Examining the Progress of Internationalizing Japanese Higher Education From 2000-2010: An Interactive Approach

This paper reveals a more comprehensive scenario for readers to generate better understanding of “internationalizing” Japanese higher education system from 2000-2010. In fact, it is a very complicated and dynamic process which involves the interactions between national and local actors. By adopting a national-local complexity framework, the paper examines the stances of multi-level stakeholders in contributing or obstructing the implementation in macro-, meta-, and micro-level. In macro level, the author scrutinizes how the national government during the period allowed a dual-track approach through providing financial resources in which public and private universities share diverse “responsibilities” – preserving traditional Japanese system and enhancing the globalized process respectively. In meta-level, the author examines the interactions between university administration and foreign students. It is true that university staff attempted to resolve the problems encountered by foreign students. However, the university administrative system inherited in Japanese management style disappointed those foreign students particularly from Anglophone countries. In micro level, the author looks into the daily life of international students and how the local community interpreted the increasing number of foreigners (kaikokujin) in mixed manner. Such complex analysis undoubtedly exposes that it was quite far for Japan to evolve a truly “internationalized” higher education system in the first decade of the 21st century.