In Favor of Japanese-ness: Future Directions for Educational Research

Abstract

This piece argues that the aversion of academic researchers to utilizing ‘Japanese-ness' has become a major obstacle, restricting the potential contribution of Japan's educational research community to global debates. It argues that until research on Japan recognizes, embraces, and elaborates Japanese-ness it will lack originality and vitality. As consequence, it will not only continue to be irrelevant globally but also lose ground in the domestic political context. Yet, to argue in favor of Japanese-ness is not to claim something essential about the Japanese nor to understand the Japanese through Western categories, but precisely to perform the double task of rejecting both of these unsatisfying possibilities. Rather than mere recognition of diversity, the appeal is for a greater push to articulate difference, a move that works against the accelerating move towards spaces of global equivalency that thins Otherness and the (re)inscribing of essential differences in domestic political discourses that run opposite to openness. The overarching aim of the piece is, however, less a definitive pronouncement on what Japanese-ness is or should be, more a self-consciously provocative attempt to catalyze deeper debate over the future direction of educational research on Japan.