2024 Volume 33 Issue 2 Pages 43-53
Drawing on post-colonial theory, including the “in-between space,” this paper examines the author's experience of studying for a doctoral degree in a “reverse direction” from the Global North in Japan to the Global South in China as a reference to discuss the significance and challenges of studying international development in Japan. In the global higher education system, the presence of the West, especially the U.S., is still dominant, and China, an emerging “semi-peripheral” power, has been absorbing Western knowledge with a great sense of inferiority. The author has received a catch-up doctoral education with limited fundamentals and formality under the academic community of “Shi Men” and the norma- tivity of Western disciplines. Ultimately, he has been actively using theories and research methods originating from the West to advance his doctoral research using China as an “experimental field” to achieve academic results, and thus, he has failed to “decolonize” the knowledge. The author reaffirms the significance of studying international development in Japan, such as the high degree of freedom of academic research and the uniqueness of Japan, which is not enslaved by the West. Meanwhile, he also highlights a lack of contribution to global knowledge production as Japan's challenge.
