Japanese University Humanities and Social Sciences Programs Under Attack

By Jeff Kingston. On June 8 the Ministry of Education,Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) sent a ten-page directive to all 86 national universities in Japan, apparently calling on them, inter alia, to abolish or reorganize their humanities and social sciences (HSS) departments. I use the word “apparently” because the wording of the letter is ambiguous. A former Ministry of Education official’s Facebook posting in September is quoted on the European Association of Japanese Studies online forum asserting that the directive has been misinterpreted. More...