Before the world war 2, university was considered to be unique from each other, so no attempt has been made to put them on one single scale in order, to indicate which one is better than the others. After the world war second, number of university increased, the government gave up to treat then as of equal performance. The university education need to be diffused geograhphically, although university as research institution need to be concentrated based on the performance. In this way the government developed the evaluation system, on which the research fund to be allocated. Along with the nation-wide evaluation, the across-country ranking of university has been invented to put individual university into the international ranking. The most strongly reacted sector was politicians based on this international ranking, they started to discuss the international reputation of their own university. The landscape of the higher education institutions has been changed.

　 In the era of “science, technology and innovation policy,” scientific community is required to communicate and engage with much wider communities and more various stakeholders than ever. Science Talks, which is a grass-root network of younger scholars and practitioners, provides fora in which scholars, practitioners, policy makers and other people concerned discuss the future visions of science in Japan, and learn from each other lessons and practices in order to energize research environments.

　 In this article, the author describes background of its establishment and details of its main activities, focusing on a project to make policy proposal for the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan of Government of Japan. Opportunities and challenges of this kind of activity in Japan will be discussed toward a better relationship between scientific community and other diverse communities.

　The cooperative system between industries and universities was introduced to Japan from the United States as an advanced educational approach for amending problems in Japanese postwar economic recovery and educational reform. Although this peculiar educational system never became common, business organizations utilized this idea to address shortages of engineers or to stimulate technological innovation. Industrial implementation coincided with the interests of university management and with governmental policies. On the other hand, such an industry-university-government collaborative promotion was regarded as a revival of prewar national “monopolistic capitalism” and also as a crisis in academic freedom or subjectivity. These criticisms exacerbated ideological disputes through campus activism in the late 1960s, and they created an atmosphere in which such matters of industry-university cooperation were viewed as taboo. Those who opposed industry-university cooperation were seen as ideologically motivated and those who favored it were seen as opportunistic and arbitrary, especially in their convenient use of the idea as slogans. In addition, both arguments were buttressed by abstractly generalizing the interests of industries. And the STS scholars reinforced the generalization of collaborative relationships from historical points of view. Thus, any specifically tailored analyses were disturbed, and the conflict remains.

　 The term “Science and Technology Innovation Policy” is quite unique, which was appeared in the context of science and technology, and other relevant policies in Japan. Both “innovation” and “innovation policy” in Japan have the same scholarly bases and characters as other countries, while Japanese society has recognized “innovation” as “Gijutsu-Kakushin” (technology innovation) ever since. The paper aims to describe the scholarly background of “innovation” and “innovation policy”, and the reason why Japan’s policy required the concept of “Science and Technology Innovation Policy” instead of “innovation policy.” Finally, the paper intends to discuss that the economic growth strategy introduced by the second Abe administration was eager for the potentials of “Science and Technology Innovation Policy,” which made “innovation” so popular among the general public as if it was a buzzword or a hype.

　“Science-Technology Innovation Policy”, which is adopted by Japanese government, is under investigation. First, a brief history of science and technology policy of modern Japan is discussed. Second, development of innovation theory, introduced by Yon Sundbo, and his three paradigms, “entrepreneurial”, “technology-economic”, and “strategic”, is developed in accord with changing industrial structures since late 19^th Century. Particularly, characteristics of strategic paradigm of innovation, which is salient in contemporary industrial society, is described. Lastly, based on these discussion, “Science-Technology Innovation Policy” of Japanese Government is criticized.

　The concept of innovation is reconsidered getting back to Schumpeter. This leads to a reconsideration of the mechanism of realising profit and economic growth in the capitalistic economy. For getting profit from innovations, both new knowledges and their commercializations are indispensable.

　Until the early 20th century, American big firms often commercialized the knowledes invented by indivisuals. From 1930s to 1960s, both getting knowledges and commercialing them were realized in a same company. This was the age of central research laboratories. After 1970s, academic entrepreneurs have actively launched start-ups on the basis of university-generated knowledges. This is greatly contributing to the American economy.

　From the end of the second world war to 1950s, sources of the Japanese economic growth was the import of foreign technologies. After 1960s, Japanese big firms adopted the system of central research laboratories. At the time of so-called the bubble economy (around 1990), Japanese industries were actively engaged with basic researches. Then after, however, Japanese companies have reduced R&D activities under the long-lasting decline of the economy. University-driven knowledeges and university-based entrepreneurs are now expected to contribute to Japanese economy. However, the resulting Japanese economy is not on the road of growth, mostly brcause Japanese innovation policies are too much research-oriented and socialistic.

　This paper offers a reflection on the Gibbons-Nowotony notion of ‘Mode 2 knowledge production.’ Firstly this paper reviews the criticisms against Mode 2 and points out that these criticisms mainly focus on the transformation of Mode 1 science rather than Mode 2 knowledge production. Secondly this paper analyzes Mode 2 knowledge production using the framework of Post-Normal Science and finds out that Mode 2 knowledge production is professional consultancy or post-normal science. Thirdly Mode 2 knowledge production for innovation has to establish new methodology for innovation. Finally I argue that The New Production of Knowledge is still worth reading in Japan for judging the situation of innovation system of Japan.

　Initiatives such as the plan to implement reforms at national universities and the requests to revise humanities and social sciences have led to the continued presentation of comparatively strong proposals to revise the current status of universities. What is important for universities at present is to have an overarching view rather than respond to these individual opinions. These proposals calling for reforms are possibly a result of various ways of thinking. This paper aims to capture such up-to-date research perspective of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the universities’ perspective and the society perspective by investigating the Ministry’s latest policies concerning science and technology. In particular, we considered policy proposals for the 3 science and technology related bureaus and the higher education bureau in the Ministry’s budget requests for FY2016 to look at aspects that can be directly deployed in university research facilities rather than materials that promote plans for reform at national universities. This allowed us to focus on the views of the policy makers such as the Directors of these bureaus and their advisors who have direct responsibility for policy proposals.

　Science and technical innovation could possibly have a profound impact on the environment, life, culture and ethics through providing new products, new services and new processes to society with new technology. In certain cases, it may even have serious negative effects on society. Technological Assessment (TA) is a tool for predicting such negative effects beforehand. TA is a tool for preparing countermeasures.

　At Kyushu University, a self-technology assessment educational program utilizing science technology communication intended for graduate students that are likely to become future leaders of creating science and technology innovation within graduate students, has been promoted since 2013. In this paper, we will introduce the contents and the results of the evaluation of its educational effects.

　Shigeru Nakayama had achieved many world-class academic works in history of East Asian, and Japanese, science and technology. Further, his studies had covered history of higher education, science and technology studies, and many related topics. This article deals with the essential features of his works in a retrospective discussion of buildings of his academic career.

　 Nakayama, who learnt astronomy as an under-graduate student of Tokyo University, had turned to a historian. He was taught by Thomas Kuhn at Harvard, then, went to Cambridge, and investigated history of science of Ancient China at Joseph Needham’s laboratory. Hereafter, through his extensive academic works he had contributed to one of the most important subjects of the historiography of science in the later half of the Twentieth Century: overcome the Whig interpretation of history, depending upon his studies of non-Western history of science. He also had taken the concept of Kuhn’s paradigm in the widest sense. In doing so, he could extend his historical studies to many areas. One of the most successful results was “the Science and Society Forum,” which had assembled many excellent scholars to publish monumental works, “the Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan.” Adopted framework was his 4-sectors model of science and technology, based on government, business, academia and people.

　Shigeru Nakayama was the person who continued to have an interest in higher education research as a historian of science. There were two reasons why he focused on a university. One was the attention to a university as a habitat of science. He tried to develop the history of science from the history of scientific theory to the social history of science, by the historical studies of higher education as a clue. Another was his experience of severe educational training and competitive principle in the American graduate school. His framework of research was the institutionalization process of science, based on the paradigm theory by Thomas Kuhn, in which Nakayama put the university as an intermediate structure between science and society. As his major outcomes, following books and papers were overviewed: The Impact of Modern Science upon Universities, Birth of the Imperial University in Japan, University and American Society, Struggle and Reform in University, Between Positivism and Non-positivism Learnings, and University Science and Technology Reforms since 1990. He succeeded generally in establishing the social history of science in Japan, and for the university studies, discussed hot topics such as campus dispute, university reform, and education and testing.

　Dr. Shigeru Nakayama (1928-2014) was one of the most creative historians of science and technology in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to clarify Nakayama’s thoughts on the historical perspective based on techno-nationalism.

　Nakayama was severely critical to the techno-nationalistic arguments, emphasized by scientists, bureaucrats, or policy makers, because of its self-seeking nature and childishness. This criticism not only focused on Japanese persons concerned, but also arguments by U.S. government representatives in the era of the Reagan administration.

　But Nakayama continued to hold a keen interest in the international comparison of the level of science and technology among leading nations from 1960s. In particular, comparison of scientific and technological capability between the U.S. and the Japan was one of the main topics of Nakayama’s historical research from the late 1980s until his later years. In that sense, Nakayama was not free from the historical perspective based on techno-nationalism.

　In the history of academic concern about how scientific work is performed by multiple actors, STS researchers have revealed that multidisciplinary collaborators use the intermediates (e.g. boundary objects) to loosely bind the participants and conduct the collective work despite various differences. Based on the ethnographical research within the forensic laboratories in New Zealand, this article discusses the features of collective work in forensic context.

　Forensic science is characterized by heterogeneous subdisciplines that examine various evidence types, and the subdisciplines collaborate with each other to facilitate a decision making in a court. However, the way of collaboration by the subdisciplines faced with criticism and was changed. By exploring the process of change, this article reveals that the collective work by the forensic subdisciplines is affected by the court, where the level of collaboration and the heterogeneous practices that the ordinary intermediates are expected to create are criticized. Forensic science receives a demand to unify its internal diversity and the practice of DNA analysis is considered as a goal for such standardization.

　Representations of scientific illustrations in published materials have been analyzed in science studies; however, little is known about what scientists and illustrators actually intend to represent in making scientific illustrations. The purpose of this paper is to show how an illustrator and a scientist create scientific illustrations and what ideas and knowledge they provide in the process. The creation of seven illustrations by a science illustrator and a brain researcher was examined. The authors collected data including field notes, recordings of conversations in meetings, e-mails, materials, drawings, and interviews, and analyzed them through qualitative data analysis. Consequently, the authors found two processes of making illustrations: image creation and modifying existing illustrations. The illustrator and scientist were also found to provide ideas and knowledge not limited to their specialties. This study may suggest the basis for a discussion on the origin of illustrations and creativity of illustrators, which has been overlooked in science studies.

　The first heart transplantation in Japan was carried out in August 1968; however, the second one was thirty one years later. During this period, particularly during the 1970s, Japanese heart surgeons had been silent for about 10 years. I considered the reason for surgeons’ silence in the perspective of “acculturation” focusing on the cultural aspects of heart transplantation.

　Heart transplantation was paid special attention from the international society, unlike other organ transplants. The heart transplant race that US surgeons had been absorbed in, spread over the world. After the South African surgeon Barnard who performed the world’s first one was praised from all over the world, heart transplants were carried out in the world all at once. One of the surgeons’ motives was ambition. The surgeon image as American hero was not able to be adapted to the traditional Japanese doctors’ image was imported to Japan which stuck on heart transplants by Japanese surgeon Wada whose thought was Americanism. So far Japanese surgeons have imported surgical techniques from the United States without doubts, but only regarding heart transplantation the cultural aspect of it made conflict with the traditional Japanese doctors’ image, and so Japanese heart surgeons came to be silent.