Bristol University today became one of twelve institutions to receive a welcome addition to its Centre for East Asia Studies in the form of a grant for a new five year Lectureship in Contemporary Japanese Society. The subject has been severely under threat in recent years, due to what has been called “a funding crisis of potentially grave proportions”.
Under a major new grant programme described as “one of the largest injections of recurrent external funding that the discipline has ever received,” The Nippon Foundation (TNF), a private grant-making foundation based in Tokyo, and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (GBSF), will place £2.5 million into the research and study of Japan in UK universities over the next five years.
The grants, for academic staff, will establish 13 teaching and research posts at UK universities. Other institutions benefiting from this programme are the Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, East Anglia, Oxford Brookes, SOAS and Birkbeck College.
Speaking at the launch of the funding programme in London, the Earl of St. Andrews, Chairman of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, stressed the strategic and economic importance of Japan, and the urgent need for the UK to maintain its pool of Japan specialists. “Japan remains the world’s second largest economy, and one of the UK’s most important partners for both trade and investment”, said Lord St. Andrews. “Expertise in Japanese language and in the country’s economy, culture, history and politics will remain essential if the British-Japanese relationship is to prosper, and British interests in relation to Japan are to be safeguarded.”
Japanese has become a vulnerable subject because it is expensive to teach, continued Lord St. Andrews, pointing out that many universities have cut back or closed departments teaching the subject over the last decade in favour of courses which bring in more revenue. “Any further diminution of our pool of national expertise on Japan would be highly damaging to our current and future national interest,” he warned. “We are losing this pool of Japan specialists at an alarming rate. These people have been instrumental in fostering and sustaining the close partnerships that the UK and Japan have enjoyed in trade and investment, cultural and scientific exchange and in a number of multilateral contexts. This pool of expertise is now under threat.”
The UK government made an attempt to address the growing crisis last year with the establishment of the Language Area Studies Initiative, which partially funded the National Institute of Japanese Studies (NIJS) at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. But funding still remains totally inadequate. Some 10,000 secondary school students study the subject and applications for Japanese degree courses have risen by 40.9 percent this year. The demand cannot be met.
The new funding programme targets the study and research of contemporary Japan primarily in the broad social sciences – fields such as politics, economics, international relations, contemporary Japanese thought, culture and society and Japan’s place in East Asia and in the world. “All posts,” said Lord St. Andrews, “are aimed at early career lecturers who will go on to form the next generation of Japan experts. All posts are to be filled in 2008.”
In a special message read out at the launch, The Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa expressed his “delight at supporting this programme for furthering Japanese studies in such influential and prestigious British universities.”
“The United Kingdom has been a leader in Europe in Japanese studies and has played a vital role in their promotion and development within Europe, and indeed, the world,” said Mr. Sasakawa. “We hope that, through this programme, the United Kingdom will again become the principal focus for research and scholarship, setting an example for other European countries to follow.”
Professor Mark Williams, President of the British Association for Japanese Studies and Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Leeds University, confirmed “the growing number of school children who are being exposed to Japanese language tuition at school. Whereas ten years ago, most of us in the profession would insist that all new students took our Beginners Japanese class, now we all have to cater for increasing numbers of those who arrive with an A level – or at least a GCSE – in the language… the importance of career prospects is a continuing motivating force for these students.
“For all the talk of this as the ‘century of China,’” he concluded, “it remains – certainly to us on the inside – that we ignore the need to nurture the next generation of Japan scholars at our peril.”
For Further Information, Please Contact:
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Stephen McEnally: stephen@gbsf.org.uk
- Emma Holland: Emma.Holland@bristol.ac.uk
