, but three of the four in the next tier wereprivate.
The 1995 study continued:
Just a few years later, the 1977 CULCON report found that the field
was opening up in terms of the number of institutions awarding degrees,
but students remained highly concentrated at a small number of institutions.
Although the 1977 study counted more than twice as many degrees as its
predecessor, almost two-thirds of them came from the same 12 institutions.
The number of institutions that had awarded ten or more degrees related toJapan increased to 19 in the 1977 study. . . .
The 1984 survey reported a smaller number of doctorates (655) andof institutions that had awarded ten or more degrees (15) in its sample ofacademic Japan specialist survey respondents, but it found a 77.3 percent
concentration of doctorates from those 15 institutions. Moreover, two-thirdsof the respondents’ doctorates still came from the original 12 institutions that
had awarded five or more degrees related to Japan prior to 1970.
By 1995 the number of institutions that had awarded 10 or more doctorates
to the current survey’s respondents had grown a bit more, to 22, but so had
the concentration: over eighty percent of the respondents had obtained theirdoctorates from those 22 institutions, and the original 12 doctoral institutions
still accounted for about two-thirds of all the doctoral degrees awarded to the
respondents.8
As we noted in Chapter 2, up until the 1990s, most Japan specialists in the United States
who had ever existed were still alive, and the field was growing because all the new people were
simply being added to the existing number. But as the first postwar cohort of Japan specialists
7 Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 215.
8 Ibid, p. 217.

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130

Chapter 6began to retire and die, the field has taken on a more normal demographic pattern in which newly trained younger scholars replace those who have left the field, rather than simply increasing
the pool. Thus since the 1995 study, there should be a weakening of the influence of the small
number of institutions that trained Japan specialists in the 1950s to 1970s, and this measure ofwhere current Japan specialists obtained their doctorates should now begin to reflect the expansion of doctoral training institutions in Japanese Studies over the past two decades.
Table 6.13 represents the latest iteration of analyzing the institutions where Japan specialists received their doctorates. The numbers reflect the simple count of the number of doctorates from various institutions reported by Japan specialists in each survey. We have ranked
the institutions in their 2012 order to emphasize the current distribution, and show the top 35
institutions in 2012 from which 5 or more Japan specialists obtained their doctorates. This isa substantial increase in number of institutions from previous studies, as there were only 27
listed in 2005.
Of the twelve institutions that dominated the production of doctorates in Japanese Studies
in the 1970s, seven are still at the very top of the ranking in 2012. All twelve are still in the top
20, but several have fallen considerably in the current ranking, and the top twelve today include
two institutions that have expanded their production of PhDs in Japanese Studies only since the1980s (University of Hawaii and Cornell University). Thus there is still considerable concentration based on the original doctoral programs, but we also see some fluctuations in the rankings
and the inclusion of new institutions. Most, but not all, of the institutions on this list are also in
Table 6.11 above, the institutions that are currently producing doctorates in Japanese Studies.
In order to see the changes more clearly, Table 6.14 and 6.15 present a series of summary
measures derived both from the long series of studies that examined where Japan specialists
had obtained their doctorates (6.14), and from the analyses of doctoral candidates reported
by Japanese Studies programs and Japan specialists to the three directory studies (6.15). The
summary measures are designed to show the extent to which doctorates and doctoral training
in Japanese Studies are concentrated, and to illuminate how this has been changing over time.
Table 6.14 should show a slower rate of change both because it measures the earlier doctoral
training of people who were surveyed when they were already professional Japan specialists,
and because it involves repeated surveys of a pool of Japan specialists that contained many of
the same people, even though the pool was growing and gradually changing. Table 6.5 presents
the summary measures calculated using the distribution of doctoral candidates reported ineach of the four directory studies in 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2012. These capture the prospective
members of the Japan specialist community as doctoral candidates, and thus provide more ofa current snapshot and future projection for each time period studied.
The number of institutions with 10 or more doctorates in Japanese Studies has grown
unevenly in the successive surveys of Japan specialists, in part because of differences in thesample that was reached in each study. The 1984 study was less successful in reaching Japan specialists, while the 1995 study encompassed a broader array of persons who had beendrawn to Japanese Studies by the Japanese economic boom and had not necessarily received
formal academic training as Japan specialists. The 2005 study reached the core of active Japan
specialists in academics and ancillary positions, but was less successful in reaching the nonacademics who had participated in the 1995 study. The 2012 study also focuses on the core ofactive Japan specialists, but has reached a somewhat larger pool. These six surveys of Japan
specialists also produced uneven total numbers of institutions at which the specialists hadreceived their doctorates. The findings in Table 6.14 point to the continued concentration of
institutions that have produced the great majority of Japan specialists.

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Table 6.13. Leading Doctoral Institutions of Japan Specialists Surveyed 1970-2012,by 2012 Rank Order*
Institution

Columbia University
Harvard University
University of Michigan
Univ. of California, Berkeley
University of Chicago
Stanford University
Yale University
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Princeton University
Univ. of California, Los Angeles
University of Washington
Cornell University
University of Wisconsin
University of Illinois
University of Pennsylvania
Ohio State University
University of Minnesota
Indiana University
New York University
University of Southern California
University of Pittsburgh
University of Oregon
University of Texas at Austin
University of Kansas
University of Iowa
SUNY Buffalo
University of Arizona
City University of New York
University of California, San Diego
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Temple University
University of California, Irvine
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology
Michigan State University
American University
Northwestern University

PhD by1970

PhD by1977

PhD by1984

PhD by1995

PhD by2005

PhD by
2012

46
54
47
37
8
19
15
*
*
*
17
*
11
*
8
*
*
8
6
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

101
102
90
53
31
38
30
*
13
14
34
*
20
16
15
*
10
17
12
13
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

63
89
60
44
48
33
32
12
13
15
22
8
23
15
10
3
7
14
8
6
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
7
*
7
2

102
129
82
64
78
73
58
20
27
27
33
23
32
21
29
10
13
15
16
13
*
  5
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
  8
*
  8
  7

105
103
69
65
58
60
56
41
39
37
31
27
25
22
17
21
12
17
16
14
10
  8
*
  8
  6
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
  7
*
  5
  5

103
102
76
75
69
68
60
44
42
40
33
31
24
22
22
19
17
16
13
13
13
12
10
  9
  8
  8
  7
  6
  6
  6
  6
  5
  5
  5
  5
*
*

* 1970 data from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, Appendix 2j, Table 1, p. 102; 1977 data from 1977 CULCON Report, Appendix N, Table 23, pp. 118-119; 1984 data from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 4, pp. 16-17. 1977 data did notprovide number of doctorates at institutions with less than 10 degrees awarded, so those institutions listed as having
awarded 1-9 doctorates are marked with an asterisk. Names of institutions with less than five doctorates in any study
were not reported. These cases are marked with an asterisk. For 2012, Japan specialists in the directory reported obtaining their doctorates from an additional 60 institutions, with less than five reported from each institution.

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Chapter 6

132

Table 6.14. Institutional Concentrations of Doctorates in Japanese Studies, 1970–2012*
Measure

1970

1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

Institutions with 10 or more
doctorates

8

19

15

22

20

23

Institutions with 5–9 doctorates

4

14

12

11

8

12

Institutions with 1–4 doctorates

31

58

8

50

32

60

Total # Institutions awarding
doctorates

43

91

35

94

61

95

Number of US PhDs* in
Sample

348

825

655

1,072

1,031

1,102

# from institutions with 10 ormore doctorates

246

638

493

887

845

911

% from institutions with 10 ormore doctorates

70.7%

77.3%

75.3%

82.7%

82.0%

82.7%

# from institutions with 5–9
doctorates

30

NA

78

71

39

76

% from institutions with 5–9
doctorates

8.6%

NA

11.9%

6.6%

3.8%

6.9%

% from institutions with 5 ormore doctorates

79.3%

NA

87.2%

89.3%

85.7%

89.6%

% from original 8 institutions
with 10 doctorates in 1970

70.7%

56.7%

55.9%

53.5%

49.9%

53.2%

% from original 12 institutions
with 5 doctorates in 1970

79.3%

65.7%

68.1%

66.4%

60.3%

53.1%

% with 10 or more doctorates
that are public institutions

41.7%

50.0%

44.4%

51.5%

52.4%

56.5%

% of PhDs from public institutions with 10 or more doctorates

43.5%

NA

40.1%

37.6%

32.7%

72.8%

* 1970 data recalculated from 1970 SSRC-ACLS Report, Appendix 2j, Table 1, p. 102; 1977 data recalculated from 1977
CULCON report, Appendix N, Table 23, pp. 118-119; 1984 data recalculated from 1984 Japan Foundation Study, Table
4, pp. 16-17. 1977 data did not provide number of doctorates at institutions with less than 10 degrees awarded. Data from1970, 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 8.6, Chapter 8, p. 216.
Data reproduced and 2005 data taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.12, p. 160. For 2012, the number of US PhDs in the sample includes only those who reported doctorates
from American institutions, and omits another 54 who received doctorates outside the United States.

In contrast, the four directory studies (Table 6.15) offer four snapshots show a decline
since 2005 in the number of institutions that are currently training 10 or more doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies, but a big increase in the number of institutions that are producing
5-9 doctoral candidates. The overall pool of institutions with doctoral students in JapaneseStudies has also decreased. Some of this may be due to underreporting, but it also may reflect
an overall decline in the number of doctoral students for economic reasons. Still, If we were toplot this distribution for each of the four directory studies, it would show a large hump for themonograph.indb 132

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

133

Table 6.15. Institutional Concentrations of Doctoral Candidates in Japanese Studies,
1970–2012*
Measure

1989

1995

2005

2012

Institutions with 10 or more doctoral students

14

18

27

16

Institutions with 5–9 doctoral students

5

6

8

15

Institutions with 1–4 doctoral students

32

36

35

27

Total # Institutions with doctoral students

51

60

70

58

Number of US PhD candidates in Sample

445

803

798

639

# from institutions with 10 or more doctoral students

361

701

690

486

% from institutions with 10 or more doctoral students

81.1%

87.3%

86.5%

76.1

# from institutions with 5–9 doctoral students

33

45

47

105

% from institutions with 5–9 doctoral students

7.4%

5.6%

5.9%

16.4

% from institutions with 5 or more doctoral students

88.4%

92.9%

92.4%

92.5%

% from original 8 institutions with 10 doctorates in
1970

54.2%

44.7%

37.0%

28.6%

% from original 12 institutions with 5 doctorates in
1970

60.7%

52.2%

43.9%

37.7%

% with 10 or more doctoral students that are public
institutions

57.9%

62.5%

63.0%

43.8%

% of doctoral students from public institutions with
10 or more doctoral students

50.9%

53.5%

46.5%

34.6%

* Calculations are based on counts of doctoral candidates, not degrees awarded. Data for 1989, 1995, and 2005 takenfrom Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.12, p. 160.

large producers of Japanese Studies doctorates that drops off sharply, and a long, low tail of
institutions that have a much smaller investment in the graduate education of Japan specialists.
Even though the 2012 data appear to show a decreased concentration in institutions with 10
or more doctoral students, the critical comparative figures are farther down the table: in 2012,
three quarters of doctoral students were studying an institutions with 10 or more doctoral
students in Japanese Studies (a drop from over 85% in the two previous studies), but the data
still show that about 92 percent of doctoral students in Japanese Studies fields are studying
at institutions that have five or more such students. Very few doctoral students are isolated at
programs that have few doctoral students and smaller concentrations of faculty.
In the 1990s I described the pattern as being like a high volcano from which a small numberof institutions were pumping out a flow of new PhDs who then flowed out primarily to institutions without large graduate programs in Japanese Studies. Since then, the overflow from this
volcano has begun to pile up around the caldera, making the whole PhD-producing volcano
much broader and larger, but it still drops quite steeply to a much lower level and then spreads
out just as far. Despite the increase in the number of institutions training substantial numbers ofJapan specialists, there are still just as many other institutions that have only a very few doctoralmonograph.indb 133

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134

Chapter 6

candidates in Japanese Studies. That figure remained at around 32-36 institutions in the first
three studies, but dropped to 27 in 2012. This suggests that the decrease in the total number ofdoctoral candidates in 2012 is due to a combination of few doctoral students at the institutions
that are the major producers of doctorates in Japanese Studies, plus a reduction in the numberof institutions that have just one or two doctoral students in Japanese Studies. Reports at institutions with a very small number of doctoral students are most likely to come from Japan specialist faculty rather than the institutions themselves. This reinforces the picture of continuing
concentration, even though the peak of the volcano is broadening out and flattening somewhat.
Given that there are now 23 institutions with complete graduate programs in JapaneseStudies, the main difference between the 2005 and 2012 concentration is that while in 2005
virtually all of those programs had more than 10 doctoral students, in 2012 many more ofthem, both old and new, have between 5 and 9 current doctoral students (although in somecases they may have more but their reporting was incomplete). If we broaden our purview andlook at the percent of doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies who receive their training in programs with 5 or more doctoral students, this measure is tapping the fact that Japan specialists
tend to be trained where there are other graduate students in Japanese Studies and presumably,
also other institutional resources for the study of Japan, human and material. This means that
doctoral students in Japanese Studies at these institutions not only benefit from faculty expertise and institutional resources, but they also constitute a critical mass for peer learning and thedevelopment of strong networks among Japan specialists.
The more significant measure of residual concentration in the field is the percentage ofdoctoral students who are being trained at the original eight or twelve institutions that were
producing most of the doctorates prior to the 1980s. Those percentages have been steadily
dropping, both as a measure of where Japan specialists received their doctoral training (Table
6.14) and as a measure of how current graduate students are distributed (Table 6.15). The
percentage of Japan specialists who obtained their doctorates at the original eight institutions
dropped from 70 percent in 1970 to about half since then, while the percentage of doctoral
students currently being trained at those same original institutions has dropped from over half
(57.2%) in 1989 to a just over a quarter (28.6%) in 2012. The percentages are slightly higher
if all 12 institutions that had awarded five or more doctorates to Japan specialists by 1970 are
included, but the pattern remains very consistent. Those original institutions account for justover a third of all doctoral students in 2012.
The two bottom lines of the two tables measure a rather different phenomenon. There has
always been a mix of public and private institutions involved in academic Japanese Studies. The
original eight institutions that had trained ten or more of the Japan specialists were evenly divided between public and private institutions, but the slightly larger list of 12 institutions was tilted
toward the private side. At different times this has had different implications stemming fromthe same underlying structural condition. In general, the private institutions have tended to limit
graduate admissions to the number of students for whom they could provide financial support,
whereas large public institutions are more likely to admit qualified students even if they cannot
provide financial support for them. During the 1990s, it appeared that this was going to resultin a higher proportion of Japan specialists receiving their doctoral education at public institutions. Initially, most students going to graduate school in Japanese Studies were supported byfederally-funded fellowships that were intended to entice qualified students to study a subject(Japanese) with little apparent economic payoff. Those fellowships were available at both the
public and private institutions with the major Japanese Studies programs, so students weredrawn to the top programs to some extent because of the financial support that was available.

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Academic Programs in Japanese Studies

135

However, the Japan boom beginning in the mid-1980s coincided with heavy reductionsin the amount of federally-funded fellowship support available for Japanese Studies, except inselect fields where fellowships were still being used to draw students to particular fields—atthat time primarily law and economics. Because of the new interest in Japan and the apparent
new economic value attached to Japanese language skills and Japanese Studies expertise, thedemand for Japanese Studies graduate training exceeded the numbers for whom both private
and public institutions were able to provide fellowships. It was no longer a question of using
fellowship support to persuade people to study Japanese; suddenly students were willing toenroll in Japanese Studies programs even without fellowship support. Since the private institutions tended not to accept students that they could not support financially, the excess demand
went to the public institutions, which felt more of a mandate to meet public demand and werewilling to admit qualified students and let them figure out their own financial support. The
public institutions also had much lower tuition rates, which made it more feasible for aspiring
graduate students to survive financially without generous fellowships.
Our data suggest that the pattern has now shifted in a different direction. While the enrollment figures suggest that there is not the same very high demand for Japanese Studies as
there was in the 1990s, at the graduate level the numbers are still solid and the students are
spread over a larger array of doctoral training institutions. While federal fellowship programsfor Japanese Studies now support only a relatively small fraction of doctoral students, the largest programs, both public and private, have also built up substantial endowments for JapaneseStudies. These endowments now provide additional fellowship support for doctoral students
in Japanese Studies. The support tends to be considerably more generous at the private institutions, some of which are wealthy enough to support students through their entire doctoral education, including support for field work in Japan and for attendance at academic conferences.
At the same time, tuition rates have been rising sharply at public institutions in recent years,
and that affects the ability of students without fellowship support to attend the public institutions even if they are more likely to be admitted without support. Consequently, while moreof the expanded number of doctoral training programs may be found at public institutions, thepercent of doctoral students is tilting back in favor of the private institutions that can provide
more generous financial support to graduate students in Japanese Studies.
Another way of conceptualizing this shift would be that while private institutions now
provide very generous support to graduate students in Japanese Studies, they still limit admissions to the number of students they can support in this manner. Public institutions are still
more willing to admit students beyond the numbers they can support, but in areas where thedemand for advanced public education in Japanese Studies is strong, part of the public solution
has been to expand the number of institutions that offer doctoral training in Japanese Studies.
Certainly in California there have been deliberate policy decisions to develop Japanese Studies at additional institutions in the state’s flagship university system. Four public universities
in the state of California’s top tier University of California system currently have complete
graduate programs in Japanese Studies, with two more at the limited PhD program level (oneof which has dropped from complete graduate program status because of reduced faculty numbers since 2005).
The State of Japanese Studies Academic Programs in 2012
Our analysis of formal academic programs in Japanese Studies reveals that undergraduate
programs are getting deeper and broader, and that this is the area of continued expansion ofJapanese Studies, particularly undergraduate institutions that do not intend to develop graduate

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136

Chapter 6

programs. In effect undergraduate education is uncoupled from its early concentration primarily at institutions that also offered graduate programs. It is noteworthy that these undergraduate only programs now offer for or more years of Japanese language training to their students,
which in earlier decades was only possible at institutions offering full graduate programs.
These B.A. level programs do feed into graduate programs by providing students with strong
language training that allows them to undertake graduate work using Japanese language materials from the very beginning of their programs, but they also prepare students for careersthat do not require advanced post-graduate training. Given the large number of such programs
at the BA level, realistically many of them are preparing students for careers in which they
will not necessarily make professional use of their knowledge of Japan and Japanese language.
This represents the further normalization of Japanese Studies in American society, making it
more like other fields in which students obtain a BA but then find employment that uses theirgeneral academic skills and ability but not the specific things they have learned in their major.
At the graduate level, we have seen some contraction in the number of doctoral students,
but the demand remains generally strong. There is some flattening and broadening of institutions offering graduate training in Japanese Studies, but also continued concentration of doctoral training at a relatively small number of institutions that have the necessary infrastructure
and also provide the critical mass of both faculty and students needed for an optimal graduate
educational environment. We turn now to look more closely at the staffing and other infrastructure on which Japanese Studies programs depend.

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7
Staffing, Infrastructure, and Support

This chapter examines the staffing, infrastructure, and support for Japanese Studies in
the United States. In the current economic climate, it has become apparent that the most basic
form of infrastructure for Japanese Studies is simply the ongoing commitment of academic
institutions to provide the staff to maintain Japanese Studies programs. We thus begin thischapter with an exploration of the staffing levels at Japanese programs of different sizes andtheir sustainability, which follows easily from our focus on categorizing those programs inchapter 6. This in turn will lead directly into our discussion of other forms of infrastructure
support for libraries, museums, and research in general.

Staffing of Japanese Studies Programs
We have demonstrated that Japanese Studies programs at academic institutions in the
United States have become broader and deeper, but how are these growing Japanese Studies
programs staffed? We saw earlier that the reason for the large discrepancy between the numberof Japan specialists listed in the Directory of Japan Specialists and the number of staff listed atacademic institutions in the Directory of Japanese Studies Institutions was primarily becauseof differentiation among staff. Although in looking at job classifications of Japan specialists
in chapter 2 we separated out retired persons, we are very reluctant to do so for the academic
programs when they have been listed as staff. We know that although sometimes these designations are honorary, retired and emeritus faculty members frequently do teach classes; atinstitutions with graduate programs they often continue to supervise graduate students. We
therefore combine the two faculty categories for this analysis. However, since there is a strong
rank system within most universities, we maintain the distinction between faculty of professorial rank and those who are lecturers and instructors. We have separated out visiting and adjunct faculty regardless of their rank in order to show the growing impact they have on staffing.
Because many large Japanese Studies programs now have administrative personnel on theirstaff, we have also kept that category separate. However, faculty status prevails in our coding.
If a person is listed as the director of a program but also holds a faculty rank, that person iscoded as faculty. This serves to distinguish the group of academic support personnel who now
populate the staff lists of large programs.
Our question is how these various types of staff positions may be differentially repre137

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Chapter 7138

sented in Japanese Studies programs of different scale, as expressed by our classifications ofundergraduate and graduate programs. Table 7.1 shows the distribution of staff positions byundergraduate program classification. Minimal programs have a higher proportion of lecturers and instructors staffing their programs. This is not because they have quantitatively morelecturers and instructors, but because they have fewer faculty of professorial rank. Full undergraduate programs employ by far the highest number of instructors and lecturers in their large
Japanese language programs, but they also have the most faculty of professorial rank, so thebalance still favors professorial faculty by more than three to one. There are minor variationsof the same story at undergraduate area and limited undergraduate programs, but all three ofthese program types have about three quarter of their staff in the professorial faculty category.
The other major difference is that full undergraduate programs rely much more on administrative staff than the other types. This phenomenon will become clearer when we look at graduate
programs. However, to clarify the undergraduate data, we have divided the full undergraduate
programs into those at institutions with and without graduate programs.
Taking all three categories of staff, we have constructed overall program staff ratios. The
findings are clear: minimal and limited programs have very small numbers of staff, and thesituation is somewhat better for undergraduate area programs. The huge jump is for full undergraduate programs, which have an average of 12.4 staff members per program. Since some ofthis is accounted for by the greater number of administrative staff positions, we also calculatea teaching staff ratio, using only the two categories of teaching staff plus visiting and adjunctpositions that presumably are also teaching positions. This has a negligible effect on the minimal, limited, and undergraduate area programs, since they have few administrative staff. For
Table 7.1. Distribution of Staff Positions at Institutions with Instructional Positions inJapanese Studies and Staff Ratios, by Undergraduate Program Classification*

Program

Instructor,
Lecturer Professor%
R anks %Other
Staff %

A djunct,
Visiting%

Total
Staff %

­Number of­Programs(& % Dist.)

No
Staff
Data

Program Teaching
Staff
Staff
R atioR atioMinimal

34.3%
(12)

60.0%
(21)

2.9%
(1)

2.9%
(1)

100.0%
(35)

(19)
9.7%

[4]

1.8

1.8

Limited

32.8%
(21)

59.4%
(38)

4.7%
(3)

3.1%
(2)

100.0%
(64)

(27)
13.8%

[11]

2.4

2.3

Undergrad Area

19.1%
(18)

72.3%
(68)

3.2%
(3)

5.3%
(5)

99.9%
(94)

(26)
13.3%

[3]

3.6

3.5

Full UG,
no grad

17.1%
(93)

74.0%
(402)

5.3%
(29)

3.5%
(19)

99.9%
543

75
38.5%

[14]

7.2

6.9

Full UG,
with grad

19.8%
(195)

67.4%
(663)

10.4%
(102)

2.3%
(23)

99.9%
(983)

48
24.6%

[4]

20.5

18.4

Full UG
Total

18.9%
(288)

69.8%
(1065)

7.9%
(121)

3.4%
(52)

100.0%(1526)

(123)
63.1%

[18]

12.4

11.4

All Programs

19.7%
(339)

69.3%
(1192)

7.4%
(128)

3.5%
(60)

99.%
(1719)

99.9%
(195)

[36]

8.8

8.2

* Staff (n=17) at institutions listed in the directory without instructional programs have been excluded from the table.
Staff data were available for 195 academic programs.

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Staffing, Infrastructure, and Support

139

full undergraduate programs, it brings the ratio down a bit, but still leaves them with an average of 11.4 teaching staff. Even full undergraduate programs without a graduate program at
the institution have an average of 6.9 teaching staff. Considering that the actual faculty number
required to meet the threshold for a full undergraduate program is three faculty members, thisis another clear indication of how strong these programs have become.
Table 7.2 gives the equivalent measures for graduate programs. While institutions with alllevels of graduate programs have some administrative staff positions (the category includes
Japanese librarians), institutions with complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies have asubstantially higher number and percentage of administrative positions. Administrators comprise ten percent of the staff at these programs, and they may hold a variety of positions related
to research centers and the library. Typically, research centers in Japanese Studies have a faculty director who is supported by an administrative assistant or assistant director who is often
a recent PhD in Japanese Studies. Such staff positions are essential to the functioning of highly
developed research and graduate programs at major universities. Despite the higher allocationof administrative staff, these programs still have nearly three-quarters of their staff in facultyof professorial rank. In fact the percentage of lecturers and instructors is lower for complete
graduate programs than for MA or limited PhD programs. It is the MA programs that appear to
be more heavily reliant on lecturers and short on faculty of professorial rank, while the limited
PhD programs have a distribution more similar to that of complete graduate programs. Thesevariations, however, may be artifacts of small sample size. We have shown the figures for those
programs that do not have a graduate program for comparison. It is clear that those programs
on average have only half as many program staff as the MA level programs; complete graduate
programs have eight times the staffing levels of undergraduate only programs.
Table 7.2. Distribution of Staff Positions at Institutions with Instructional Positions in JapaneseStudies and Staff Ratios, by Graduate Program Classification*

Program

Instructor,
Lecturer Professor%
R anks %Other
Staff %

A djunct,
Visiting%

Total
Staff %

­Number of­Programs(& % Dist.)

No
Staff
Data

Program Teaching
Staff
Staff
R atioR atioMA Level

23.9%
(16)

70.1%
(47)

4.5%
(3)

1.5%
(1)

100.0%
(67)

16.3%
(8)

[4]

8.4

8

Limited PhD
Program

19.9%
(38)

72.2%
(138)

5.2%
(10)

2.6%
(5)

99.9%
(191)

34.7%
(17)

[0]

11.2

10.6

Complete Graduate Program

15.1%
(141)

73.5%
(687)

9.6%
(90)

1.8%
(17)

100.0%
(935)

49.0%
(24)

[0]

39.0

35.2

All Graduate
Programs

19.7%
(195)

67.6%
(671)

10.4%
(103)

2.3%
(23)

100.0%(992)

100.0%
49

[4]

20.2

18.1

No Graduate
Program

17.1%
(120)

74.1%
(521)

3.6%
(25)

5.3%
(37)

100.1%
(703)

(146)

4.8

4.6

Full UG Total

18.9%
(288)

69.8%
(1065)

7.9%
(121)

3.4%
(52)

100.0%(1526)

(123)
63.1%

[18]

12.4

11.4

All Programs

19.7%
(339)

69.3%
(1192)

7.4%
(128)

3.5%
(60)

99.%
(1719)

99.9%
(195)

[36]

8.8

8.2

* Staff data were available for 195 program, 49 graduate programs and 146 undergraduate programs without any graduate program.

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Chapter 7

It is obvious that staffing levels lie at the very heart of academic Japanese Studies programs. Staffing levels determine how many courses can be offered in how many disciplines,
and how many levels of Japanese language a program can offer. At the higher levels, administrative staff is essential to build and maintain a Japanese library collection and to support
graduate instructional and research programs in Japanese Studies. And despite the growthof the administrative, instructor, and lecturer categories, the core element for an academic
Japanese Studies program remains the presence of faculty of professorial rank who are Japan
specialists. This raises a set of critical questions concerning the stability of the professoriate
in Japanese Studies programs. We have seen that some faculty members have moved from one
institution to another in the past decade, and that many faculty have retired and left the field.
We asked Japan specialists in our survey about their own plans. Happily, the overwhelming majority (79%) said they plan to stay in the academic world until retirement, and only atenth of one percent said they planned to leave the academic world before retirement. Another9.5 percent said they were not sure because it was too early to tell. At the other end of thespectrum, about 6 percent of respondents wrote in responses to explain that they are already
retired, but the majority added that they are still active in research or even teaching. The remaining respondents are not in academic positions, but they also tended to be content with
where they are. As these responses demonstrate, Japanese Studies is well into a generational
turnover as the Baby Boom generation retires. While the presence of a tenured professor occupying an academic position pretty well assures that Japanese Studies will remain in thatparticular discipline in the institution’s program, there is considerably more uncertainty about
what happens to Japanese Studies positions when someone retires or leaves, particularly if theposition was never “marked” as a Japanese Studies position to begin with.
Our respondents were asked whether they thought their position would be filled with another Japan specialist after they leave. Only a third (32.1%) of respondents were confident thata replacement appointment would be made in Japanese Studies, while slightly fewer (28.9%)
thought the position would be filled but not with a Japan specialist. Another third (32.6%) of the
respondents were not sure what would happen, but only 6 percent thought the position would
simply not be filled at all. This distribution is roughly the same as it was in 2005, with a smaller
percentage confident that their position would be filled with another Japan specialist. However,a closer look at the results by disciplinary category confirms our continuing concerns about the
future of the social sciences in Japanese Studies. While over a third of those in the humanities
and more than two-thirds in the smaller category of languages and linguistics thought theirposition would be filled with a Japan specialist when they leave, only a fifth of social scientists
thought their replacement would be a Japan specialist and just over half (53.3%) thought theposition would be filled by someone who was not a Japan specialist. Substantial minorities inall the disciplinary categories said they did not know what would happen to their position, but
only a very small minority thought the position would not be replaced at all.
We have additional evidence from another question in the survey. The 1984, 1995, and2005 studies asked Japan specialist respondents why they thought new PhDs were accepting
non-academic employment, which was a bigger concern in earlier decades. This question contains the assumption that new PhDs are in fact taking non-academic jobs, which carries different meaning in different economic climates. In the 1990s the reference point was the money to
be made by marketing one’s Japanese skills outside the academy, while in the 1980s and 2000s,
it is the absence of desirable academic positions that provides the reference point. The responses have changed considerably over time, so we present the results from the current study
along with those from the three previous ones in which the questions were asked in Table 7.3.

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Table 7.3. Percent Distribution of Perceived Reasons New PhDs Accept Non-Academic
Employment, 1984, 1995, 2005, 2012
R easonM ajorR easonSome­Importance

Little­Importance

Not Sure#­R esponding

1984 Survey*
No tenure track positions available
No positions available in geographic area
No academic positions of any sort available
Low salary compared to non-academic posts
Lack of security and future in academics
Family considerations (spouse’s employment)
Prefer non-academic work

65
23
58
22
31
5
6

24
42
23
43
44
37
29

4
25
9
26
15
32
41

7
11
10
9
10
26
25

725
676
712
692
696
638
635

1995 Survey
No tenure track positions available
No positions available in geographic area
No academic positions of any sort available
Low salary compared to non-academic posts
Lack of security and future in academics
Family considerations (spouse’s employment)
Prefer non-academic work

39.5
19.8
20.8
35.6
21.8
9.6
16.0

28.5
37.0
24.8
30.2
31.2
42.2
29.2

8.5
13.5
23.3
11.0
20.6
13.4
18.5

23.6
29.8
31.1
23.2
26.4
34.7
36.3

636
587
557
626
587
573
531

2005 Survey
No tenure track positions available
No positions available in geographic area
No academic positions of any sort available
Low salary compared to non-academic posts
Lack of security and future in academics
Family considerations (spouse’s employment)
Prefer non-academic work

53.0
26.8
18.1
14.9
14.2
16.9
7.6

26.4
45.4
34.0
39.9
33.3
46.9
30.5

2.6
5.9
21.0
22.2
25.0
9.4
26.4

18.1
21.9
26.9
23.0
27.4
26.8
35.4

421
392
376
383
372
384
367

2012 Survey
No tenure track positions available
No positions available in geographic area
No academic positions of any sort available
Low salary compared to non-academic posts
Lack of security and future in academics
Family considerations (spouse’s employment)
Prefer non-academic work

61.1
33.1
34.8
16.6
17.4
16.2
5.9

19.7
36.4
29.1
32.3
35.6
44.3
27.6

1.4
0.2
10.6
23.2
20.4
10.4
24.7

17.8
23.6
25.5
27.9
26.6
29.2
41.8

589
535
529
535
534
531
510

* 1984 data from 1984 SSRC Report, Table 58, p. 88. Percentages were reported rounded to whole numbers. Data from 1995 and2005 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 7.15 p. 167.

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In 1984, the lack of tenure track academic positions was the major reason offered, with lack of
any academic positions a fairly close second. Respondents thought geographic location, salary,
and a perceived lack of security and future in academics were of some importance as well. By
1995, only 39 percent thought lack of tenured academic positions was a major factor, and two
thirds thought the low salary compared to non-academic posts was either of some importanceor was a major factor. Concern about spouse’s employment also was cited more frequently as
having some importance. In 2005, the majority of respondents again thought the lack of tenure
track positions was the major reason new PhDs took non-academic jobs. Family considerations
and geographic location were cited as having some importance, along with comparatively low
salaries. Again in 2012, a strong majority cited no tenure track positions available, with no academic positions of any sort and no positions in the geographic area also cited by about a thirdof respondents. Family considerations were also cited, but as of lesser importance.
These findings provide some indirect evidence about the state of the job market, basedon the combined perspective of Japan specialists at large and small institutions with varying
degrees of Japanese Studies programs, and at different stages in their careers. We also haveasked Japanese Studies programs about their staffing situation and future prospects. Reports
from the Japanese Studies programs about their staff situation paint a mixed picture of faculty
gains and losses. Overall, 73 institutions reported losing a total of 148 Japan specialist faculty
since 2004. However, they refilled 78 of those positions with another Japan specialist, andanother 21 institutions reported that they were currently seeking a Japan specialist. The positions being sought included six in Japanese literature, two in culture and one in film, four inhistory, three in Japanese language, and one each in anthropology, economics, humanities, andlinguistics, plus a director of an East Asian program. In addition, programs reported that 18
additional Japan specialist faculty had been hired on serendipity positions at their institutions.
These included seven historians, two each in sociology, language, and performing arts, andone each in anthropology, linguistics, and religion. In response to a question about whether
non-faculty staff had been added, programs reported ten new staff positions, but also reported
additional seven faculty positions. Several of these positions were supported with Japan Foundation, Freeman Foundation, or other foundation funding, but the majority were funded by theinstitutions themselves. When all of these positions are taken into account, this is an estimatedshrinkage of only 24 positions, or 16 percent.
However, the number of adjunct positions reported to the study this time is 57, and someof the visiting positions reported may also be a disguised form of adjunct appointment. The
category of lecturer is also ambiguous, since in many universities it constitutes a temporary
position, while in others there are permanent lecturer positions. It is difficult to pursue thisanalysis any further, but the data do suggest that some of the expansion in academic programs
is being handled by hiring qualified Japan specialists into unstable positions rather than moresecure tenure track positions. Hence while there is ample evidence that the largest infrastructure contribution to Japanese Studies by academic institutions is support of faculty and staff
positions for their Japan programs, the growing tendency for American academic institutions
to meet some program needs with temporary or unstable appointments rather than making apermanent investment in faculty careers is cause for concern.
The other missing piece of the puzzle is whether there is an oversupply of new doctorates
entering the field. This is very difficult to answer because our data provide a snapshot numberof current doctoral candidates at the time of each study, but those candidates finish at different
times and many do not finish. Moreover, many of them do not go into the American academic
market, which may be either by choice or because there are no positions available for them.

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The number of reported doctoral candidates is smaller in 2012 than in 1995 or 2005. Althoughsome of this may be the result of weaker reporting, the number does seem to be down somewhat for programs that have reported consistently in each study. From informal observations
and the survey data reported above, we sense that new PhDs are having a harder time finding
stable academic employment right out of graduate school, which meshes with the increase inunstable positions reported at Japanese Studies programs.
The hiring data reported earlier suggests that few social science positions are marked forJapan specialists, but some social scientists continue to be hired into serendipity positions.
Surprisingly, historians are also being hired into serendipity positions, presumably at smaller
programs that do not already have defined Japanese history positions. The demand for literature and language positions, as well as for cultural studies positions, corresponds both to thestrong continuing demand for Japanese language courses, and to the attractiveness of Japanese
popular culture that we noted earlier. If we relate these traces of current hiring patterns tothe current disciplinary distribution of doctoral students in Japanese Studies as reported in
Chapter 2, Table 2.14, we can begin to identify areas of potential oversupply. The three largest disciplines represented among the doctoral students are history (128), literature (86), andanthropology (52). If we combine literature with linguistics (18), second language acquisition(7) and cultural studies (22), the total is 133 doctoral candidates who can potentially fill thedemand for new positions in language and literature or language and culture positions. Andeven though this is the area of greatest current demand, some of those positions will be filledwith lecturers, instructors, or adjuncts. It may take a while for the market to absorb these newJapan specialists into stable academic positions, but they should find employment.
Hence the biggest area of potential oversupply appears to be in history, which may explain
why some Japanese historians are now filling serendipity positions. Anthropology also seems
to be potentially in oversupply, which is a more chronic condition in that discipline. Some historians and anthropologists may also compete for positions in language and culture departments,
but there are not enough of these departments to accommodate the potential oversupply. The
potential supply of new political scientists is down, while the supply in religion-philosophy, art
history, and sociology is stable and relatively low. In all of these fields, new PhDs will probably
need to market themselves based on their general disciplinary credentials.
Because Japanese Studies is a very small and specialized field, there is frequently a mismatch between the number of new PhDs entering the job market and the number of positions
available at that particular time. What is somewhat different now is that the Japanese Studies
job market is global. For the past two decades Japan specialists trained in the United States
have been taking academic positions in other countries. In some cases these are international
students returning to their country of origin, but increasingly their ranks have also included
American trained American citizens taking positions in other countries. We saw earlier that
there are currently a substantial number of such persons working abroad. Moreover, the flow
is now dispersed globally. The majority still may be found in Japan and Canada, but nearly
20 percent are found in Europe, Australia-New Zealand, and other places in Asia. While that
may increase the job opportunities for American-trained Japan specialists, the flip side is thatsome Japan specialists trained in other countries may also be competing in the U.S. academic
market.
This situation is by no means unique to Japanese Studies; it is part of our increasingly
globalized world. Of course, the increased use of unstable positions in academia is anotheraspect of the same process of neoliberal globalization, which emphasizes the use of short-term
economic metrics to manage labor costs as well as to shift risks onto the individual. We alsomonograph.indb 143

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know that people come into Japanese Studies out of personal commitments that have been generated through a combination of the attractions of Japanese culture and the opportunities to be
exposed to it. They did not choose Japanese Studies because they saw it as a particularly marketable career choice, but rather because they had become personally committed to JapaneseStudies. While we welcome these graduate students and share their dedication to the studyof Japan, we also still bear some responsibility for what happens to them after they leave ourprograms. The days of being able to place them in secure academic positions through personalconnections and good recommendations are part of the distant past. What we can still do isensure that we have prepared them as well as we can for this globalized and risky job market.
To compete today they need publications and strong credentials in their discipline as well asJapanese Studies credentials, and they need exposure to the field through presenting papers at
academic conferences large and small.
That leads us to take a broader look at other aspects of the infrastructure and support forJapanese Studies, focusing first on the Japanese libraries whose holdings have figured directlyin the criteria for graduate programs in the previous chapter.

Library Resources
The most basic resource for scholars has traditionally been the library. The growth ofJapanese Studies in the United States has been quite dependent on its library collections ofJapanese materials. While there are a substantial number of old and large Japanese researchcollections in the United States, the absence of a strong Japanese collection has long been abarrier to the expansion of new programs at the graduate level. Since the 1980s the rise in thevalue of the yen relative to the dollar has made it increasingly difficult to maintain and expand
existing Japanese collections, and even harder to develop new ones from a modest base. Yet
the collections in the U.S. do continue to grow. The standard metric for measuring collection
is simply the number of book volumes in Japanese, although the libraries of course have otherresources such as newspapers, periodicals, microfilms and material in other formats.
Table 7.4 shows the number of institutions with Japanese collections of various sizes as reported in several studies of the field. Despite the fact that the 1977 CULCON study established
Table 7.4. Japanese Language Collection in the United States, by Number of Volumes inJapanese, 1977, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
Volumes in Japanese

1977

1984

1995

2005

2012

1,000 to 19,999
20,000 to 39,999
40,000 and over

31
8
12

33
9
16

36
9
23

26
9
30

27
9
31

Total

51

58

68

65

67

* Figures for 1977 and 1984 taken from 1984 Japan Foundation Report, Table 26, p. 49, which calculated the 1977
figures from numbers provided in the 1977 CULCON Report, Appendix V, Table 33, p. 137. The 1977 figures wereoriginally from collection surveys by Japanese librarians. The 1984 figures were from that study’s questionnaire, supplemented by 1975 data for institutions that did not return the questionnaire. For 1995, small collections reported size
figures on the questionnaire, but figures for the larger staffed collections were taken from the 1984 Annual Report of theCommittee on East Asian Libraries to ensure comparability. Data for 1977, 1984, and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 10.1, Chapter 10, page 249. These data were reproduced and 2005 data addedin Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 8.1, p. 170. The 2005 table
separated academic and non-academic libraries, but they have been combined here.

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25,000 volumes as its standard for a graduate research collection for Japanese Studies, thatstudy and all subsequent ones have reported the lower categories with the break at 20,000 volumes rather than 25,000. Both the 1995 and 2005 studies reported the same seven non-academic
libraries separately, but they have been combined with the academic libraries in this table. In
fact, the present study includes data from 14 libraries not affiliated with academic institutions.
Several are public libraries, while many of the others are research collections associated withmuseums. The present study has collection information from a total of 74 libraries, including
seven with less than 1,000 volumes in Japanese. The distribution of the academic libraries haschanged as more libraries have exceeded the 20,000 volume and 40,000 volume levels. Although there have consistently been nine libraries in the 20,000 to 39,999 category, they havenot been the same libraries. As with academic programs in Japanese Studies, libraries movethrough the categories as they grow larger and stronger. Three major academic institutions now
report data from multiple libraries. Columbia University and the University of Washington bothhave law libraries with more than 30,000 volumes in Japanese, while Harvard University has
both a law library and a fine arts library, each with more than 10,000 volumes in Japanese.
The 1995, 2005, and 2012 studies collected data directly from Japanese librarians, but took
the latest collection figures from numbers that these libraries report annually to the Committee on East Asian Libraries. Most libraries report their collection figures very precisely, but afew provided only round numbers. Table 7.5 displays the list of all Japanese collections in the
United States that have over 20,000 volumes in Japanese as of 2012. The largest collection in
the United States by far is the Library of Congress, with over a million volumes in Japanese,while the largest university collection is at the University of California at Berkeley, with over
390,000 volumes in Japanese. Both of these institutions were at one time designated as national
repositories for book acquisition programs that placed one copy of every book published inJapan in each of these libraries. That program was discontinued, but it helps explain why the
UC Berkeley collection is somewhat larger than those at other universities. Currently there isan exchange between the Library of Congress and the National Diet Library. About 15,000
items come to the Library of Congress annually, of which about 72 percent are serials, 25
percent are monographs, and 3 percent are in other formats. The comparison with figures in
1995and 2005 demonstrates that the rank ordering of collections by size is not all that stable.
Collections can increase substantially because of increased institutional support for Japanesecollection development in general, or by the acquisition of one or more special collections bypurchase or donation.
Although two non-academic institutions in the United States with very large Japanese collections appear on the list, the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, one of
our primary concerns is the relationship between library resources and graduate programs inJapanese Studies. As explained in the 1995 study,
Previous surveys of Japanese Studies in the United States have routinely
documented the size and location of the major Japanese language librarycollections. Two different size criteria have been used to rank these collections.
The first, established by the 1977 CULCON study as part of its categorizationof graduate programs, set 25,000 volumes in Japanese as the minimum librarysize for a full graduate program. . . . The 1984 Japan Foundation Report notedthat the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies regarded 40,000 volumes inJapanese as a necessary minimum for comprehensive research purposes.1
1 Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, p. 249.

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Table 7.5. Japanese Language Library Collections in the United States with Over 20,000
Volumes in Japanese, 1995, 2005, and 2012, in 2012 Rank Order*     Library

Library of Congress
University of California at Berkeley
Harvard University
Columbia University
University of Michigan
Yale University
University of Chicago
Stanford University
Princeton University
University of California at Los Angeles
Cornell University
University of Washington
University of Hawaii
Ohio State University
University of Pittsburgh
University of Pennsylvania
Duke University
University of Kansas
Indiana University
University of Maryland
University of Illinois
University of Wisconsin
New York Public Library
University of Texas
University of Washington in St. Louis
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, San Diego
University of Arizona
University of Minnesota
University of Oregon
University of Iowa
University of Southern California
University of Washington School of Law
Columbia University Toshiba Law Library
University of California, Irvine
Georgetown University
University of California, Davis
Arizona State University
Brown University
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

monograph.indb 146

1995

2005

2012

791,156
297,148
224,723
222,665
235,092
198,372
151,588
140,806
136,000
127,694
87,982
106,611
108,026
56,63429,33635,892
26,24352,85749,00331,98360,00050,00053,30042,00043,34036,354
20,25436,67634,00041,507
27,20013,296–––25,00017,403–––

1,846,859
351,067
283,958
273,522
285,494
246,652
206,435
175,800
177,035
165,055
136,720130,281
121,088
102,345
114,168
65,62351,54170,89967,924
61,73067,13564,07275,25057,94950,49346,70751,44751,27334,87841,507
29,83427,60025,57523,000–27,50026,67522,483–20,0001,186,029
391,470
328,319
307,738
303,139
271,846
236,492
212,365
197,471
193,546
159,138
150,924
134,194
128,183
127,932
84,067
82,141
81,66981,15077,758
77,13577,01075,25067,611
55,11354,694
51,61744,60841,971
41,50740,00037,92232,39930,09028,591
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We have used 25,000 volumes in Japanese as the criterion for complete graduate programs inchapter 6, but all of the complete graduate programs except the University of Southern California also exceeded the 40,000 volume level. Five programs with limited PhD programs also
have libraries that exceed 25,000 volumes in Japanese. Ironically, it is no longer the size of
their libraries, but rather the size and disciplinary distribution of their faculty that limits their
movement into the complete graduate program category, as noted earlier.
Support for Japanese library collections in the United States does not rely solely on institutional funds. The federal government provides some support for library collections as partof its National Resource Centers program, which generally awards support on a competitive
basis to between 12 and 15 National Resource Centers for East Asia at the graduate level, andsometimes one or two additional ones as undergraduate programs. The awards are now madefor four years at a time. Initially, the number of such Centers more or less matched the numberof graduate programs in Japanese Studies, so all programs were supported. As new programs
have developed, the competition has become quite fierce, and even long-standing programs
are sometimes bumped for one grant cycle. The fact that there are now 24 Japanese Studies
programs with complete graduate programs demonstrates the limitations of the current arrangements for providing federal support. These awards are for East Asia, so the amount oflibrary support that actually flows to the Japanese collection depends on the priorities at each
institution.
Beginning in the 1970s, both the Japan Foundation and the Japan-US Friendship Commission began providing support for Japanese language library collections in the United States.
In the early years, most of this support came in the form of block grants to the twelve largest
university library collections, at the University of California at Berkeley, the University ofMichigan, Harvard University, Columbia University, Yale University, the University of Chicago, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles,
University of Washington, and University of Hawaii. As more institutions developed graduate
programs, there were increasing complaints that the system was unfair because it provided no
support to the newer programs that also had growing Japanese collections and needed librarysupport. The problem was exacerbated by the skyrocketing cost of Japanese language researchmaterials as a result of changes in the exchange rate from the 1980s on, which affected all
existing Japanese library collections and made it prohibitively expensive to develop new ones.
The two major funders tried to expand the pool of libraries they could support by creatingsome competitive programs and encouraging libraries to think beyond their own collections
and develop regional plans for sharing resources, but these measures produced limited results.
By the end of the 1980s it was clear that more drastic measures were needed to support theJapanese language library resources in the United States with the limited amount of resources
available. The funders called a major conference of all the libraries with Japanese collections
to try to develop new ideas. As a direct result, a new national organization was created to help
coordinate Japanese library resources in the United States and develop new ways to makematerials available to a broader array of Japan specialists. Sponsored jointly by the two major
governmental funders of Japanese library collections in the United States, The Japan Foundation and the Japan-US Friendship Commission, this group was originally called the National
Coordinating Committee for Japanese Library Resources (NCC). It later expanded its scope
to include Canada, and was renamed the North American Coordinating Council for Japanese Library Resources. The group worked from the premise that they were coordinating (andthus were in cultural studies terms “constructing”) a “national” library collection accessible
through inter-library loan. The NCC developed policies and procedures for the equitable dis-monograph.indb 147

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Chapter 7

tribution of the limited amounts of available external funding for Japanese library resources,by concentrating the support into cost-sharing for the purchase of expensive multi-volume setsthat a single institution could not afford and that otherwise would not be available in the UnitedStates. They then worked with other institutions in Japan and the US to open up new vehicles
for international inter-library loan, and to develop organized access to Japanese “gray materials” such as reports and other limited circulation documents that are essential for research but
are not normally collected by American libraries.
The creative efforts of the NCC coincided with the expansion of the Internet and the availability of library catalogs and full-text databases of Japanese materials online. In addition to
supporting initiatives to create online catalogs of some specialized Japanese materials available in the US such as Japanese newspapers, the NCC worked with the Japanese providers of
online information resources to ensure that access would be available to users outside of Japanand to reduce the barriers and costs of access. More materials are now available directly fromthe National Diet Library through document delivery and interlibrary loan. In addition, morematerials are available from many Japanese universities, thanks to an arrangement called the
Global ILL Framework, which is now administered by the NCC and the Japan Association of
National University Libraries. Nearly 200 libraries now participate in this program, which includes document delivery and interlibrary loan. Libraries can join the program without charge,
and the interlibrary loan fees are handled through an existing interlibrary loan fee management system. The NCC has also promoted the exchange of Japanese and American art exhibition catalogs, and developed a protocol and instructions to assist scholars who need to obtain
permission to use copyrighted Japanese images in their publications.
As part of the broader East Asian library community, they also helped to establish an online
resource called AskEASL, (Ask an East Asian Studies Librarian) that for several years allowedanyone with an Internet connection to get reference assistance from a qualified librarian based
at a large East Asian collection with access to reference tools for Japanese materials. Whilesome of these Internet-based resources would have developed independently, the NCC deserves
credit for working to make access to these resources available to users outside of Japan.
A major worry in the field in the 1990s was how to support the research needs of those Japan specialists who had taken positions at institutions without any infrastructure for JapaneseStudies. Although the NCC’s original aim was simply to make Japanese library resources more
readily available to isolated American scholars, the intersection of their work with the rapid
expansion of the Internet and the work of similar groups in the United Kingdom and otherplaces has meant that the fruits of their labors are now available to scholars and students allover the world. It is quite clear that there are still many Japan specialists located at institutions
without a Japanese Studies infrastructure, and that most of these institutions are unlikely todevelop a strong Japanese Studies program that could provide research support to the faculty.
However, these new arrangements for access to distant resources using electronic technology
have greatly reduced the problem.
Librarians and libraries have been at the forefront of the digital revolution, and after an
initial slow start, the benefits of these changes have now come to Japanese Studies. Twenty-fiveacademic libraries now provide free access to an array of electronic databases from Japan for
their users. These are basically the same institutions that provide complete graduate programs,
have the largest concentrations of faculty resources in Japanese Studies, and are training theoverwhelming majority of new doctoral students in the field. While this is far from offering
universal access to such research resources, it does ensure that most graduate students and thefaculty at the major Japanese Studies programs have such resources at their fingertips. It is amonograph.indb 148

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Staffing, Infrastructure, and Support149

far cry from the situation just a decade ago, when only one or two institutions provided suchaccess to Japanese language online resources. It is the NCC’s leadership and hard work thathas made this possible at costs that American graduate research institutions can support.
Both the two previous studies and the present one have included a substantial number ofsurvey questions that were designed to provide better understanding of how Japan specialists
conduct their research, the place of library materials in that research, and how specialists obtain access to the library materials they need. We are therefore in a position to evaluate how
the situation has changed because of the two major factors and their intersection: the growth of
the Internet and the work of the NCC.
We saw in chapter 3 that Japan specialists use a broad range of materials in both English
and Japanese to keep up with their field and also for their specific research needs. Ninety percent reported that they use materials in their own personal collection, but over three quarters
also use library materials in either their own institution or another institution’s collection.
Substantial percentages also reported using document delivery of inter-library loan materials. These ways of obtaining research materials also rely heavily on access to an institutional
library as the gateway. We now explore how accessible such materials are and how specialists
obtain them. The data we have already presented make it abundantly clear that only a fraction of Japan specialists have direct access to a major Japanese library collection at their own
institution or one nearby.
Japan specialists have been asked in all four studies about their access to materials on
Japan in library collections either at their own institution or at one that is readily accessible
to them. Our questions ask particularly about research needs, but the resources scholars needfor their research and teaching may overlap considerably, and both are important. Table 7.6
presents the results for 2012, with results from 1995 and 2005 for comparison. For 2012, only
three respondents reported that they do not use English language materials. Two percent of
the respondents reported either that they do not use Japanese language materials at all, while
one percent said that they do not use Japanese library materials and about the same percentage
reported that Japanese materials are not available in their library. A somewhat larger number(4.6%) said their research requires materials that are available only in Japan.
The local or nearby library does not get high marks for meeting Japan specialists’ needs
for either English or Japanese materials, but users are more likely to be satisfied with theEnglish language resources. On the bright side, the percentage reporting that the library met
all or most of their needs for Japanese materials increased in 2012, and the percentage giving
the lowest evaluations was lower. We should not regard these responses in too pessimistic alight, since no one expects that the local institutional library resources can meet all of Japan
specialists’ needs for Japanese or even English language materials. We already know that nineout of ten Japan specialists have their own personal collections that meet many of their needs,
and that they also rely on other types of materials. However, library resources remain important, both for the books in the local collections that are available for immediate use, and as thegateway for access to a much broader range of materials. The question then is how do Japan
specialists get the materials they need if they are not available locally. This, too, is a question
we have asked in 1995, 2005, and 2012, although we have added categories to reflect new formsof access as they have become available.
This is a multiple response question for which 465 respondents gave an average of 2.6
responses each. The two most common responses were that the librarian orders the material
for them through interlibrary loan (ILL), selected by nearly three-quarters of the respondents(71.2%), and that they go to Japan to get the materials they need, selected by over half (55.3%)

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Table 7.6. Satisfaction with Materials on Japan in Library Collection
at Own Institution or One Readily Accessible to Respondent,
by Language of Materials, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
1995

2005

2012

#

%

#

%

#

%

Satisfaction with English
Language materials
Meets all needs
Meets secondary needs
Meets most needs
Meets half of needs
Sometimes usefulCompletely inadequate# of respondents

116
128
307
100
99
16
675

17.2
19.0
45.5
14.8
14.7
2.4

65
85
172
35
35
3
401

16.2
21.2
42.9
8.7
8.7
0.7

111
82
199
57
41
3
452

24.6
18.1
44.0
12.6
9.1
0.7

Satisfaction with Japanese
Language materials
Meets all needs
Meets secondary needs
Meets most needs
Meets half of needs
Sometimes usefulCompletely inadequate# of respondents

50
79
156
96
172
63
570

8.8
13.9
27.4
16.8
30.2
11.1

58
40
107
47
95
31
386

7.3
10.4
27.7
12.2
24.6
8.0

59
42
161
72
86
24
452

13.1
9.3
35.6
15.9
19.0
5.3

* Respondents were permitted to select up to two responses from a list including reasons they did not use the collection at all, so the number of responses slightly exceeds the number of respondents. Percentages based on number of
respondents. Data for 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 10.2, Chapter 10, page251. These data were reproduced and 2005 data added in Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 8.3, p. 174.

of respondents. A quarter (26.5%) said they ask a Japanese colleague to get the materials forthem, while others borrow material from colleagues at their own institution or at other institutions. One in eight report that a librarian at another institution orders the material for themthrough ILL. Smaller percentages of respondents reported that they go to a nearby Japanesecollection or the Japanese collection from their doctoral institution or that they buy all theJapanese materials they need.
Japan specialists today use the computer as a fundamental tool for their work, and many of
their uses of the computer involve online communication that links them to distant resources
and colleagues. To explore this further, we asked respondents about their use of a variety ofcomputerized research aids. A full 90 percent of respondents access their own library’s online
catalog, and half access the online catalogs of other libraries, presumably from their own computers. More than two thirds (69.6%) report that they access the OCLC/Worldcat online catalog, which tells users what libraries have particular items and also provides access to global
ILL for some Japanese resources. Well over a third (37.7%) reported that they access various
full-text databases. A follow-up question asked them to specify, and the range included a variety of Japanese full-text databases plus the general databases of journal articles to which mostmonograph.indb 150

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large American academic libraries now subscribe. Both in that questions and in another asking
about reference databases, many listed Japanese resources such as Japan Knowledge to which
many of the major Japanese collections now subscribe. In a dramatic turnaround virtually no
respondents this time said they did not know how to use such resources, or that they were notavailable. A quarter of respondents reported using Google, Google Scholar, and other Internet
search services, which 30 percent reported using online booksellers including Amazon in both
Japan and the United States, Kinokuniya, and a few other sources.
Respondents were also asked about their use of Japanese databases, a resource that is
becoming more available through American universities but still is prohibitively expensive
for many institutions. Since 2005 the percentage with no interest in using Japanese databases(18.7%) has dropped to ten percent. Over half have now used them in Japan (55.2%) comparedto just over 40 percent in 2005 and half (50.5%) have used them in the US, up from the 2005
figure (37.8%). This reflects both a greater familiarity with such resources, and their greater
availability. All of these findings suggest that technological developments, coupled with theinitiatives of the NCC to make Japanese research resources more accessible to Japan specialists in the United States, are indeed making a real difference. The sole Japan specialist at an
institution without a Japanese language library collection is not nearly as isolated as he or she
was a decade ago. Many more resources are directly accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, and our responses suggest that includes just about all Japan specialists today.
This certainly does not mean that Japanese library collections are less important, or thatJapanese librarians are less essential to the enterprise of Japanese Studies. On the contrary,
the Japanese librarians at staffed collections have transformed themselves into information
specialists who know how to access an enormous range of resources beyond just the books
and periodicals in their own collections. They have become an essential network hub, helping
to link Japan specialists all over the United States with the much broader array of researchresources they now use. Although some of these changes have come about globally as partof the emerging information society, for Japanese Studies the NCC and Japanese librarians
deserve much credit for bringing the information revolution to Japan specialists. In addition todeveloping infrastructure and opening new ways to expand Japanese research resources in the
United States, they also play a continuing role in teaching new Japanese librarians about the
many new resources for research in Japanese Studies and helping to train Japan specialists as
end-users of these resources. Any American initiatives for open information access, just likesuch initiatives anywhere else in the world, are instantly not just national but global, becauseof the nature of the medium. What began with a specifically American problem caused by thegeographic expansion of Japanese Studies in the United States has morphed into public goods
available to Japan specialists anywhere in our new borderless world.
There is no need to belabor the point that the Internet has fundamentally changed accessto information for scholars, students, and the general public all over the world. A number ofprojects in the US and elsewhere have been making full-text editions of significant Japanese
language research resources available online, in addition to those available through both publicand commercial sources in Japan. The “cultural turn,” as the rise of the cultural Studies paradigm is sometimes called, also has changed the nature of the research resources to which Japan
specialists need access. In addition to the continuing need of Japan specialists to do fieldwork
in Japan, many scholars now need access to Japanese films and popular culture materials. Stillothers have begun making research use of material that either originates on the Internet or isposted there for public access, such as organizational websites, blogs, and Internet social sitesof various types. While with limited resources there is no way that even the richest of Ameri-monograph.indb 151

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can library collections can meet all the needs of their faculty for very specialized research materials, there have been major strides in making highly specialized materials available througha combination of specialized collection development to meet local needs, and arrangements toshare these resources more broadly. The number of special collections reported by Japanesecollections at American academic libraries has increased to 71 in this survey. These same
libraries reported that they make a vastly increased number of Japanese databases available totheir users. Twenty-five libraries report that they make Japanese databases available to theirusers, which means that they purchase licenses to provide the access on a continuing basis.
Fifteen of the libraries provide between one and four Japanese databases, while ten libraries
provide between seven and twelve. This represents a large continuing expense that has cometo be essential for major Japanese collections.
We conclude our analysis of the role of libraries and librarians in Japanese Studies in the
United States by looking briefly at librarians’ own views of the situation in Japanese libraries
today, as compared with the situation as they saw it in 1995 and 2005. The results are shown in
Table 7.7. The results point to a serious deterioration in support for this most essential resource.
A much larger percentage of librarians (45.7%) report decreased support for acquisitions, andover half (54.3%) say that their staffing has decreased. Both are about double the percentagethat reported decreased in the two previous studies. While very few report decreased infrastructure, only 10 percent say that their infrastructure support has increased, compared to 30
percent or more in the two previous studies.
There has been some movement of Japanese library staff among institutions recently, due
to the same generational turnover that has affected academic staff. While this has meant advantageous career moves for a few Japanese librarians, they also report that some institutions
have consolidated the library positions and one person is covering both the Japanese and Chinese collections, in many cases a China specialist. This is one of the few tangible pieces of evidence of direct competition between Japanese and Chinese resources. It reflects adminstrators’
assumption that since both languages use Chinese characters, one librarian can serve both
Table 7.7. Librarians’ Perception of Changes in Library Support in Past Five Years,
1995, 2005, and 2012* Type of Support

Acquisitions
1995
2005
2012
Staffing
1995
2005
2012
Infrastructure
1995
2005
2012

Decreased %A bout Same %Increased %Total N #

21.1
28.6
45.7

47.4
38.8
37.0

31.6
32.7
17.4

57
49
46

23.6
32.7
54.3

60.0
53.1
28.3

16.4
14.3
8.7

55
49
46

3.6
22.4
3.8

66.1
46.9
54.3

30.4
36.6
10.9

56
49
46

* 1995 data from Japanese Studies in the United States: The 1990s, Table 10.4 p. 262. Reproduced with 2005 data inJapanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 8.5, p. 179.

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fields. Obviously, the loss of a Japanese librarian and replacement with a Chinese librarianmeans a serious loss in the level of professional support for the Japanese collection in terms ofknowledge of the relevant materials and resources, ability to provide service to library users,
ability to acquire grants and gifts from Japanese sources, and loss of the interpersonal network
relations that enable Japanese librarians to share resources and information freely. An evenmore serious loss has been the elimination of staff support for the large Japanese collection at
the New York Public Library, which now is being merged and administered as part of a muchlarger unit without specialized Japanese library staffing. There are 41 Japanese librarians withentries in the Directory of Japan specialists. Collectively they hold 106 academic degrees,
including 36 library degrees, and six PhDs, which serve as an alternate professional qualification for some Japanese library positions. Nearly all of those advanced degrees were earned in
the United States. The requirements for Japanese librarians at American institutions now really require either the library and information resource degrees that are offered by American
library schools, or advanced training in Japanese Studies at the PhD or near PhD level. There
are sufficient well-trained people to fill these positions; the problem now is to ensure that theJapanese collections continue to staff them with trained Japanese librarians.

Ancillary Programs and Services
Our data on the non-instructional aspects of Japanese Studies are less complete in thissurvey, and will not support detailed analysis. Many institutions maintain study abroad programs, and large institutions typically offer several different programs in which their students
may participate. Small programs use study abroad to supplement their limited language offerings, and in some cases also to supplement area courses with content on Japan. Most JapaneseStudies programs, particularly language departments, have institutionalized some procedurefor giving academic credit within their own system for work students take in study abroad
programs. This implies that such programs now have been firmly established within the institution, so that students can participate in study abroad without administrative problems.
Several Japanese study-abroad and language programs are managed by consortia of American
institutions, which oversee the quality of instruction and provide some faculty on a rotatingbasis. Other programs are managed by Japanese academic institutions but have long-standingties with particular American institutions.
For students at public institutions, the major barrier to study abroad remains the high costof spending a semester or a year in Japan, although for students at private institutions the cost
may be about the same as a year on their own campus. The U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation began as a project sponsored by CULCON to increase the number of American students studying
in Japan, which helped to establish appropriate programs at several Japanese universities. Now
an independent foundation supported by the Japan U.S. Friendship Commission, the Bridging
Foundation has established a national infrastructure for information about study abroad opportunities in Japan, and raises money from corporations and foundations to provide partial
scholarships for study-abroad in Japan through a national competition.
Most large Japanese Studies programs maintain a lively program of outreach activities thatserve their institution and the wider community. The National Resource Center competition,
which evaluates East Asia programs in part on their outreach activities, has spurred this typeof activity for decades. Many institutions now provide extensive training programs for K-12
teachers and some also run programs for community college instructors to strengthen theirknowledge of East Asia and Japan.

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We must also take note of a number of private and public institutions that contribute to
the rich array of resources for the study of Japan in the United States. They include museums,
libraries, foundations, societies that promote awareness of Japan to the general public, andother organizations that support Japanese Studies in various ways. While some independent
research organizations in economic and political policy areas have reduced their involvementin the study of Japan since the 1990s, support for Japanese Studies within the cultural arena
remains strong. Many academic institutions maintain collections of Japanese art and artifacts,
along with some major museum collections.

Perceptions of the Current State of Japanese Studies
The past four surveys of Japan specialists have all asked about their perception of funding
levels for Japanese Studies. In each of the studies, about a quarter of the respondents were unsure, but the responses of the remaining three-quarters track very neatly the situation before,
during, and after the Japan boom of the early 1990s. Table 7.8 shows the results for all fourstudies. Whereas in 1995 a third of Japan specialists surveyed thought that funding levels inJapanese Studies had increased and only a quarter thought funding was less plentiful, the belief that funding for Japanese Studies has become less plentiful has increased steadily and now
two-thirds of the respondents hold that view. Virtually no one now believes that funding has
become more plentiful, the lowest percentage recorded across the four studies.
Whether this pessimism is warranted objectively depends on one’s location and whatkinds of funding come to mind. Clearly new funding for Japanese Studies is much harder tocome by than it was during the Japan boom of the early 1990s. However, many of the largest Japanese Studies programs built substantial endowments beginning with gifts from theJapanese government in the 1970s and supplemented them with private gifts and corporate
donations in the 1980s and early 1990s. It is the practice of American academic institutions toinvest their endowments through professional management companies, and to pay out only 4-5
percent of the endowment’s value annually to the programs the endowments support. Since theactual investment earnings are usually higher than this, the endowments grow both because ofincreases in the value of the principal and of income that is reinvested. Despite occasional bad
years, these endowments have grown substantially over the years, and they helped to protect
and sustain Japanese Studies during the financial crisis of 2008, even though private institutions that are dependent on their endowments for general operating costs were hit very hardby the sudden drop in the stock market. Institutional endowments have now largely recoveredfrom the steep decline, but of course they have lost the steady increases they might otherwise
have enjoyed over the years following the crisis.
Nonetheless, the institutions with dedicated endowments for Japanese Studies now havethe resources to sustain their Japanese programs for the foreseeable future, even without new
Table 7.8. Perception of Funding for Japanese Studies Research
Funding Level

1984

1995

2005

2012

Less Plentiful
No Change
More Plentiful# Respondents

44.0
16.0
17.0
831

26.0
14.6
34.9
840

51.8
8.5
16.8
517

65.2
11.3
0.2
600

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infusions of external funds. In addition, the growth of Japanese Studies programs and of theirlibraries at a number of large public institutions over the past decade is evidence of substantial
institutional commitment to the field that is largely funded out of regular institutional budgets.
On the other hand, the U.S. and Japanese governments are reducing or holding flat their financial support for Japanese Studies in the United States, while the increased number of programsand the relatively large pool of both faculty and graduate students in the field means that competition for that funding is more severe than it was in earlier times. This adds to the perceptionthat funding is becoming much less plentiful than it was in the past. Most faculty and graduate
students would view funding not as institutional resources, but rather in terms of their own
ability to get funding for a specific research project and travel to Japan, whether through theirown institution or through a nationally competitive funding source such as the Japan Foundation, the Fulbright program, or other sources. From that perspective, the combination of highyen, shrinking value of the dollar, and shrinking budgets for the major research funders havedefinitely made research funding more difficult for individual scholars to obtain.
In the 2012 study we asked Japan specialists two additional relative questions about theirperceptions of the availability of research funding: whether they thought funding for international research was more or less available than funding for US projects, and whether funding
for Japan-related research was more or less available than funding for other world areas. The
results are shown in Table 7.9. While a third thought that there was a level playing field forresearch funding, just over half felt that international research in general was less well-funded
than non-international work, and an even larger majority felt that research on Japan was disadvantaged compared to other areas. This is an understandable perception, but is likely to varyby discipline as well. In disciplines and topic areas in which most research is domestic rather
than international, there may appear to be much more plentiful resources for domestic researchat both local and national levels. Moreover, within the international area studies community,
over the past two decades federal funding has had to accommodate urgent national needs inother world areas with a limited or shrinking overall budget, and this has definitely reduced theshare of the pie that goes to East Asia and to Japan.
This is also one place where the perception of the rise of China and Korea may also factor in. It is certainly true that both the Chinese and Korean governments have in recent years
established generous foundations that provide research and training support for American students and researchers. What may be less apparent is that both of those moves were simply following the earlier leadership of the Japanese government in establishing the Japan Foundation
with its many support programs. It is also certainly true that the Japan Foundation’s funding
has been shrinking over the past decade or more, even as more Japan specialists and JapaneseStudies programs are vying for that support.
The same surveys have also asked Japan specialists their priorities for funding in JapaneseStudies. Table 7.10 shows the results for four studies, with priorities ranked in 2012 order. The
Table 7.9. Perceptions of Relative Availability of Funding forJapan-Related Research, 2012
Funding Type% More­Available% Less­Available% Same­Available

NInternational versus non-international projectJapan project versus another area

9.4
4.9

54.4
60.6

36.8
34.5

555
551

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Table 7.10. Japan Specialists’ Funding Priorities, 1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012, in 2012
Rank Order*
PurposeLanguage Study in Japan, Study Abroad
Dissertation Support
Additional Faculty Positions
Graduate Training (pre-doctoral)
Postdoctoral Fellowships
Research Grants for Scholars
Conferences and Seminars
Expanding to Small Schools
Library and Museum Acquisitions
Outreach and Public Affairs Programs

1984

1995

2005

2012

2
1
4
3
6
5
7

1
2
3
4
8
7
9
6
5
10

1
2
3
3
6
5
9
8
7
10

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

* Data for 1984 and 1995 taken from Japanese Studies in the United Staes: The 1990s, Table. 10.9, p. 275. Reproduced
and 2005 data taken from Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, Table 8.7,
p. 181.

top four priorities remain the same as in the previous two studies. In 2012, Japan specialists
strongly support language study in Japan and study abroad, followed by support for with dissertation research, additional faculty positions, and pre-doctoral graduate training.. Priorities
below these top four items have changed, however. Japan specialists now give higher priority
to postdoctoral fellowships for younger scholars without jobs, followed by research grants
for established scholars. Support for conferences and seminars has moved up two places in
the rankings, switching places with support for library and museum acquisitions. Expanding
Japanese Studies to smaller institutions remains unattractive, in eighth place for the second
time. Japan specialists in 2012 also give the lowest priority to the same item as in 1995 and2005: outreach and public affairs programs. Overall, the clear priority is to get young people
to Japan (language study, dissertation research) and to get them employed (faculty positions).
A related question asked in all three four surveys concerns the balance of funding allocations between larger and smaller institutions. Table 7.11 shows the results for all four studies.
Only 20 percent feel that larger institutions should receive a larger proportion of the funds
than they do at present, a figure that has remained stable since the 1980s. However, the enthusiasm for providing additional support to smaller institutions has waned since 1995, when
as we saw earlier, there had been a sudden increase in small programs during the economic
competition paradigm. In 1984 respondents were given a “not sure” option, which has notbeen offered in the two later studies, thus forcing respondents to choose one of the three options. In the 2005 and 2012 studies, just over a third of respondents felt that a greater proportion of funding ought to go to smaller institutions, while over 40 percent thought the present
allocation to larger and smaller institutions was appropriate. There is thus considerably lesssupport for increasing support to smaller institutions than there was in the 1990s; the optionof increasing support to smaller institutions has reverted to the level it had in 1984. The results should also be read in light of the responses to the previous question concerning the rankorder of funding priorities. Expansion of Japanese Studies to small colleges ranked eighth outof ten options for support.
What should we make of these last survey results? We have seen that most Japanese Stud-

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Table 7.11. Preference for Funding Allocation Between Larger and Smaller Institutions,
1984, 1995, 2005, and 2012*
Preferred A llocation of Funds

1984

1995

2005

2012

Greater proportion to larger institutions than at present
Same proportion to larger and smaller institutions as atpresent
Greater proportion to smaller institutions than at present
Not sure

20

19.4

20.9

19.8

22
38
20

34.8
45.8
–

43.2
35.9
–

44.2
36.0
–

Total

100

100.0

100.0

100.0

# of Respondents

811

623

449

491

ies programs are established at large academic institutions. All of the complete graduate programs are at large, research intensive institutions, and most undergraduate Japanese Studies
programs are also located at institutions with quite large undergraduate enrollments. So thequestion of whether the funding balance should go to larger or smaller institutions is ambiguous about whether this means smaller institutions in overall enrollment or to institutions ofany size that have smaller Japanese Studies programs. The priority question quite explicitly
refers to expanding Japanese Studies to small colleges. This was the movement that was sostrong in the early 1990s, but we have seen that many of those programs did not survive thewaning of the Japan boom. In addition, in our analysis of the 1995 findings, respondents fromsmall institutions supported expansion of funding to small institutions, while those from large
institutions were less enthusiastic about it.
The message since then seems to be that there is some support for giving more funding
to existing smaller Japanese Studies programs, but not much support for expanding further
into small colleges that lack the infrastructure to build strong Japanese Studies programs. At
the same time, we know from the analysis of program size and staffing that the area of likely
growth for Japanese Studies over the next decade is probably by strengthening and expanding
Japanese Studies programs at undergraduate institutions. This is most likely to be successful when it is done at institutions that have a relatively large undergraduate student body andalready have some Japanese Studies presence: in short, if it follows the existing pattern inwhich undergraduate Japanese Studies programs become larger and deeper over time. Thereis now a large pool of over fifty area and limited Japanese Studies undergraduate programs
upon strategic investments in new faculty positions could bring them up to the level of fullundergraduate programs.
More generally, we can expect continuing decline in the level of external support for Japanese Studies programs in the near future. In general, any funding that is not formally dedicated to Japanese Studies is likely to be diverted elsewhere. The National Resource Centersthat fund the largest programs are organized as East Asian National Resource Centers. Whilethey provide some protection for Japanese Studies, the balance between Japan, Korea, andChina may shift over time. In addition, the actual number of National Resource Centers thatare designated for East Asia fluctuates as the government perceives the need to use a limited
pool of funds to support language and area training in other world areas that have become
more politically salient. Such areas do not have the level of self-sustaining infrastructure thathas been built in Japanese and East Asian studies. However, these national programs actuallyprovide only a small part of the resources that large Japanese Studies programs utilize—andmonograph.indb 157

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do not affect the great majority of Japanese Studies programs at all--so these fluctuations are
not fatal to Japanese Studies.
Endowments from the Japanese government and Japanese corporations protected large
Japanese Studies programs from the full impact of the fiscal crisis in 2008, but administrators are now finding ways to “tax” even dedicated endowments in order to divert some of that
wealth to other institutional needs. Korea and now China have followed in Japan’s footsteps indeveloping special national programs to endow their American academic programs, so there
is some balance among the East Asian programs at major institutions. As noted earlier, whatmight appear as a threatening amount of new support for competing area studies is actually justlate-comers catching up to what Japanese Studies received in previous decades. It is importantto remember that these endowments and federal support apply only to the largest programs.
Smaller Japanese Studies programs at both public and private institutions depend primarilyon their own institutional budgets, which are increasingly driven by metrics such as student
course enrollments. To the extent that the current demand for both Japanese language courses
and area courses about Japan is sustained by student interest, programs stabilize, flourish, andeven expand. However, if the demand should fall substantially in the future, programs could
shrink. The smallest current programs are at greatest risk.
This assessment of the staffing and infrastructure for Japanese Studies in the United States
has identified some weak spots in an otherwise positive picture. Despite the size and strength ofthe largest Japanese Studies programs, and the healthy condition of academic offerings, there
are concerns about replacement of existing positions when they become vacant, coupled withconcerns about appropriate employment for young scholars. These concerns come throughclearly in Japan specialists’ perception of the funding situation as well as their funding priorities. While support for language programs and study abroad in Japan is unwavering, the next
four priorities in 2012 all concern student support and academic positions, the most basic elements of academic life. In uncertain times, the extras fall to the bottom of the list. Fundamentally, these concerns are not about Japanese Studies in particular, but about the overall climateof American academics in the era of neoliberal globalization. Even as the positive attractionsof Japanese culture sustain high enrollments and rich development of Japanese course offerings, and Japanese Studies programs are offering strong undergraduate and graduate programs
to large numbers of students, academic life is no longer as stable and secure at it used to be,
especially for younger scholars. The consensus on these priorities seems directed both towardstabilizing the career path for young scholars and supporting the elements that sustain student
demand for Japanese Studies.
Responses of Japanese Studies in the United States to 3.11
The response of the Japanese Studies community in the United States to the 3.11 triple
disaster in Japan can be understood as a direct result of the massive infrastructure for JapaneseStudies that has been built up over the five decades. Above and beyond the general public sympathy and support offered by the American people, the Japanese Studies community used its
resources, its expertise on Japan and its strong network ties to Japan to respond to the tragedy.
The study was just beginning when disaster struck, and the impact on our students, faculty,
and programs was soon apparent. We added an open-ended question to both the specialist andinstitutions surveys in order to try to capture some information about the impact of the disasteron the Japanese Studies community and what people were doing. They invited respondents tocomment on both the positive and negative impacts. The questions were added at the very endof both surveys, and about half of the overall sample provided responses.

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For Japanese Studies programs, the first and most immediate impact was that many study
abroad programs were cancelled and students were sent home for safety reasons. The programs had to scramble to take care of the returning students. Some summer 2011 study abroad
programs were also cancelled. However, the programs report that these programs were subsequently restored and this negative impact was temporary. University administrators worried
about liability issues and in some cases increased the insurance requirements for students going on study abroad and study tours to Japan. Some study abroad programs were temporarily
moved to locations in western Japan. A few schools reported a temporary decline in enrollments in introductory Japanese language courses, but recovered after a semester.
At the same time, programs began reporting a range of positive developments. Programs
and students organized fundraising drives. Japanese Studies programs began organizing special symposia and lectures to share their knowledge, connect the disasters to similar events
elsewhere in the world, and focus attention on Japan. These events also provided additional
opportunities for fundraising for relief efforts. Later, study abroad programs began participating in relief work in the Tohoku area. Schools used partnerships with Japanese institutions in
Tohoku and elsewhere to develop or enhance joint activities. MIT created the MIT-Japan 3.11
Initiative in collaboration with Miyagi Prefecture University and the town of Minami Sanriku.
Vassar College participates in the Tohoku Earthquake Forum with Ochanomizu University. A
faculty member at one university organized a joint subtitling project in which students created
English subtitles for a Japanese TV documentary film related to the earthquake. One of thebiggest initiatives was Harvard University’s digital archive project, now co-sponsored withseveral other institutions, to collect and archive materials about the disaster and preserve themfor future research. The Portland Art Museum reported that it owns a rare set of prints that
document the 1923 Kantō earthquake. They put the series online after 3.11 with a link to a site
for making donation, and received more than 140,000 hits on the website. All of these program
responses could be organized on short notice because Japanese Studies programs already had
the faculty expertise and the administrative resources to make them happen.
Japan specialists also offered a wide array of both positive and negative comments. On
the negative side, faculty reported not only the difficulties of accommodating students who
were forced to leave Japanese study abroad programs in the middle of the semester and return
home, but also the fears of parents who did not want their children to go to Japan or to study
Japanese. Some reported that parents were urging students to study China instead, but others
commented that the students are more interested in Japan and that interest in China tends to bebusiness oriented. Many faculty also reported disruptions in their lives if they were in Japan
at the time of the disaster, or had planned to go soon thereafter. Some research projects werecancelled or postponed in the aftermath of the disaster. Some Japan specialists expressed fearof radiation and hesitated to travel to Japan, and that fear was also expressed by parents ofstudents. Commenting more broadly on the impact, some Japan specialists felt that 3.11 would
reduce interest in Japan, while others primarily expressed critical comments about the government and administrative responses and decried the stereotypical American news coverage. A
Japan specialist at the University of Guam reported a very negative impact because 3.11 had
led to postponement of the movement of American military personnel from Okinawa to Guam,which had been anticipated as a big boost to the economy. Consequently university budgets
were negatively impacted and Japanese Studies was in danger of being consolidated with East
Asian Studies.
On the positive side, many Japan specialists reported that they have incorporated something about 3.11 or related issues into their courses and their pending publications. Some havemonograph.indb 159

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added new units to language courses and to area courses in anthropology, history, and political science. They have been asked to comment on the disaster itself and to contribute theirexpertise in many ways. Some report having done translation work in relation to the disaster
aftermath, giving public lectures, participating in symposia, and helping to organize events.
They have participated in special panels at the regional and national Association for AsianStudies meetings, and at many local public events. A number of scholars report that they haveshifted their existing research interests to incorporate some aspect related to 3.11, whether it
is an interest in energy policy, in nuclear issues, in community response to disasters, civil society, or Japanese politics. Those who previously had ties to Tohoku have used them to reachout to friends and colleagues, while others have created new ties by leading student groups to
do volunteer work. Those who have gone to Tohoku have written about it, or given talks ontheir return. The disaster has produced both a greater general public awareness of many issues
concerning Japan, and an increased interest in Tohoku as a place.
Many specialists also felt that 3.11 had increased student interest in Japan. Some thought
it was temporary, but others saw it as connecting students to the reality of contemporary Japanand felt the results would be more enduring. While programs reported programmatic activities
and the effect of 3.11 on enrollments and study abroad programs, Japan specialists wrote much
more about the human connections. They expressed their own personal ties and emotional
responses to the disaster, and also reported the concerns of students and parents. These arepeople who have spent their lives studying Japan, living in Japan, and interacting with Japanese people. They were not only experiencing the events of 3.11 and its aftermath very personally, but they were also the individuals that others turned to for information and assistance. It isclear that many of them felt a strong sense of responsibility to contribute not just to fundraisingand volunteer efforts, but to use their skills and expertise in whatever ways they could. Some
Japanese literature specialists participated in a project to translate poetry about the disasterby Tohoku poets, while historians began to research and write about Japanese earthquakes ofthe past. Social scientists already working with Japanese colleagues on the Kobe earthquake
expanded their purview to include the Tohoku earthquake as well.
Most view 3.11 as having a lasting impact on Japanese society, and consequently, many see
it as something that they need to incorporate into their own teaching and research on Japan.
A few Japan specialists were uniquely positioned with directly relevant expertise and background and have made 3.1l the center of their research activity. Others have a more tangential
interest, but still have used it to refocus their attention either on the Tohoku area or on issues
that were previously a less central part of their expertise. While the responses to our survey
questions captured immediate responses in the first year after the disaster, there are going to
be long-term positive impacts on Japanese Studies in the United States in the form of increased
ties with counterparts in Japan, and new topics for teaching and research that will bring different perspectives on Japan to students for many years to come. The involvement of American
students in responding to 3.11 will be a lasting memory that reinforces their sense of personalconnection to Japan.

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8Japanese Studies in the Twenty-First Century

In the preceding chapters we have worked through a massive amount of data, trying tounderstand the present situation of Japanese Studies in the United States by placing it into appropriate contexts. In many cases we found simple continuation of patterns that had previously
established, but we also identified some new issues and directions. This concluding chapter
highlights our key findings, covering the general health of the field and its sustainability, theconcerns about competition from Chinese Studies, and the impact of 3.11 on Japanese Studies
in the United States. These findings rest not only on quantitative data from the survey, but on
my overall analysis of the growth and development of Japanese Studies in the United States
and the context of American higher education as outlined in Chapter 1.

Japanese Studies is Alive and Well in the United States
On a wide variety of quantitative measures, Japanese Studies appears to be healthy, despite persistent rumors that it is declining. In fact, it has grown substantially just since 2005.
1.

The number of Japan specialists has increased nearly 11%, the number of doctoral candidates has increased 12.2%, the number of Japanese Studies academic programs has
increased 6.5%, and the number of professional staff at Japanese Studies programs is up
8.1%. This is very impressive growth over a rather short time.
2. Japanese Studies programs have become steadily larger and deeper. Nearly half of all
programs have sufficient Japan specialist staff to offer a full undergraduate program witha major, and many offer both Japanese Studies and Japanese language majors. Many undergraduate programs have become stronger since the previous study, and have moved
up in our standard rankings. The greatest instability, as always, was among the smallest
and weakest programs. Separate from these formal rankings using criteria developedin earlier studies, the study found 361 undergraduate major or minor programs related
to Japan. There were 140 minors and 221 majors reported. The degree of emphasis on
Japan is strong. Nearly two-thirds of the minors and over half the majors were on Japanor Japanese language. The rest were on East Asia or Asia in general but included a Japan
component.
3. An increasing number (20%) of programs have 12 or more staff, which enables them to161monograph.indb 161

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offer graduate programs in Japanese Studies. Doctoral students in Japanese Studies werereported at a wider range of institutions than ever before, and MA programs continue
to thrive. However, the great majority of doctoral students continue to be studying at 23
institutions with complete graduate programs, which have rich human and infrastructure
resources for Japanese Studies. The infrastructure at larger programs continues to develop and resources for the study of Japan are more widely available, even as the resources
specialists want and need have also diversified.
4. The number of courses on Japan is up more than 25%. Such courses are taken by many
students who are not pursuing a Japanese Studies major, and provide a better assessmentof the overall impact of Japanese Studies on students than the count of formal JapaneseStudies program at the undergraduate level. Japanese language courses have increased
more than 35%. Area courses with Japan content have increased 14.5%. Courses exclusively on Japan have increased 17%. Although our data on enrollments are very incomplete, it does appear that enrollments are up both for language courses and for area
courses on Japan.

Current Conditions Appear Sustainable in the Near Future
These current conditions in Japanese Studies appear sustainable for the next several years
for a number of reasons.
1.

Students come to Japanese Studies through a combination of their attraction to Japaneseculture and direct exposure to Japan. The specific nature of these forces changes overtime, but they produce a steady flow of new entrants to the field. The current attraction isJapanese popular culture, to which American students are exposed as children. Courses
are now offered that use that attraction to build knowledge of Japanese language, history,
and culture.
2. Students now have high school exchanges and college level study abroad opportunities
for exposure, and the JET program provides additional exposure. As long as these exposure opportunities are sustained, they will bring a steady flow of students into the studyof Japan in the United States. Hence as a matter of policy, these programs need to be protected and expanded because of their long-term impact on Japanese Studies.
3. Japanese language training and specialized exams for college entrance are now available
at the high school level, and 15% of students enter college Japanese language courses
with prior Japanese language training. Japanese has become the second most commonly
taught foreign language in the United States, with an infrastructure to support both abroad base of elementary level instruction and more advanced courses.
4. College Japanese language programs provide advanced language courses to both undergraduates and graduates, steadily raising skill levels. Four years of Japanese are now offered at 116 institutions, and many large programs now provide extensive offerings above
the fourth year level. These programs provide a pool of Japanese language teachers forhigh school courses, as well as supporting the training of professional Japan specialists atthe doctoral level.
5. A wide variety of courses about Japan are offered to undergraduates, making some basic
level of knowledge about Japan part of a general college education at a growing numberof institutions. While this does not necessarily produce Japan specialists, it serve to institutionalize the study of Japan in the curriculum. Strong student demand for language

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and area courses on Japan protects faculty positions and allows programs to stabilize andexpand.
6. In the contemporary United States, the overall scale and broad distribution of JapaneseStudies programs no longer serves just to produce a small number of professional Japan
specialists with doctorates. As part of normal knowledge, it contributes to the skills of
people at the BA and MA levels who enter a range of occupations. More broadly, it raises
the level of knowledge about Japan in American society as a whole.

Economic Issues and Problems on the Horizon
Although the field as a whole is self-sustaining, there are economic issues in American
higher education that impact Japanese Studies, producing differential effects on particular
programs and specialists.
Doctoral Training and Hiring of New Japan Specialists
1. Japanese Studies programs have grown from the top down and the center out, with large
programs at elite graduate institutions producing the great majority of new PhDs, whothen seek employment at a much broader range of institutions.
2. Except for Japanese language and literature, most doctoral level training takes placein disciplinary departments that produce PhDs with disciplinary credentials who also
have a research specialization in Japan. Because of the particular nature and structure ofAmerican higher education, the majority of these new PhDs seek and find employment indisciplinary departments, where they teach courses in their discipline and are evaluatedby the standards of the discipline and not specifically as Japan specialists.
3. Much of the expansion in Japanese Studies has been serendipitous rather than programmatic. While some institutions did deliberately create Japanese Studies programs andstaff them with specialists, many more people have been hired at colleges and universities because of their disciplinary credentials, for jobs that are not “marked” as being for a
Japan specialist. As clusters of such faculty develop at institutions that also start to teachJapanese language, they coalesce into programs that offer undergraduate minors andmajors in Asian Studies, East Asian Studies, or Japanese Studies, and eventually also
may support graduate programs. Consequently, at any particular time, the field includes
large and very stable programs, middle range programs that are stable and growing, plus
small programs whose stability rests on a very small core of faculty. In addition there
are institutions that offer only a few courses related to Japan, plus a substantial numberof Japan specialists who teach at institutions with no program in Japanese Studies at all.
Japanese Studies is quite stable at large or middle-sized programs, but much more fluidat the smaller end.
4. It has become much more difficult for new PhDs in Japanese Studies fields to find stable
employment in the United States right out of graduate school. The current productionof substantial numbers of new doctorates in Japanese Studies with excellent credentials
coincides with neo-liberal fiscal trends in American higher education. These larger
trends produce few entry level tenure track positions and increase reliance on contingent
academic employment such as temporary lecturers, instructors, and adjunct faculty.
Postdoctoral fellowships provide opportunities to develop a publications record, but theyalso increasingly provide contingent teaching staff to institutions reluctant to hire tenure
track staff.

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5.

At the same time, the labor market for English speaking Japan specialists is global,
which means that American-trained new PhDs are finding employment all over theworld, but also that new PhDs trained elsewhere are now competing for jobs in theAmerican Japanese Studies market. Of course, it is also true that American institutions
are training Japan specialists from all over the world, and not all of those students enter
the American academic market. Programs reported that they are hiring and are replacing
Japan specialists who leave, but overall there are more Japan specialists currently employed in insecure positions than at any time in the past.
6. The resulting instability at the beginning of careers may lead some people to leave academics and perhaps Japanese Studies. Some, particularly social scientists, may find their
Japan skills valued more in non-academic positions in government or the private sector.
Within academics, this lag in initial stable academic employment leads to much more
movement between institutions. In the American context that can mean that young scholars who take positions at small institutions without strong Japanese Studies programs
may later move to bigger programs on the basis of their strong publication records. Others may have such heavy teaching loads that they cannot keep pace and gradually become less active as Japan specialists, although they may continue to teach courses about
Japan at their institution.
7. The competition for stable academic employment also falls differentially on young Japan
specialists with different forms of credentials. On one hand, there is substantial demand
for specialists who have the credentials to teach Japanese language, even if that is nottheir primary area of specialization. On the other hand, Japan specialists with strong
disciplinary credentials, particularly in the social sciences, may have more opportunities
to obtain “serendipity positions” in their discipline, which may or may not allow them toteach courses related to Japan.

Impact of Fiscal Austerity on Japanese Studies Programs
1.

While Japanese Studies programs that enjoy high student demand as measured by course
enrollments may have opportunities to expand, fiscal concerns can also take a toll evenon very strong and stable Japanese Studies programs. In general, any funding that is notformally dedicated to Japanese Studies is likely to be diverted elsewhere. The National
Resource Centers that fund the largest programs are organized as East Asian National
Resource Centers. While they provide some protection for Japanese Studies, the balance
between Japan, Korea, and China may shift over time. In addition, the actual number of
National Resource Centers that are designated for East Asia fluctuates as the government
perceives the need to use a limited pool of funds to support language and area training
in other world areas that have become more politically salient but do not have the levelof self-sustaining infrastructure that has been built in Japanese and East Asian studies.
At present such federal funding only is awarded to about two-thirds of the main doctoral
producing complete graduate programs in Japanese Studies. Even at those institutions,the national program actually provides only a small part of the resources that large
Japanese Studies programs utilize. Loss of such funding is not fatal to Japanese Studies,but it does have a direct impact on fellowship support for graduate students at the predissertation stage.
2. Endowments from the Japanese government and Japanese corporations protected large
Japanese Studies programs from the full impact of the fiscal crisis in 2008, but adminis-

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trators are now finding ways to “tax” even dedicated endowments in order to divert someof that wealth to other institutional needs.
3. These endowments and federal support apply only to the largest programs. Smaller ones
at both public and private institutions depend primarily on their own institutional budgets, which are increasingly driven by metrics such as student course enrollments. To
the extent that the current demand for both Japanese language courses and area courses
about Japan is sustained by student interest, programs stabilize, flourish, and even expand. However, if the demand should fall substantially in the future, programs could
shrink. The smallest current programs are at greatest risk.
4. In the area of library studies, there is some concern about consolidation of Japanese andChinese Studies positions, which reduces the level of library support for Japan specialists at that institution if a China specialist is hired to cover both fields. However, that has
been the norm at some libraries for decades and there is a stable continuing supply ofJapanese librarians.
The Perception of a Threat from Chinese Studies
The perception that Chinese Studies threatens Japanese Studies is an urban legend or myththat is not supported by the data. The conditions sustaining current growth in the two fields are
somewhat different and do not produce a zero-sum game.
1.

Chinese Studies as a field of professional specialization in the United States has historically always been larger than Japanese Studies, as measured by membership in the Association for Asian Studies and the relative number of faculty at large institutions offering
Japanese and Chinese Studies, either separately or combined into East Asian Studies.
The fields co-exist at most institutions and have often been mutually reinforcing. This
has not changed.
2. Korea and now China have followed in Japan’s footsteps in developing special national
programs to endow their American academic programs, so there is some balance among
the East Asian programs at major institutions. What might appear as a threatening
amount of new support for competing area studies is actually just late-comers catching
up to what Japanese Studies received in previous decades.
3. Chinese Studies is currently experiencing the sort of economic competition boom thatJapanese Studies experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. We know from Japan’s experiencethat such a boom brings an influx of students into the field because of their perception ofpotential economic value. Such students are concentrated in particular disciplines andprofessional fields and they tend to move into the general economy rather than becoming
academic specialists. An economic competition boom also may attract the attention ofscholars who have not previously studied the area, and lack language skills for research.
Because their choices were opportunistic, many of these people later move away to pursue the next economic boom and do not become permanent area specialists.
4. Japanese Studies is sustained by student attraction to Japanese culture and direct exposure to Japan, which then leads students to take language and area courses and deepen
their understanding. The decision to study Japanese language or to take courses about
Japan emerges first as a personal interest, which for some students then builds into a lifelong commitment. It is rarely an opportunistic choice based on a perception of potential
economic value, although those who gain enough skills and knowledge do find ways tomonograph.indb 165

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utilize it productively. The opportunities for exposure to Japan and its cultural attractions
are now so widely available that even if only 10-20% of the students go on to become
professional Japan specialists, this will sustain the profession while serving the general
educational needs of the broader population.
5. While parental perceptions of economic advantage may affect their encouragement ofhigh school students to study Chinese rather Japanese, and post-earthquake fears may
have led some parents to discourage their children’s participation in student exchanges,
this is less of a factor at the college level. American students generally make their own
decisions about what courses to take and what major to pursue, perhaps after an initial
year of complying with parental demands and doing poorly. If anything, parental pressure to study a particular language is likely to decrease the student’s interest in pursuing
it. The only exception would be the effect on heritage learners, which at present affectprimarily Korean and Chinese language enrollments in the United States rather than Japanese and might lead to a perception that interest in these languages has grown simply
because there are currently more heritage learners of Korean and Chinese entering college. We also know from earlier experience with heritage learners in Japanese, that while
it may affect enrollments in elementary level courses, it does not necessarily translate
into continued progression into more advanced courses. While there was some parental
concern about study abroad in Japan in the immediate aftermath of 3.11, it does not appear to have had a lasting impact.
6. Hence overall, current interest in China is not really in competition with what brings
people to Japanese Studies. There continue to be students who are drawn to the study ofChina by the same kinds of forces that bring others to the study of Japan. This is the coreof both fields at the professional academic level, which requires sustained commitment tomany years of language study in addition to mastery of a discipline using both Japaneseand English sources.
The Impact of 3.11 on Japanese Studies in the United States
The study asked both specialists and programs about the impact of 3.11 on Japanese Studies in the United States and on their own activities.
1.

Both programs and specialists initially reported disruptions as a result of the 3.11 disasters. Programs had to scramble to take care of students in study abroad programs thatclosed suddenly and some faculty reported initial declines in student enrollment as a result. Research activities of some specialists were also disrupted. Things soon reverted tonormal, although some institutions imposed increased demands for insurance protection
on study-abroad students that increased the already high cost of participation.
2. Faculty reported that radiation fears led some American parents to discourage theirchildren from going to Japan, or even from studying Japanese language. Some Japan
specialists also reported that radiation fears had led them to postpone or give up research
projects in Japan, or to refrain from visiting Japan during the summer months. Since
these comments were reported within the first year after the 3.11 disaster, it is not clear
whether they will have any lasting effect. However, similar fears have been reported inJapan among some segments of the population such as mothers of small children.
3. Both programs and specialists have reported a great outpouring of support for Japanin the wake of the disasters. Many organized fundraising activities and participated inorganized volunteer activities. Some of these activities have led to the creation of moremonograph.indb 166

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enduring ties between residents of Tohoku communities and American students and Japan specialists who had little or no prior experience in the area. New consortia between
American academic institutions and Japanese academic institutions in Tohoku have developed to pursue research and exchanges on a more formal and enduring basis.
4. Many Japan specialists have either initiated new research topics, or have extended existing areas of research to focus particularly on the Tohoku area. The number of specialists
claiming some expertise on the Tohoku region has increased. In the wake of the disaster,some Japan specialists found that their expertise on a previously obscure topic had suddenly become much more significant. Those who initially felt their research agenda had
been rendered irrelevant by the disaster soon discovered new ways to pursue their interests. They were already well prepared with the background to deal with new problems
that arose, or to examine the impact of the disaster on particular parts of the population.
Even if the things that attracted their attention were not in Tohoku at all, Japan specialists have been close observers of the ramifications of 3.11 throughout Japan, with newstudies of social movements, food safety, and other concerns. It is not just that Japan
specialists have suddenly become interested in these topics; an additional factor is thatthe current intellectual paradigm for understanding Japan provides tools and academic
legitimacy for exploring topics that would not have been considered worthy of study twoor three decades earlier.

Revisiting the Challenges of 2005 and Presenting New Onesfor the Current Decade
In the previous monograph, Japanese Studies in the United States and Canada: Continuities and Opportunities, the analysis of Japanese Studies in the United States concluded with areview of the challenges for the 1990s and updating them for the first decade of the new century. We reproduce them here and update them for the current second decade of the 21st century.
I. The Challenge of Providing Japanese Library and Information Resources for JapaneseStudies in the United States
The Japanese library community in the United States, in cooperation with its major
funders, has made great strides in this area. The problems of providing access for isolated
scholars have largely been overcome by new electronic technology coupled with new arrangements for borrowing materials globally through Interlibrary Loan and obtaining themthrough document delivery services. Many of these arrangements still require institutional
access to an academic library, if not to a specialized Japanese librarian, but Japan specialists are increasingly able to obtain needed resources directly through the Internet. A newgeneration of Japanese librarians has been trained in the use of the many new technologicalresources, and now the concern is that for fiscal austerity may be eliminating some dedicatedJapanese librarian positions, which greatly reduces the support available to both faculty andstudents. The existence of new technologies does not obviate the continuing need to maintainthe books and periodicals that are the traditional lifeblood of Japanese library collections,even as more scholars are using research resources outside the normal collection range ofthese collections.
Thus the challenge remains: while great progress has been made in overcoming specificproblems, there remaining a continuing need to provide support both for collection development and for the library community infrastructure that has been created through the NCC.

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II. The Challenge of Supporting Japanese Studies and Japan Specialists at Smaller Academic Institutions
While this challenge remains to some extent, it certainly does not loom as large as it didearlier, and has dropped to a very low priority with the Japan specialists in our survey. Ourfindings suggest that there is likely to be continuing instability among the institutions withminimal Japanese programs, and that resources should be focused more on programs withgreater potential for success.
However, the challenge remains: there still must be a commitment to support Japan specialists who are located at smaller programs or are more isolated. Their library resource needs
may be somewhat less severe than they were a decade ago, but they must not be forgotten in
the competitions for research and instructional support. Since some of the Japan specialists atthese institutions are likely to be precisely the young, promising scholars who have taken such
positions because of the unpredictable job market in Japanese Studies, their research opportunities need to be supported so that they can continue to be productive as Japan specialists andmaintain their network ties to the Japanese Studies community.
III. The Challenge of Integrating Japanese Studies in the Social Sciences
This challenge is just as great today as it was when the previous study identified some of
the factors exacerbating the situation. There have been serious new declines in the number ofdoctoral students in both political science and economics, reflecting the waning of the economic competition paradigm and probably also the negative incentives for studying Japan inthose disciplines. There may be an oversupply of anthropology doctoral students for the job
market, but the supply of sociologists seems to be stable. Japanese Studies is now quite clearly
operating within a cultural studies paradigm, although larger and older programs retain strong
elements of both the original language and area studies paradigm and the short-lived economic
competition paradigm.
This remains a challenge without obvious solutions. However, as long as Japanese Studies
can retain a basic level of faculty expertise in the various social science disciplines and some
doctoral programs continue to train a basic core of new young scholars with solid disciplinary credentials in the social sciences, we can adapt to the overall reshaping of the field that istaking place. About all that can be done is to ensure that social science doctoral students haveaccess to whatever research and training support is available, and that the social sciences areincluded in any programs to create new positions.
IV. The Challenge of Supporting Larger Numbers of Students to Reach Higher Standardsof Achievements in Japanese Studies
Our findings indicate that many aspects of this challenge have been met. The levels ofachievement in Japanese Studies programs have been rising, as indicated by the scale anddepth of programs and the increased language proficiency of students. The scope of this challenge is also broadening because of the increased number of institutions now offering doctoral
programs in Japanese.
There remains a continuing strong need for support for language training in Japan at theundergraduate (study abroad) and graduate (Inter-University Language Center) levels, and forpre-dissertation and dissertation support for graduate students. These remain the highest funding priorities of Japan specialists in our survey.

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V. The Challenge of Adjusting to the Normalization and Internationalization (Globalization) of Japanese Studies in the United States
The issue of providing training for professionals in fields that are not well-served by traditional academic Japanese Studies programs seems to have been largely resolved. There are
now several strong programs in place that can provide specialized professional Japanese Studies training to those who need it. Their graduates find employment in the mainstream economy
and most are not identified as Japan specialists, unless they are employed as academic faculty.
The current issue of Globalization is quite different. The impact of globalization on American
academic institutions affects the job market for Japan specialists in two ways: first, throughthe tendency for programs to fill some Japanese Studies positions with contingent faculty(lecturers, adjunct faculty, and postdoctoral fellows with teaching responsibilities) rather than
through stable tenure-track positions; and second, through the globalization of the job market
so that Japan specialists trained in the United States and elsewhere are now competing for thesame positions in many countries.
The challenge now is to prepare doctoral students as well as possible for this uncertain
global job market while at the same time trying to create in the United States both new faculty
positions and postdoctoral positions to serve as way stations to more stable academic employment.
Reviewing these challenges once again reveals how much has been accomplished throughthe concerted efforts of the Japanese Studies community with the support of the Japan Foundation and other funders. It also reveals the extent to which changes in the broader environment have altered both the problems and the priorities of the field. The challenges of library
resources and of supporting isolated scholars have been transformed by new technology, but
still require support and attention. The core challenges of improving research and training opportunities in Japanese Studies remain central, and now extend to providing more employment
opportunities for our well-trained young Japan specialists.

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Appendix A
Methodological Note

The data for this study were collected as a combined enterprise for producing the fourth
edition of the Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in the UnitedStates and Canada and providing survey data for analysis, as was the case with the 1995 and2005 directory and monograph. For this project we used online data collection forms and tocarried out virtually all communication about the project through e-mail. We tried to makethe process of updating earlier directory entries as painless as possible, but the lengthy survey
still required a substantial expenditure of time for most respondents. As a result of the combination of collecting data for a directory publication containing detailed information plus thesurvey data for statistical analysis, there was much more interaction between the project andits respondents than would be the case with a normal survey. We describe the data collection
procedures in considerable detail in part to provide a guide for anyone who attempts to carryout a similar project in the future.

Contact Lists
The first two editions of the directory were produced at the Association for Asian Studies
offices in Ann Arbor. The Association has not been able to accommodate the project sincethen, although it agreed to continue its co-sponsorship and to provide its mailing lists for ouruse. Consequently, the 2005 project and this one were carried out at the University of Hawaii’s
Department of Sociology under my direct supervision.
The first task for the directory was to find the relevant people and programs to include. Our
baseline was the list compiled for the 2005 directory, which was six years out of date when we
began the present project. The Association for Asian Studies provided its most current membership lists for members listing Japan as an area of specialization, which contained e-mail addresses for all current members. Only about half of the directory entrants are members of the
AAS, but we cross-checked and added any new names and also updated e-mail addresses fromthis source. The websites of academic institutions offered a second resource, both for identifying whether Japan specialists had moved, and for obtaining clusters of e-mail addresses. It
might have been faster just to search for them individually in Google, but we feared that simple
searching on names would produce erroneous matches, which we hoped to avoid by locating
individuals through known institutional affiliations. Later, when institutions provided theirstaff lists, these were also cross-checked to provide new specialists and new affiliations ande-mail addresses for ones already in the database.
171

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Appendices

For the 1995 directory we had located and included a substantial number of Japan specialists who were working outside of traditional academics, either in cognate areas such as
libraries, museums, and research institutes, or in professional fields such as government, law,business, and mass media, where knowledge of Japan had become important. For the 2005
directory and even more so for the current one, our ability to track people outside the confinesof academia is limited. If these individuals belonged to the AAS or were still employed at thesame company or institution, we were generally able to locate them, but we could not track
them if they had changed employers or were no longer linked to academic networks.
To identify institutions with Japanese Studies programs, we relied primarily on our existing database, since this time the AAS told us our list of programs was probably more complete
than theirs! Since we already had a pool of institutions that went well beyond the parameters ofexisting programs as a result of the three previous studies, we concentrated on trying to locate
someone to contact by e-mail at every institution with some trace of Japanese Studies activity,
past or present.
For the first directory in 1989 we had supplemented the AAS list of academic institutions
through a library search of museums, libraries, research institutes, and other organizations
related to Japanese Studies. This list was expanded in 1995 with the addition of other nonacademic institutions that employed Japan specialists and again in 2005. This time we used ourexisting list, supplemented by a handful of new organizations that support Japanese Studies.

Database and Forms for the Directory and Survey
The 1989 and 1995 directory projects had been managed with an R:Base relational database programmed by the AAS programmer, Ronald Peterson. However, by the time I needed
to analyze the 1995 data, we were able to convert it to the initial version of Microsoft Access,which gave me much more independent control over the data. For the 2005 study and the current one, the UH College of Social Sciences systems manager, Harry Partika, housed and provided critical oversight for the project’s web server, through which the data were collected. He
initially provided space on his SQL server, and the project’s programmers upgraded the 1995
Access database to SQL so that our staff could work on it from several computers and locations
simultaneously. Despite our migration to a “grown-up” database system, we have continued to
manage the project through an MSAccess “front-end” that provides a familiar, easy-to-manage
user interface to the SQL database. For the current study we have our own web server and SQL
server, housed under the watchful eye of Harry Partika and behind his strong firewalls. We
also still had the College of Social Sciences url from the previous project and a project e-mailaccount. Even though the tools are basically the same, we had to revise and update everythingin order to keep up with the rapidly changing technologies.
Using the 2005 directory entry and survey questionnaires as the base, Canadian Associate
Julian Dierkes and I solicited input from various quarters and used our own sense of the field todetermine questions that needed to be added or revised. We were reluctant to eliminate manyquestions because a major strength of this project is its ability to compare data from previous
studies. While the directory questions remain basically the same, we made some changes
in the surveys. Many questions that we had asked in the 2005 study were updated with additional response categories, and the librarians provided technical information about how toword questions concerning a whole host of resources that have changed in the past few years.
We did cut out a few questions, but the survey remains inordinately long.
As in the previous studies, the directory portion was designed so that people who hadmonograph.indb 172

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participated in the previous study could simply update their entry, but in each study the survey portion is a completely new blank form. While in the original two studies we relied onacademic program staff to distribute and collect the specialists’ paper questionnaires, with themove to an online data collection system we rely on the programs to report their staff, but we
communicate directly with both programs and specialists by e-mail.
Doctoral student Trang Phan Thu and her husband Skol Watanawongskul re-programmed
both the SQL server and the data collection website, which had separate sections for Japan
Specialists, Japanese Studies Programs, and Japanese Studies Librarians. For each of the threecomponents, the directory portion came first, followed by the clearly marked survey section.
Respondents in all three categories received an invitation to participate in the study by e-mail,giving them the url of the website and a username and password to gain access to the appropriate directory entry form and survey. However, each of the various entry points also included aregistration system for people who were missed by our invitation system. Once the data collection was underway, we sent out announcements to major Japanese Studies list serves, but mostof the participants in the list serves had already received invitations with their own username
and password to enter the site.
As in the three previous studies, we collected data about doctoral candidates in JapaneseStudies from both the Japanese Studies programs and from the Japan specialists who supervise
their studies. However, for the past two web-based studies we have also added a place on thewebsite where doctoral candidates in Japanese Studies could register to ensure that they would
be included. Nearly all of the doctoral students who registered were also reported either by
their program or their advisor, but we were also able to verify the authenticity of the ones who
were not reported by others.
The data from the 2005 directory was already loaded into the SQL database. When persons who had participated in the 2005 study (or even the 1995 one) entered their username andpassword, the directory entry portion of the online data collection forms displayed their old
information so they could update it. The survey portion was blank and required that all questions be answered anew. Most questions were in standard survey format and required only aclick of the mouse to answer, but we did repeat questions from the previous survey that asked
for numbers of publications and other quantitative measures of Japanese Studies activity, andincluded a few open-ended questions.

Online Data Collection
To send out the e-mail invitations, reminders, and formatted entry proofs, we used ane-mail “blaster” program from FMS that works as an add-in to our Access system. This permitted us to write a standard message formatted to accept personalized data from records inthe database, and send it out in large batches. The project has its own e-mail account throughthe University of Hawaii and since the university’s accounts are now managed by Google, I
was able to send out the batch messages without difficulty, as the program builds in periodic
pauses. The e-mail program automatically recorded in our database the time that the e-mails
were sent out. It was quite easy to adapt messages and send new ones to specifically tailoredgroups. The e-mail program’s audit logs reveal that I sent out 48 different standard e-mail messages over the course of the project: 10,435 to Japan specialists, 672 to librarians, and 2,626 toJapanese Studies programs. This of course does not count individual e-mails sent by staff inresponse to questions and comments.
The e-mail program would immediately notify us if some error prevented the e-mail frommonograph.indb 173

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174

Appendicesbeing sent. Usually this was a simple typo in the e-mail address that could be easily corrected.
The return address for the e-mails was the project’s e-mail account, which we monitored closely after sending out a blast of e-mails. Typically, despite our careful work to get updated e-mailaddresses, about 10-15 percent of the e-mails would bounce back as undeliverable within thefirst day or two. We then would try to track down a new e-mail address and send the invitationout again. We also had to monitor the project e-mail account closely to answer questions andtroubleshoot any difficulties that respondents had with the website.
One particular difficulty with this project is the need to time the data collection to strategic
points in the academic calendar. We first tested our data collection system with the JapaneseStudies librarians. They were a relatively small group of information specialists who are very
comfortable with online data collection, since their work involves considerable use of online
databases. This time we sent those invitations out in May 2011, on the assumption that mostof the librarians worked year round. However, we did not realize that most of them take theirbook buying trips to Japan in the summer. Eventually, we received responses from virtually
all of the librarians who participate in the Committee on East Asian Libraries, the primaryorganization of professional Japan Studies librarians plus a smaller number of other libraries
with Japanese collections.
Next we began online data collection for Japanese Studies programs, beginning with thelargest programs so we could also get further information from them about their current Japan
specialists. We sent invitations to programs in fall 2011 and reminders in winter and spring2012. While we continued to send reminders to programs, we moved on to begin the data collection from Japan specialists in the spring of 2012. The overlap between the two types of datacollection caused some confusion, since often the same person received invitations to participate both as a Japan specialist and as the director of a program. The username for both invitations would be the same (the individual’s e-mail address), but the respondent needed to entera different part of the website and use a different password for each one, which corresponded
to the ID number for the correct record in the database. Since we did not expect our reminders
would be very effective over the summer, we went back to both programs and specialists infall 2012 to try to maximize participation, even as we began sending out formatted proofs tothose who had already responded.

Increasing the Return Rate
It has become increasingly difficult to get good return rates from any type of survey,
whether mailed or online. Typical return rates for professional mail surveys are now around15-20 percent after the standard two or three follow-up reminders. Although online surveys
enjoyed a higher return rate initially because of their novelty, they are already suffering fromthe same kind of respondent overload and fatigue as more traditional ones. The Japan Directory project has always enjoyed much higher return rates than most surveys, because of thepersonal network relationships among the members of the sample and the nature of the project
itself. This, plus new technology, has enabled us to employ a variety of techniques to increase
the return rates for the study. Data collection and processing of directory proofs also overlapped throughout the study in a manner that would be quite unconventional for a standard
mailed survey.
By late fall 2012, 1,493 persons had participated in study and were sent proofs, including those in Canada and overseas. The majority (844) either sent back corrections or said theproof was okay as is. Another 649 did not send the proof back or respond to it, but they weremonograph.indb 174

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Appendices175

all included because they had done the study. While this was proceeding, I identified known
specialists who had not responded but for whom there was existing data available. As we haddone in 2005, we sent them a proof of their old data and ask them to approve or correct theproof. Proofs were sent to 300 additional people who had participated in the 2005 directory,
using their old data and any updated e-mail addresses we had located for them, of whom 22
responded, and 10 were inactive. The remaining 12 were added. Of the remaining 278 who
had been sent proofs but had not responded, 131 were located by cross checking staff lists andsix were deceased or no longer active, leaving 141 unaccounted for. Thirty-four of those did
not have an institutional affiliation in the US or Canada in 2005 and thus could not be traced
further, leaving 107. These were checked first against the program proofs to look for missed
people on staff lists or name variations. Eight had previously been removed from an institutional affiliation because the institution had reported that they were no longer there, leaving
99. Many were at institutions for which we did not have an updated staff list or which did notparticipate in the study. Those were checked against the institution’s website and 77 additional
persons were identified and two deceased. A Google search on their names produced more
people who were actually located at universities but not picked up in their searches. Ultimately
only seven people were coded as “L” for lost. There were recent traces for most of them, but
without definitive evidence they are not included in the directory. Including only those who
were verified as still being where our data said they were, this intensive follow-up procedure
added 200 more specialists for whom we already had directory data.
The final result was 1,693 Japan specialists included in the directory, 1,435 of whom werein the United States and are included in the study. Along the way, among people in our original database with U.S. addresses, we had identified 41 who were deceased, 68 who were still
graduate students and thus ineligible for inclusion, and 276 who had noted in the online datacollection site that they were unqualified. We identified 356 who were no longer active, andeliminated four with very incomplete data who did not respond to inquiries asking them for
additional information. A total of 259 people on our mailing lists were coded as lost because
we were unable to locate them by existing e-mail addresses or through our intensive tracking
procedures.
A similar procedure was used for the programs that did not respond to our invitations.
The initial return rate was directly correlated with the size of the program. We had complete
coverage of the largest programs, and solid responses from the next tier, but the rate decreased
below that level. After multiple e-mail entreaties, we realized that in some cases we were probably trying to reach the wrong person. We either verified that we had been trying to reach thecorrect person, or located a new person or part of the program to try. Our logic for the largest
programs had led us to focus on area studies programs, but in many cases the language department was the more appropriate hub of Japanese Studies activity. The response also was weaker
if the person in charge was not a Japan specialist. It was difficult to target someone other thana program director or department chair, but that person might be a China or India specialist,
or even a French professor.
After exhausting our e-mail efforts to get the remaining programs that had participated in
the 2005 study to fill out the online form, we prepared page proofs of their old data and sent
them off by e-mail asking them to update it or we would print the old version. This finallygenerated a strong response, with many people complaining that the data was terribly outof date and finally giving us the requested updates (and often insisting that this was the first
notice they had received although our message records said otherwise). The resulting corrections were very extensive, and took a great deal of time to enter. At a very late stage we weremonograph.indb 175

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176

Appendicesstill receiving and entering corrections and working with some institutions to get last-minutechanges into the directory part.
Unfortunately, when we encouraged specialists and programs to provide corrections totheir old directory data, we lost all hope that they would complete the survey portion of theonline entry form. Our survey data therefore necessarily is based on a smaller sample. Evenamong those who did respond, many stopped either when they reached the survey or at somepoint gave up on responding. This is normal for survey data, and I simply used the maximum
amount of data available for every question.
Data Preparation
The project’s graduate student staff did a fair amount of data cleaning in preparation for
producing the directory, but much of it involved simply standardizing data formats and eliminating blank records for parts of the data that would appear in individual directory entries.
After the directory was well underway I began working with the data to write this volume,cleaning sections as I needed to analyze them. We had a number of standardized codes that had
been developed for the earlier directory projects, some as adaptations of existing Association
for Asian Studies codes. Some of these were presented to respondents to code in the online
system, but for other purposes I had to code the data manually. For example, specialists hadentered their own disciplines using a standard discipline code, but the same code had to be
applied manually to the doctoral candidates and later to the courses and the staff lists. I later
developed many simple codes to facilitate the analysis, and coded the data as needed. This isvery easy to do in an Access database by adding a new field, sorting an existing field in a query
if needed, and then adding the new code to all the records.
We had created a very complicated dataset with multiple tables for each of the three surveys (specialists, programs, and librarians), so in order to analyze the data various components
had to be combined in queries. Access is very convenient for basic data management and caneven be used for quick tabulations, but it is awkward for any sort of crosstabulation or calculation of percentages. I therefore would work with the Access database until I had sufficient
numerical codes and then pull segments of the data into SPSS for more intensive analysis.
Given the nature of this study, I did not do anything more sophisticated than simple crosstabs
and comparisons of means, but the data contained many multiple response variables for which
SPSS also provided efficient tools for analysis. For simple data, it was often faster to get the
numbers in an Access query or pivot table and calculate percentages with a hand calculator.
Many parts of our data were collected making full use of the relational database structure,
which meant that there were a variable number of responses for each person or program (themany-side of a one-to-many relation), linked to a single parent record (the one-side of a oneto-many relation). Sometimes these data could be analyzed in their existing form, by adding
some other fields from the one-side in a query. In other cases, the data needed to be transposedso that there would be multiple fields in a single record, using a procedure available in SPSS.
Once the data were in an SPSS file, additional recodes could be added to simplify the output.
The beauty of an online data collection system is supposed to be that the respondents
code their own data, but this also produces unexpected errors that only come to light when
the numbers in an analysis do not look right. It still requires judgment and a sense of what thedata might reasonably be in order to avoid misinterpreting results that have been labeled incorrectly! Because of the complexity of our dataset and the need to manipulate it in unusual ways,
I have described some of these data manipulations in excruciating detail in the chapters. I feltthat such information was most relevant in the context of how that particular analysis was car-monograph.indb 176

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Appendices177

ried out, and it would not be useful if relegated to the appendix. I have reported all that detailbecause in doing this study I found myself relying heavily on similar detailed information that
I had included in the 2005 study, without which I would not have been able to produce data inthe same format for comparison.
Nonetheless, I am not at all sure that the project can be repeated in the future, despite its
success in the past and the high level of cooperation we receive from Japan specialists andJapanese Studies programs. Although the digital divide has pretty much vanished in our highly
educated sample, respondent fatigue will only worsen. Ironically, the Internet revolution willprobably make it easier for a staff to collect much of the information on Japanese Studies programs directly from the Internet, and simply submit it to the institutions for verification. However, there is no guarantee that programs update their websites regularly. If we reach the point
where virtually all faculty post their curriculum vitae on their websites, it might even work forthe directory information for specialists. However, response rates for surveys will continue todecline, and at some point the data become too unreliable to make the survey worthwhile. For
this study I have used only the parts of the data about which I had sufficient confidence. Some
items that were analyzed previously could not be used this time because the response rates
seemed too low or the quality of the data was inadequate. This is a chronic problem in survey
research and it is unlikely to improve in the future.

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Appendix B

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS IN JAPANESE STUDIES
Minimal Undergraduate Program
Brookdale Community College
Clark University
Coastal Carolina University
Gonzaga University
Illinois Central College
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Johns Hopkins University
Los Angeles Harbor College
Loyola University
Mary Baldwin College
Mississippi State University
Northeastern Illinois University

Salisbury University
Santa Barbara City College
Seattle Central Community College
Southwestern University
Tulane University
University of Montevallo
University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of St. Thomas
University of West Georgia
Wheeling Jesuit College

Limited Undergraduate Program
Auburn University
California State University, Northridge
Chaminade University of Honolulu
Dartmouth College
East Los Angeles College
Everett Community College
Fort Lewis College
Indiana State University
Kansas City Art instituteLeeward Community College
Lincoln University
Louisiana State University
Marietta College
Maryville College

Metropolitan State University
Middle Tennessee State University
Missouri Southern State University
Oakton Community College
Purdue University Calumet
Rhodes College
Rio Hondo College
Southern Methodist University
University of Arkansas
University of Guam
University of Hawaii West Oahu
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
University of Mount Union
179

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Appendices

180
University of North Texas
University of Northern Iowa
University of RichmondWestern Carolina University

Undergraduate Area Program
Bridgewater State University
California State Univesity, East Bay
California State University, Fresno
California State University, San Bernadino
Clemson University
East Carolina University
Eastern Michigan University
Elizabethtown College
Foothill College
Hope College
Illinois Wesleyan University
Kapiolani Community College
Knox College
Lake Forest College
Loyola University Chicago
Full Undergraduate Program
Amherst College
Arizona State University
Augustana College
Bates College
Boston University
Bowdoin College
Bowling Green State University
Brandeis University
Brigham Young University
Brown University
Bucknell University
California State University, Chico
California State University, Los Angeles
Case Western Reserve University
Colby College
Colgate University
College of St. Benedict and St. John’s
University
College of William and Mary
Columbia University
Connecticut College
Cornell University
DePaul University
DePauw University
Dickinson College

monograph.indb 180

Whatcom Community College
Whitworth University
Willamette University
William Jewell College

Monterey Institute of International Studies
Northern Kentucky University
Saint Cloud State University
Texas A & M University
The City College of New York, CUNY
University of Alabama
University of Findlay
University of Georgia
University of Kentucky
University of Nebraska
University of New Mexico
University of the PacificWest Texas A & M University
Whitman College

Duke University
Earlham College
Emory University
Florida International University
Florida State University
George Washington University
Georgetown University
Georgia State University
Gustavus Adolphus College
Harvard University
Hawaii Pacific University
Illinois State University
Indiana University
John Carroll University
Kalamazoo College
Lehigh University
Macalester College
Manhattanville College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Miami University
Michigan State University
Middlebury College
Montana State University
New York University
North Carolina State University

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AppendicesNorth Central College
Northeastern University
Northern Illinois University
Northwestern University
Oakland University
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Ohio State University
Old Dominion University
Pennsylvania State University
Pomona College
Portland State University
Princeton University
Purdue University
Queens College, City University of New
York
Rice University
Rutgers, The State University of New
JerseySan Diego State University
San Jose State University
Skidmore College
Smith College
St. Olaf College
Stanford University
State University of New York at Albany
State University of New York at
Binghamton
State University of New York at Buffalo
State University of New York at New Paltz
Stoney Brook University (SUNY)
Syracuse University
Temple University
Trinity College
Union College
University of Arizona
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Riverside
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Colorado
University of Delaware
University of Florida

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181
University of Hawaii at Hilo
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Illinois
University of Iowa
University of Kansas
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Massachusetts, Boston
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Missouri
University of Missouri-St. Louis
University of Nevada Las Vegas
University of New Hampshire
University of North Carolina
University of Oklahoma
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
University of Puget Sound
University of Rochester
University of Southern California
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
University of Texas at Austin
University of Toledo
University of Utah
University of Vermont
University of Virginia
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin at Madison
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Ursinus College
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Wake Forest University
Washington and Lee University
Washington University of St. Louis
Weber State University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
West Virginia University
Western Michigan University
Western Washington University
Williams College
Wittenberg University
Yale University

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Appendix C

GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN JAPANESE STUDIES
MA Programs
Arizona State University
DePaul University
Florida International University
George Washington University
Georgetown University
Johns Hopkins University

San Diego State University
University of Florida
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Oklahoma
University of Virginia

Limited Graduate Programs
Boston University
Brigham Young University
Brown University
New York University
Portland State University
Purdue University
Rutgers, The State University of New
JerseyTemple University

University of Arizona
University of California, Davis
University of California, Irvine
University of Colorado
University of Iowa
University of Minnesota
University of North Carolina
University of Texas at Austin
Washington University of St. Louis

Full Graduate Programs
Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Harvard University
Indiana University
Ohio State University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara

University of Chicago
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Illinois
University of Kansas
University of Michigan
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
University of Southern California
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Yale University
183

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monograph.indb 184

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IndexA
academic credentials, 52, 53, 57, 70
academic institutions, 2, 3, 5–11, 18–19, 21, 25,
32–34, 37, 53, 63–66, 68–79, 81–83, 87,
107–108, 110, 113–115, 123–125, 128,
137, 142, 145, 153–154, 157, 167, 169,
171–172
elite, 11, 110, 163
Academic institutions
elite, 110
access to Japan, 148–149, 151
Age, iv, v, 20, 25, 27, 49, 56, 103
Ancillary Programs and Services, 153
Anthropology, 30, 37–38, 44,v46, 86, 91–92,
94, 96–97, 99–101, 143
Area studies
programs, xiii, 1–12, 17–19, 21–23, 29–30,
32, 34–39, 63–72, 74, 76–79, 81–95,
98–104, 107–130, 133–140, 142–145,
147–148, 153–166, 168–169, 171–177
B
Buddhist Studies, 91, 92, 95–96
Business, 9, 29, 45–46, 53, 89, 92, 96–97, 99,
101
C
Canada, ix, xi, 7, 10, 17, 21–25, 27–28, 30–31,
33, 37, 67–68, 73, 79–80, 84, 86–89, 91,
97, 104–106, 109, 112, 118, 120–121,
127, 132–133, 141, 143–144, 147, 150,
152, 156, 167, 171, 174–175

Chinese Studies, 1, 6, 8, 15, 101–102, 104, 161,
165
Columbia University, 6, 69, 127, 129, 131,
145–147, 180, 183
computers, 150, 172
courses, 3–7, 11–12, 14, 16–18, 21, 30, 38,
63–64, 68, 71, 74, 77, 81–101, 103–113,
115–122, 124, 126, 140, 143, 153,
158–160, 162–166, 176
area, 2, 4, 6–18, 20, 26, 30, 33–34, 38, 40–44,
46–47, 53, 57, 61, 65, 81–86, 91–101,
103, 108–113, 115–117, 119–121, 124,
126, 135, 138, 141–143, 153–155,
157–160, 162–165, 167–168, 171–172,
175
language, 2, 4–18, 21, 23, 26, 30, 35, 38–40,
46–47, 50, 52, 54, 57–58, 60–61, 64,
69–71, 74, 77, 82–88, 90–96, 98–106,
108–109, 111–113, 115–122, 125,135–136, 138, 140, 142–143, 145, 147,
149, 151–153, 156–166, 168, 175
CULCON, 8, 32–34, 88, 97, 111–112, 118–120,
129, 131–132, 144–145, 153
Cultural Studies, 15, 16, 98, 100
Cultural Studies paradigm, 98
Ddata collection procedures, 64, 171
directory listings, 66
Directory of Japan Specialists and JapaneseStudies Institutions, xi, 10, 22–23,
171
doctoral candidates, 17–18, 34–39, 110,185

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186
125–126, 130, 132–134, 142–143, 161,
173, 176
Doctoral candidates, 34
doctoral degrees, 3, 35, 63, 128–129
doctoral students, 2–4, 11, 13–14
E
Economic Competition paradigm, 17
Economics, 30, 37–38, 45–46, 92, 96–99, 101
e-mail, 15, 22, 64–65, 171–175
employment, 12, 26, 28, 30–32, 38, 70–71, 79,
102, 104, 136, 140–143, 158, 163–164,
169
academic, 1–3, 5–21, 23–26, 28–30, 32–34,
37–41, 44, 47, 52–53, 55, 57, 60, 63–79,
81–83, 85, 87, 89–90, 94, 103–105,
107–108, 110–115, 117, 119, 121–126,
128–130, 134–138, 140–145, 148,
151–154, 157–158, 161, 163–167, 169,
171–174
enrollment, 5, 12, 18, 72, 76–78, 88–91, 97,
100–101, 104–105, 135, 157–160, 162,
164–166
enrollments, 5, 12, 18, 72, 78, 88–89, 91, 97,
100, 104–105, 157–160, 162, 164–166
F
Faculty, iv, vii, 28–29, 31, 33, 118, 121, 156,
166
adjunct, 69–71, 137–138, 142–143, 163, 169
Fellowships, 156
Film Studies, 86, 91–92, 96–101
funding, 3, 8, 19, 30, 63, 123, 142, 148,
154–158, 164, 168
Funding, viii, 154–157
endowments, 135, 154, 158, 165
G
Gender, iv, v, 20, 25, 27, 36, 54, 56, 97–98
Geography, 92, 96
G.I. Bill, 5Globalization, 169
graduate programs, 19, 77, 110–113, 115,–126,
128, 133–139, 144–145, 147–148,
157–158, 161–164
Graduate training, 128
Growth, 10monograph.indb 186

Index
H
Harvard University, 69, 127, 129, 131, 145–
147, 159, 180, 183
History, 5, 10, 30, 37–38, 86, 92–93, 96–101
Humanities, v, 31, 51, 59, 60
disciplines, 3–4, 6–8, 10–11, 13–15, 29–30,
35, 37–40, 44, 46, 61, 82, 84–85, 91–
100, 105, 110–112, 116–122, 124–126,
140, 143, 155, 165, 168, 176
I
Information technology
websites, 22, 65, 73, 151, 171, 177
Institute of Pacific Relations, 5
institutions, ix, xi, 1–12, 15, 18–19, 21–23, 25,
32–37, 46, 53, 61, 63–84, 86–91, 93–94,
97, 100, 103, 105, 107–120, 122–139,
142, 144–145, 147–159, 162–169,
171–172, 175–177
interdisciplinary, 3–4, 7–8, 13, 16, 29–30, 44,
93, 108–112, 119, 121, 125
Internationalization, 169
Internet, 22, 65, 125, 148–149, 151, 167, 177
JJapanese language, 5–7, 9, 11–12, 18, 21, 35,
39–40, 47, 50, 52, 54, 57–58, 60–61, 64,
69–70, 74, 77, 82–83, 85–88, 90–94, 96,
98, 100–102, 104–106, 109, 111–113,
115–122, 125, 135–136, 138, 140,
142–143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 158–159,
161–166
study of, xi, 1–2, 4–5, 7–9, 11–14, 20, 26, 28,
38, 42–43, 46, 52, 81, 93–94, 98–99,
102, 106, 111, 121–122, 134, 144, 154,
162, 166
Japanese language and area programs, 6Japanese language competence, 47
Japanese popular culture, 98, 102–104, 143,
162
Japanese Studies, i, iii, v–ix, xi–xii, 1–25, 27–
41, 43–46, 48–51, 53–56, 58–60, 62–89,
91–97, 99, 101–116, 118–130, 132–145,
147–148, 150–169, 171–175, 177
academic programs in, 19, 81–82, 94, 135,
145
attractions, 101–102, 144, 158, 166

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Index
audiences for, 61
doctoral candidates, 17–18, 34–39, 110,
125–126, 130, 132–134, 142–143, 161,
173, 176
exposure, 6, 77, 86, 90, 101–102, 121, 144,
162, 165–166
funding for, 63, 148, 154–155
infrastructure, 6, 11, 19, 63, 70, 72, 110, 136–
137, 142, 144, 148, 151–153, 157–158,
162, 164, 167
infrastructure for, 11, 19, 137, 148, 153, 158
paradigms, 2, 5–6
staffing, 19, 82, 83, 105, 108, 110, 113,
136,–140, 142, 152–153, 157–158
Japanese Studies in Canada, ix, xi
Japanese Studies institutions, xi, 1, 63, 73, 79,
82, 87
number of, vii, xi, 4, 6, 11, 13, 19, 21–26,
28–29, 32–35, 37–38, 41–45, 47,
53–54, 58, 63–66, 68–69, 71–81,
83–94, 96–97, 100, 103, 105, 108–114,
116–122, 124–125, 128–138, 142–144,
147, 149–155, 157, 160–165, 167–168,
172, 174–176
Japanese Studies in the United States, iii, ix,
xi–xii, 1–3, 5–12, 14–15, 18–21, 23–25,
27–28, 30–31, 33, 35, 37, 63, 67–68, 73,
75–77, 79, 80, 84, 86–89, 91, 93, 97, 99,
101, 104–106, 109, 111–112, 118,–122,
127, 129, 132–133, 137, 141, 144–145,
150–152, 155–156, 158, 160–161,
166–167, 169
Japanese Studies in the United States andCanada, ix, xi, 24–25, 27–28, 30–31, 33,
37, 67–68, 73, 79, 80, 84, 86–89, 91, 97,
104–106, 109, 112, 118, 120–121, 127,
132–133, 141, 144, 150, 152, 156, 167
Continuities and Opportunities, ix, xi, 24–25,
27–28, 30–31, 33, 37, 67–68, 73, 79–80,
84, 86, 87–89, 91, 97, 104–105, 109,
112, 118, 120–121, 132–133, 141, 144,
150, 152, 156, 167
Japanese Studies programs, 1–2, 7–12, 17–19,
23, 30, 32, 34,–36, 39, 63–72, 74, 79,
81, 83–84, 87, 91, 99, 103–104, 107–
110, 114–116, 118, 122–123, 125–126,
130, 134–138, 140, 142–143, 147–148,
153–159, 161, 163–164, 168–169,
172–174, 177monograph.indb 187

187
expansion of, 11, 18, 65, 67–68, 71, 90, 101,
118, 130, 135, 144, 148, 151, 157
large, 2–3, 7, 9, 13–17, 23, 25–26, 29, 30,
32–34, 37–40, 42, 44, 46, 57, 65,
66, 68–72, 74–75, 77–79, 84–85, 91,
94–97, 99, 100, 104–105, 108–110–
113, 118, 120–121, 125, 130, 132–138,
142–145, 147–149, 151–158, 161–169,
173–175
librarians, 1, 12, 22, 28, 70–72, 120, 139,
144–145, 151–153, 165, 167, 172–174,
176
libraries, 71, 120, 125, 137, 144–145, 147–
148, 150–152, 154–155, 165, 172, 174
small, 3, 6–8, 11, 13, 18, 21–26, 29, 33–36,
38–40, 44, 46, 52, 54–55, 57–58, 60–61,
63–67, 69–79, 81–82, 84–88, 90, 93–94,
97–100, 103, 109–110, 114, 119, 125,
128–130, 133–136, 138–140, 142–144,
156–158, 161, 163–166, 168, 174, 176
staffing, 19, 82–83, 105, 108, 110, 113,
136–140, 142, 152–153, 157–158
Japan Foundation, ix, xi, xiii, 1, 5, 8–10, 14–15,
19, 23, 25, 30, 33–35, 47–48, 53, 55, 69,
72, 88, 97, 99, 104–106, 109, 111–112,
114, 120, 131–132, 142, 144–145, 147,
155, 169
Japan specialists, xi, 1–5, 8–15, 17–30, 32–36,
38–42, 44, 47, 50, 52–53, 55, 57–58,
60–71, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 93–94, 98,
100, 103–107, 111, 119–120, 124–125,
128–131, 133–134, 137, 140, 142–143,
147–151, 153–156, 158–169, 171–175,
177
academic, 1–3, 5–21, 23–26, 28–30, 32–34,
37–39, 63–79, 81–83, 85, 87, 89–90, 94,
103–105, 107–108, 110–115, 117, 119,121–126, 128–130, 134–138, 140–145,
148, 151–154, 157–158, 161, 163–167,
169, 171–174
age, iv–ix, xi, xiii, 2–18, 21, 23–30, 32–35,
37–61, 64–65, 69, 70–71, 73–75, 77–80,
82–109, 111,–123, 125, 127–128,
134,–136, 138–168, 172–173, 175–176
American-trained, 5, 143, 164
gender, 13, 27, 36–37, 46, 54–55, 70, 98, 103
non-academic, 23, 25, 38, 55, 60, 79, 130,
140–142, 144–145, 164, 172
number of, vii, xi, 4, 6, 11, 13, 19, 21–26,

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188
28–29, 32–35, 37–38, 41–45, 47, 53–54,
58, 63–66, 68–69, 71–81, 83–94, 96–97,
100, 103, 105, 108–114, 116–122, 124–
125, 128–138, 142–144, 147, 149–155,
157, 160–168, 172, 174, 176
professional, xiv, 9–10, 12, 15, 17–18, 20–22,
24–26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 52–54,
57, 60–61, 70–71, 85–87, 94, 102,
110, 117–118, 121, 130, 136, 153–154,
161–163, 165–166, 169, 172, 174
Japan-US Friendship Commission, 147
JET program, 102, 104, 162
Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, 8, 145
Joseph A. Massey, 8L
Language and Area Studies paradigm, 93
Law, 29, 45, 46, 53, 92, 146
libraries, 58, 71, 120, 125, 137, 144–145,
147–148, 150,–152, 154–155, 165, 172,
174
Library Resources, 144, 147
Linguistics, 37–38, 86, 91–92, 96–97, 99, 101
Literature, 30, 37–38, 86, 92, 96–99, 101,
108–109
N
networks, 21, 23–24, 61, 73, 134, 172
non-academic institutions, 145, 172
Normalization, 169
North American Coordinating Council for Japanese Library Resources, 147
Northwestern University, 127, 131, 181
O
Occupation, iv, 7, 28–29
Online, 173
discussion, 5, 20, 65, 137
journal, 12, 150
P
Perceptions of the Current State of JapaneseStudies, 154
Political Science, 30, 37–38, 86, 92, 96–100
Postdoctoral fellowships, 163
Postwar, 10, 41

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Index
profession, xiv, 9–12, 15, 17–18, 20–22, 24–26,
28–30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 52–54, 57,
60–61, 70–71, 85–87, 93–94, 102,
110, 117–118, 121, 130, 136, 153–154,
161–163, 165–166, 169, 172, 174
R
Religion, 30, 37–38, 86, 92, 96, 99–101
research, 2–3, 6–16, 18, 25, 28, 38, 40–44, 47,
49, 52, 54, 57–58, 60–63, 70–71, 77–78,
93–94, 98, 103, 105–106, 119–120,
125–126, 128, 137, 139–140, 144–145,
147–152, 154–157, 159–160, 163,
165–169, 172, 177
types of, 2, 12, 57–58, 60, 64, 71, 83, 87, 95,
100, 120, 137, 149, 174
resources, xi, xii, 1, 5, 8, 57–58, 61, 63, 100,
105, 112, 119, 120, 122, 124–126, 134,
144–145, 147,–155, 157–159, 162, 164,
167–169, 172
Ssatisfaction with teaching, 104Second Language Acquisition, 92
Services, 153
outreach, 70, 153, 156
Social Sciences, v, xiii, 51, 55, 59–60, 168, 172
Sociology, 30, 37–38, 44, 46, 92, 94, 96–99,
101, 171
Specialization, iv, 40–45
staffing, 19, 82–83, 105, 108, 110, 113,
136–140, 142, 152–153, 157–158
Stanford University, 69, 127, 129, 131,
146–147, 181, 183
survey questions, 10, 22, 57, 149, 160
survey sample, 25, 40
Tteaching, 2, 11, 14, 18, 40, 57, 60–61, 63,
70–71, 85, 94, 104–106, 108, 138–140,
149, 151, 160, 163–164, 169
teaching materials, 63, 106U
undergraduate, xiv, 4–7, 19, 63, 71–72, 76–78,
82, 84, 94, 98, 100, 108, 110–113,

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Index
115–123, 126, 135–136, 138–139, 147,
157–158, 161–163, 168
University of California at Berkeley, 127, 129,
145–147
University of Hawaii, ix, xiii, 69, 127, 130–131, 146–147, 171, 173, 179, 181, 183
University of Michigan, 6, 69, 127, 129, 131,
146–147, 181, 183
University of Washington, 127, 129, 131,
145–147, 181, 183
US government, 6monograph.indb 189

189
Vveterans, 5WWorld War II, 17, 20, 110
Y
Yale University, 127, 129, 131, 146–147, 181,183

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