Introduction

World-class research and education are recognized as essential channels for participating in a globalized knowledge society. The construction of world-class or global research universities has been pursued by governments and top (mostly flagship) universities in a variety of emerging economies (Salmi 2009; Altbach and Salmi 2011; Shin and Kehm 2013). In particular, a distinctive approach in the form of strong government intervention has been widely observed in East Asia (Altbach and Balán 2007; Marginson et al. 2011). These countries have chosen this approach partly to maintain and improve the status of top universities while in the process of  expanding the higher education system with limited public financial resources. Japan is not an exception. Universities in Japan have enjoyed highly established academic freedom and professoriates have been respected as autonomous decision-makers in terms of academic affairs since the end of World War II (Yonezawa 2014). The incorporation of national and local public universities in 2004 has also promoted institutional autonomy to some degrees (Kaneko 2009). However, the government has been still influential in allocating public funds and in setting the standards of physical conditions, such as the number of faculty and students for both public and private universities.

Although it is quite difficult to find a consensus on what a world-class university is, Salmi (2009) identified three key factors that explain the characteristics of world-class universities: abundant resources, concentration of talent, and favorable governance. In order to provide abundant resources to world-class universities within systems with limited public financial resources—as well as the contemporary demand for higher participation in tertiary education—classification or categorization of higher education institutions has been utilized. For example, the state of California (USA) has developed a three-tier higher education system called the California Master Plan, namely the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges (Douglass 2000). This categorization of certain universities as flagships can also be observed in some Asian countries, such as the Philippines (University of the Philippines) and Vietnam (National University of Vietnam). Another typical approach is a dual system—a clear distinction between university and non-university higher education sectors, such as polytechnics in Singapore. Japan, however, has already abolished a similar, official categorization called “imperial universities” and eliminated a dual system by upgrading semmon gakko (polytechnics) to universities in higher education reforms just after World War II (Amano 1998). Currently, it is becoming difficult to set up tiered or dual systems without continuous assessment, especially with widespread ideas of neo-liberalism and new public management. For example, this can be seen in the abolition of a dual system in 1992 and the introduction of performance-based financial allocation, especially in research, in the UK (Kyvik 2004; Willmott 2003).

Under these circumstances, the excellence initiative—the selection of internationally competitive research units based on performance assessments—is spreading widely around the world. In East Asia, in the 1990s, South Korea and China, in particular, started targeted financial investment to upgrade their top universities into world-class institutions, even before the wide usage of world university rankings from the mid-2000s onward (Moon and Kim 2001; Huang 2005).

As to the concentration of talent, most of the East Asian higher education systems have developed effective screening systems to collect domestic talent in their top universities through nation-wide entrance examinations and hierarchical higher education systems. In addition, Singapore and Hong Kong have made a strategic effort to construct world-class universities by attracting cosmopolitan talent based on global academic networking and strong financial investment by their governments (Altbach and Salmi 2011).

Salmi’s (2009) stress on the idea of “favorable governance”—as exemplified by supportive regulatory framework, autonomy, academic freedom, leadership team, strategic vision and the culture of excellence—should be examined carefully. Given the highly diverse and complex social contexts of respective higher education systems, these do not necessarily share common academic and intellectual values. In Japan, however, top universities have basically enjoyed academic freedom, a culture of excellence, a supportive regulatory framework, and autonomy of the professoriate under a democratized regime after World War II. At the same time, all the national universities and most of the local public universities have operated as public corporate bodies since 2004, so these universities have been able to develop strategic visions and strong leadership teams (Kaneko 2009).

These trends in the pursuit of world-class status, mainly in emerging economies, have also stimulated a quite reactive change among countries with long-established academic traditions, such as Germany and Japan (Hazelkorn 2011). Both countries have begun “excellence initiatives” in the form of targeted investment in internationally competitive research units or institutes, partly based on earlier models in other countries, such as Brain Korea 21 (BK21), South Korea’s World-Class University project, and Projects 211 and 985 in China (Yonezawa 2003; Hur and Bessey 2013).

In Japan, these excellence initiatives first took the form of concentrated financial investment, including Twenty-First Century Centers of Excellence (21COE), from 2002 to 2009, and then Global Centers of Excellence (GCOE), from 2007 to 2014. These projects supported internationally competitive research units over a five-year term, in order both to raise research performance and to foster the next generation of researchers. In addition, various types of funding projects have sought to support graduate schools and research institutes in becoming world-class, such as the World Premier International Center Initiatives (WPI), which is a more concentrated, long-term (10-year) investment into an extremely limited number of institutions (nine have been selected since 2007) (Yonezawa and Hou 2014). However, considering the constraints on its overall national budget—as a mature economy facing an aging demographic—Japan can no longer expect a drastic increase in its science and technology investment, as seen in emerging economies.

In addition to these direct investments in research, the Japanese government has also driven its top universities to internationalize, partly to recruit world talent and also to transform Japanese universities’ governance and management into internationally competitive systems. International profiles are clearly weak even among Japan’s top universities (Newby et al. 2009), and this is recognized as fatal to efforts to connect Japanese academics to global networks (Huang 2009). At the same time, this approach, developed within an established economy, is completely different to the approaches to world-class research and education typically seen in emerging economies, that is, rapid increases in financial investment, especially in top universities.

In this paper, the authors examine the challenges of internationalization among Japan’s top universities, both for the government and the universities themselves. First, the authors reflect on the historical background of Japanese higher education, which developed as an early front-runner in Asia, along with the dynamics of national identity and global trends. Second, the authors examine a series of government-funded programs for research and internationalization, especially focusing on these programs’ functions in governance reform. Last, the authors reflect on how the construction of world-class universities not only implies concentrated financial investment but also a comprehensive transformation of university governance in a global context, both by universities and governments. The authors also point out the major challenges for top Japanese research universities, in terms of maintaining and improving their international presence, and then clarify the implications both for other East Asian economies and for mature economies facing demographic challenges.

Historical background

Japan was among the first to establish a highly developed higher education system in Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, the research performance of Japanese top universities was recognized in Asia, according to Asian university rankings in Asiaweek at that time (Yonezawa 2013). However, the high international prestige given to the academic performance of top Japanese universities was not achieved by the integration of the Japanese system into global, “cosmopolitan,” or English-speaking systems, as typically seen in Singapore and Hong Kong, but rather through the strong protection of a national higher education system based on the national language and culture.

The protection of national identity through social development programs, including research, education, and technology is not a new phenomenon in Japan. When East Asia faced the threat of the first wave of Western colonization (by Portugal and Spain) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, East Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan chose to protect their societies by limiting and controlling trade and other sociocultural interactions with Western societies. In Japan, the Netherlands was selected as a trade partner, in addition to China, a strong neighbor, and only one official trading port and encounter zone (Nagasaki) was opened, until the government reopened the country to the USA in 1854, and then other Western forces, by signing trade agreements.

At the same time, the Japanese government sent students and delegations to Western countries to seek out models of modern higher education from the mid-nineteenth century onward. As a result, the University of Tokyo, the first modern university, and other Western-style higher education institutions were created in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Kaneko 2004). In these universities and higher education institutions, the government first entrusted the system’s design and teaching to foreign experts invited from Europe and North America. However, these experts were soon replaced by Japanese academics trained in Western countries and then in Japan (Institute for International Cooperation 2003). Since then, an absolute majority of researchers, even in the top universities, have been trained inside Japan using the national language (Yonezawa et al. 2013; Huang et al. 2014). Since the defeat in World War II in 1945, top Japanese researchers have also been given opportunities to study in the USA and Europe, as is widely done in other East and Southeast Asian countries. However, the impact of those researchers trained in Western countries on the national academic system has been much smaller compared to their current impact in other new leading industrial countries in East Asia.

In this context, the internationalization of higher education in Japan has been understood as a “two arena” model (Teichler 1999), namely the double pursuit of exporting its system to other countries and adjusting its system to the world. Even now, a strong national identity is widely observable in the research and education styles of Japanese universities, such as the stress on laboratory work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and the development of academic research through dialogs in Japanese in the humanities and social sciences. Mainly because of the geopolitical setting, the strength of national boundaries in educational and research activities has remained extremely strong. Since the end of World War II, Japan has been the only country with Japanese as its official language. In addition, a relatively large population (127 million in 2014) and a strong economy (the third largest gross domestic product in the world) have protected the absolute majority of national university faculty and students from direct exposure to global competition.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, it became evident that Japan was having difficulty maintaining a distinguished, or even competitive, place in a rapidly globalizing research and higher education community. A variety of evidence reveal the weakening competitiveness of Japan’s top universities in research and education. In specific, in the QS world university rankings, the University of Tokyo dropped from nineteenth in 2008 to thirty-first in 2014. The number of Japanese universities ranked among the top 200 has remained relatively stable: from nine in 2008 to 10 in 2014. However, other Asian countries’ universities ranked in the top 200 have increased from 29 in 2008 to 36 in 2014. A Thomson Reuters report (Adams et al. 2010) on Japanese research performance in terms of publications showed that total publication is shrinking, although its quality, as measured in citations, is improving. Saka and Kuwahara (2013) indicated that trends in the number of co-authored publications within nations is not significantly different for Japan, the UK, France, and Germany, but Japan is noticeably behind in the increase in international co-authorship when compared with these countries. In terms of student intake, China and South Korea are becoming competitors in recruiting students from Asia, Africa, and even Europe and the Americas. On the other hand, the number of Japanese studying abroad has decreased from 82,945 in 2004 to 57,501 in 2011 (MEXT 2014).

Over all, the strong national identity of Japanese universities has turned into a weakness with globalization. The mediocre international profile of Japanese students, academics, and the higher education system as a whole is now considered a critical obstacle to Japan’s sustainable development in a globalized knowledge economy.

Centers of excellence programs

In this context, how have Japanese universities and the government tried to improve the international presence of Japanese higher education? Until the end of the 1990s, most national policies on internationalization mainly focused on accepting international students, with the objective, set in 1983, to invite 100,000 international students by the end of the twentieth century. At that time, the Japanese economy had a high status among Asian economies, and the main role of internationalization in higher education was seen as the dissemination to the world of Japan’s advanced science and technology, as well as its successful model of socioeconomic development. The inherent system and educational content of Japanese universities received quite positive recognition and these were not faced with any substantial challenge from globalization.

However, the emergence of newly industrialized economies in East Asia—such as Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea in the 1990s and their aggressive efforts to develop world-class universities in a globalized environment—without question stimulated Japan’s universities and government. In 2001, Atsuko Toyama, the minister of education, revealed her policy guidelines for forming around 30 world-class universities out of the then 99 national, 72 local public, and 478 private universities in Japan. In order to achieve this goal, the government started a financial support program, Twenty-First Century Centers of Excellence (21COE), in 2002. In this program, 274 internationally competitive research units were chosen, and they received 5 years of financial support of 100–500 million Japanese yen a year. In 2007, the Global Centers of Excellence program was started as a follow-up to the 21COE program: A financial support program that concentrated more on a limited number of research units (140 units receiving 50–300 million Japanese yen a year) and on support for young researchers and international networking.

In addition to these COE programs, the government started a program, World Premier International Center Initiatives (WPI), as an even more tightly concentrated program supporting world-class research for a longer period. This program started in 2007 by selecting only five research units, and four units were additionally selected by 2012. In this program, universities are asked to invite top international researchers and to make English an official administrative language.

These COE and WPI programs should be understood as modeled on similar, earlier programs in South Korea (BK21) and China (the 211 and 985 programs), which later came to be called “excellence initiatives” and which became an international policy trend (Hazelkorn 2011; Yonezawa and Hou 2014). Table 1 shows a list of Japanese universities that have five or more research units selected as research units in the two COE programs and the WPI program. The table reveals that these programs have resulted in a concentrated research investment in a limited number of universities. However, these top universities, especially national universities, have experienced a gradual decrease in financial support from the government’s annual operating budget, especially after the incorporation of national universities in 2004. Partly through efforts to generate new income, such as university-industry links, these top universities’ total income has increased, although not as dramatically as their “rivals” in other East Asian countries. Mohrman (2014) did a comparative study of financial resources of top universities in the USA, Japan, and China, which revealed that Japan’s top universities have already been matched by their Chinese competitors in terms of research funding.

Table 1 Universities that received funding to do world-class research (five or more units in total)
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Strategic fund for establishing international headquarters in universities (SIH)

In addition to these successful initiatives to invest financially in research, Japan’s government started a support program to encourage university reforms toward internationalization. From 2005 to 2009, the government started a program, the Strategic Fund for Establishing International Headquarters in Universities (SIH) (Ota 2014). Nineteen universities and an inter-university research institutes were selected: all seven former imperial universities, eight other national universities, a local public university, and three private universities as shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Universities that received funding for internationalization—to become world-class
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The selected universities received from 10 to 40 million Japanese yen per year. Based on this funding, the government tried to improve the universities’ strategic approach to internationalization within nine themes: (1) organization and governance for internationalization, (2) goal setting, action plans, and evaluation systems, (3) attracting external funds for international education and research, (4) participating in and utilizing cross-border interuniversity partnerships and consortiums, (5) expansion of international activities based on specific transnational research projects, (6) training and recruiting administrative personnel for international programs, (7) improving services and support for international researchers, (8) expanding overseas study and research opportunities for young Japanese researchers, and (9) establishing and operating overseas bases (Ota 2014).

Through the SIH program, Japan’s top universities started to think more seriously about strategic planning and management of internationalization in higher education. The project was implemented just after the incorporation of all national and nearly all local public universities around 2004, as part of the introduction of the New Public Management policy. Therefore, the SIH program helped integrate the efforts of Japan’s leading universities to approach internationally competitiveness more strategically. At this point, however, planning and assessment were implemented quite qualitatively, through a case study approach. In addition, the SIH program implemented a large-scale survey on internationalization that used various indicators. Although the indicator set was not utilized for the direct assessment of the universities, this survey played a facilitative role by indicating how the government perceived the internationalization performance in higher education organizations (Tokunaga and Momii 2011).

Global 30 program

By the mid 2000s, Japan achieved a small-scale economic recovery within the long-term trend of an economic recession. At the same time, the increasing economic and diplomatic presence of East Asian neighbors, such as China, South Korea, and ASEAN countries, made Japan feel the need to reconsider its diplomatic strategy. In 2007, the government published the Asian Gateway Initiative report, which stated that Japan should take up a position as an “Asian gateway” to encourage links with mainly the Western world. This report also pointed out the importance of strengthening the international presence of the Japanese higher education system both through research excellence and the acceptance of large numbers of international students. Following up on this report, the government revealed its plan to accept 300,000 international students by 2020, that is, to more than double the numbers from 123,829 in 2008. At the same time, to improve the international presence of Japanese leading universities, including their positions in world university rankings, the government created a plan to select around 30 universities to become globally competitive.

In this policy context, the Global 30 program started in 2008, with the first 13 universities selected in 2009. The selection criteria were clearly set so that universities with large and competitive research capacities would be selected: 340 or more post-graduate degrees granted annually, acquisition of 130 or more governmental research grants, acceptance of 300 or more international students from more than 4 countries, 50 or more students sent abroad, employment of more than 45 international faculty members, participation in international university consortiums, plans to have international students be 20 % of the student body, a total number of international students of more than 2,599 by 2020, and a plan to have 10 % of its faculty be international by 2020. These indicators are clearly related to the indicators utilized at that time by the QS/Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings.

In addition, the universities applying to the program were also asked to submit their plans to establish at least one undergraduate and one post-graduate degree program in English, on top of any existing programs. At that time, no Japanese national universities provided undergraduate degree programs with lectures in English. These universities also had to set up offices abroad to recruit students and make these offices available to other Japanese universities—to supplement the functions of the governmental institution, Japan Student Service Organization.

In this program, seven national universities (of these, six were former imperial universities) and six private universities were selected, as shown in Table 2. However, this program’s funding is not directed at research activities, as in the COE and WPI programs. The five-year funding of the Global 30 program was to encourage the internationalization of universities, and universities set their own achievement goals, such as increasing degree programs in English at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and the number of international students and faculty members. To achieve these goals, universities published a plan of organizational reforms, and the process was monitored by interim and final assessments. At the same time, the selected universities had regular meetings with other member universities and the government and also collaborated on many occasions, such as at university fairs overseas or in dissemination seminars.

In the Japanese government’s original plan, around 30 universities were scheduled to be selected. However, the first round of selections was limited to 13 universities, mainly because of budgetary constraints. Subsequently, the second round to select the rest of the universities did not happen because a new government led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), from December 2009 on, replaced the long-established government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This new government set a priority on equal access to higher education, as well as international networking among various types of universities, rather than the concentration of resources on a limited number of universities.

Nonetheless, the Global 30 and Global COE projects continued until their final year as planned. In 2009, 11 top research universities (nine national: Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, University of Tsukuba, University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Nagoya University, Osaka University, and Kyushu University and two private: Waseda University and Keio University) established a consortium, Research University 11. These universities, which ranked within the top 200 in world university rankings, started regular meetings of their top administrators, and the consortium issued occasional policy proposals signed by the presidents of member universities.

Global human resource and strategic links

In addition to recruiting international students, international experiences for Japanese students and youngsters also became a serious issue. As mentioned above, Japan’s economic development after World War II was largely achieved through strong national integrity, and studying abroad to develop professional careers was not a strong custom, in contrast to other Asian countries. Although the number of Japanese studying abroad increased up to the beginning of the 2000s, most of these came back to Japan, so the ‘brain drain’ phenomena has never been a serious political issue in this country.

Led by the DPJ, the government announced its idea of sending 300,000 Japanese to study abroad by 2020 (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet 2010), eventually setting the official target as 120,000 Japanese studying abroad by 2020 (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet 2013), after the LDP and others came back into power. To facilitate study abroad activities in universities, the government started the Project for Promotion of Global Human Resource Development in 2012. The government selected 11 universities that promoted global human resource development at the university level (type A) and 31 universities that promoted specific programs of global human resource development as a part of their university curricula (type B). In type A, only two former imperial universities were selected (Hokkaido University and Tohoku University), as well as two national universities (Chiba University and Ochanomizu University), one local public university (Akita International University), and six private universities (International Christian University, Chuo University, Waseda University, Doshisha University, Kwansei Gakuin University, and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University). Kyushu University, another former imperial university, was selected as a type B. The selection results, however, did not necessarily match the international reputations of these universities for research performance.

In addition to the above program, the government also started a five-year funding project, Re-inventing Japan, in 2011, which aimed to develop global human resources among Japanese youths and to develop Japanese universities’ capacity for international activities. In 2011, this program was implemented as a core project of Collective Action for Mobility Program of University Students (CAMPUS Asia), a higher education collaboration for student exchange and quality assurance between Japan, South Korea, and China. That same year, universities of these three countries were asked to submit their student exchange plans for joint education programs, and a selection was made by joint committees from these three countries. Proposals for joint education partnerships with universities in the USA, Europe, and Australia were also funded through a selection process in Japan only. The next year, the program set specific targets for student exchange partnerships with ASEAN countries, in 2012 and 2013, and with Russia and India in 2014.

These programs for enhancing international student mobility are not necessarily linked with the idea of establishing world-class universities. Nonetheless, the top universities tend to be selected frequently, reflecting their strong international capacity, in both the academic activities and administrative functions needed to write up well-organized proposal documents.

Strengthening globally competitive research universities

After the LDP regained power in 2012, the general policy direction started to put more focus on improving the international competitiveness of higher education organizations. In his first statement to the Diet in January 2013, the current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, identified Japan’s universities as a symbol of national strength. Through his initiative, the Japanese government set an official policy goal of making 10 universities achieve a ranking in the top 100 universities worldwide (Education Rebuilding Council 2013).

Currently, the rapid improvement of the research performance of other top universities in the Asia Pacific region is perceived as a threat to top Japanese universities’ ability to maintain their status. This issue is also attracting much attention among policy makers, and the government has strengthened its strategic policies of improving the world-class status of Japan’s universities.

The government has set up two main programs for improving the global competitiveness of Japanese research universities, creating different budgetary streams through governance and management reform. The first is the Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities (PPERU). This started as a part of the science promotion budget, in 2013, and it was set up to support 22 selected universities for 10 years. The annual funds available are divided into three categories: 400 million Japanese yen for four former imperial universities (Tohoku University, University of Tokyo, Nagoya University, and Kyoto University), 300 million Japanese yen to two former imperial universities (Osaka University and Kyushu University), two comprehensive national university (University of Tsukuba and Hiroshima University), four national universities in the science and technology fields (Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, University of Electro Communications, and Nara Institute of Science and Technology), one private university (Waseda University), and three inter-university research institutes. Other selected universities include one former imperial university (Hokkaido University) and one private university (Keio University) that receive 200 million Japanese yen. These funds are not directly utilized for research activities but are used mainly to improve research strategy and management in these universities and inter-university research institutes.

The second program is the Top Global University Project, which started in 2014, again a 10-year funding program. This is a part of the higher education policies budget, and it seeks to increase international recognition and competitiveness. The program provides two categories in funding, namely type A (top universities that can aim at the top 100 in world rankings through world-class education and research, receiving 500 million Japanese yen per year) and type B (universities that can lead Japanese society in globalization, getting 200–300 million Japanese yen per year). In type A, 13 universities were selected: all seven former imperial universities, two comprehensive national universities (University of Tsukuba and Hiroshima University), two national universities in the science and technology fields (Tokyo Medical and Dental University and Tokyo Institute of Technology), and two private universities (Keio University and Waseda University), as shown in Table 2. In type B, 24 universities (10 national universities, 2 local public universities, and 12 private universities) were selected.

The type A program seeks to foster Japanese universities’ efforts to place higher in world university rankings. These universities were asked to provide their concrete plans to improve their ranking with various externally available data, such as citations, international co-authorship, international joint research projects, and consignment study projects. In addition, these universities were asked for a self-evaluation of their strong and weak fields and their strategies for improving their research performance as a whole. Both type A and type B universities were asked to provide highly detailed data and mainly numerical achievement goals not only directly related to internationalization but also to university reform in general. These included, among others, indicators related to international and gender diversity, student mobility and exchange, systems to support student mobility, provision of classes and degree programs in foreign languages, Japanese language education, curriculum management and quality assurance of educational programs meeting international standards, flexible academic calendars, international student recruiting and alumni networks, international dormitories, information provision in foreign languages, reforms of personnel policies and university governance, improvement of teaching and learning, entrance examination reform, and information disclosure. The government is planning to make interim assessments in the third and seventh year, in addition to the final assessment of this 10-year project. For these, the universities will be asked to report and assess how well they have achieved their plans, focusing mostly on quantitative goals. The selected universities set their achievement goals autonomously, in principle, based on their own strategic plans. However, in order to be selected, the universities had to set achievement goals that appeared to be “desirable” from the national government’s viewpoint.

Overall, both the PPERU and Top Global University programs do not directly support research activities, but university governance and management reform improves international competitiveness. Overall, the amount of funds is extremely small compared to the total income of the selected, research-intensive universities. Subsequently, the governance and university reform plans of respective universities are to be made public on a website and strictly monitored by the government, which will give suggestions and make requests during selection, interim, and final assessments.

Conclusions

From the above analysis of various policy initiatives and budgetary programs, the following conclusion can be made: The construction of world-class universities not only implies concentrated financial investment but also a comprehensive transformation of university governance in a global context. However, this global context itself is not necessarily defined by autonomous decisions of the universities themselves but rather by government policy forces, at least in Japan.

At the same time, considerable overlap exists between the lists of universities selected for the various funding projects. As a result, Japan’s top universities—represented by the former imperial universities and the long-established prestigious private universities—tend to strengthen their capacity in the course of both the excellence initiatives in research and university management and governance reforms, by successfully participating in funded projects. On the other hand, in the last decade or two, the gap has probably widened between these top universities and universities with defined international profiles and other colleges and universities in the middle and lower ranges, which cater more to the domestic student and labor market and have insufficient funding for internationalization.

Two major challenges remain among top Japanese research universities in terms of maintaining and improving their international presence. First, it is still unclear whether the above-mentioned government-led transformation of university governance through the process of internationalization has actually led to a substantial improvement in the international presence and competitiveness for Japan’s top universities. Japanese universities still rely heavily on domestic resources in research, education, and even university reforms to achieve internationalization. Their weak exposure to market mechanisms, which are incentives to participate in the competition for international academic resources, may set limits on these institutions’ further improvement in international competitiveness.

Second, the internationalization of a wider range of education and research institutions must be pursued, as a nation, to stimulate domestic competition in the internationalization of the education system and Japan’s society as a whole. The government is now setting up a cabinet-level council to revitalize the entire educational system. However, the tension between the desire for a global or cosmopolitan profile and the preservation of national identity—as well as between the drive in state policy toward efficiency and the decentralized nature of academic autonomy—is becoming more apparent. The findings and implications of this paper, based on Japan, clearly call for a more reflective examination of the historical context, current status, and future of university governance in East Asian higher education.