Nissan Seminar: Translated Scholarship and Japanese Universities: How Have Translations of Western Scholarship into Japanese Affected and Biased Japanese Academia? (Professor Takehiko Kariya, Oxford)

Convener(s): Professor Hugh Whittaker and Professor Kristi Govella

Since the early Meiji period, Japan's 'catch-up' development strategy has been heavily reliant on the importation of 'advanced knowledge' from the West. Japanese higher education has assumed a pivotal role in the dissemination of Western knowledge through translation. This seminar addresses how cultural transmissions, facilitated by translation, have impacted Japanese higher education and the manner of thinking cultivated thereby. A key concept is the notion of 'pseudo-deductive’ ways of thinking, developed through the process of translated scholarship from Western knowledge into the Japanese language. This has been accompanied by the development of both images of 'advancement' and abstract understandings of the meanings, but often the realities corresponding to such words as ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, and/or ‘education’ did not exist in Japan. The employment of such abstract concepts and translated words also facilitated the establishment of authority on the part of professors; one-way lecture styles have historically been the most prevalent teaching method in Japanese universities. The discussion will also address positive outcomes of these processes.  

Takehiko Kariya is Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and Specially Appointed Professor at Sophia University. He was Professor of the Sociology of Japanese Society at the University of Oxford from 2008 until 2024.  Prior to this, he worked at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Education. His research interests include the sociology of education, social stratification and social mobility, the social and educational policies of post-war Japan. He is also interested in the perceptions of modernity and modernisation among Japanese political and academic leaders. A list of his publications can be found on the Nissan Institute website (https://www.nissan.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-takehiko-kariya).