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Professor Toru Sato has been engaging in research and education at Kyoto University for over forty years and is a leader in his field. In his long career in university and organizational management, he has worked through a variety of issues while holding many posts. He has served as the Dean of the Graduate School of Informatics, amongst other positions, and is currently the Director of the Gender Equality Promotion Center. We asked him about the nature of working at a university as a scholar, as well as scholars’ responsibilities and rights.

The 2007 “Declaration of Equality”

Sato: Let’s begin by talking about labels. Research office work is based on the university teaching faculty job class definitions found in Article 92 of the School Education Act. It underwent major revisions in 2007—the biggest in the seventy years since the end of World War II. Until then, assistant professors (jokyōju) and assistants (joshu) had been defined therein as people who help professors (kyōju). Assistants used to speak self-deprecatingly of themselves, saying that they were not researchers but just lowly helpers. However, it then changed to be like it is today: professors, associate professors (junkyōju), and associate lecturers (jokyō). Item 6 defines professors, Item 7 associate professors, and item 8 associate lecturers. Interestingly, their text is completely the same. Professors are defined as “individuals with particularly outstanding knowledge, abilities, and achievements” and associate professors as “individuals with outstanding knowledge, abilities, and achievements.” Associate lectures don’t have the “outstanding” part. This is actually very important. While there are differences in terms of their experiences, they all have “knowledge, abilities, and achievements” and it is their job to “teach students, guide them in their research, and engage in research.” In other words, we have a declaration of equality that the work duties of professors, associate professors, and associate lecturers are completely the same.

Universities Are Like Public Markets

Sato: I then became Dean, and having been involved in solving problems between researchers (harassment and so on), I think that many professors are completely unaware of this. In fact, before the major revisions, there was a ten-year time span in which the average age of teaching faculty rose by ten years. After World War II, the number of research posts, particularly those in engineering, rapidly increased, and then this all of a sudden stopped. From then onwards was a time when ages just increased. Perhaps it is because people still have an attitude from this era, but there is still a very strong sense, even amongst people who became professors after the revisions, that they have the right to make the decisions about, for example, how research group funds are used.

While companies are pyramids, their structure—who has the authority to give what kind of orders and who exists above these people—is clear. However, universities are like public markets where everyone has their own individual stall, so to speak. Professors are like the head of the market’s board of directors, facilitators who bring everything together. Everyone’s equal. While it depends on the place, there are differences in how people are treated in accordance with their abilities. In many key graduate school departments, professors having the right to make personnel decisions is rationalized—groups of “particularly outstanding” people are allowed to make the decisions. However, professors don’t actually have rights when it comes to the operations of research offices. Since the basis of everything is only Article 92, particularly younger scholars need to understand that professors asserting anything more is a mistake. Materials submitted in response to public employment calls are like contracts, and those selecting candidates also do their best to read them very closely. What’s written has to be implemented, and I also think that one can use what’s written as a basis when responding to things that are not written in them. However, when the professor is unaware, unproductive clashes occur. If one experiences being in a leadership or management position from which one has to solve problems, there are opportunities to refer to laws regarding these things. However, it is highly likely that professors who have not had this experience are unaware of this.

Everyone wants to comfortably do their research and not have unproductive fights.

Sato: I say “unproductive” because even if an ethics committee issues recommendations, the problem is handled based on the personnel division’s strict arrangements, and all parties involved are satisfied, insofar as this kind of awareness is not shared by everyone, fundamental problems will remain in the research group. Having equal rights also means that it’s important for all members to see themselves as members of a community.

Each Scholar Doing Their Own Research

A recent report¹ was issued which said that despite younger researchers being detached from professors in 2007, this did not lead to people freely trying out research in fields that can be expected to grow.

Sato: What’s interesting about this report is whether it is a good thing to get people into fields that are expected to grow in the future. Today, the national government provides a massive amount of research funds for such fields. Research offices that have this kind of funding continually obtain research funds that members would almost never be able to acquire normally, and they try to continually produce results that are the best in the world within a set period of time. I think that this is an important role of universities. However, this competitive framework goes completely against the philosophy of Article 92; it’s working under top-down management towards an objective, like a company. Therefore, while professors want to say that people can do the research that they like, there are fields that one can do nothing in alone, and if associate professors and associate lecturers each were able to do their own topics, then people would no longer be able to work. This is why full-time staff hired with research funds for a specific project is necessary.

While motivations for teaching courses differ depending on the scholar, being able to do so depends on whether teaching and research are seen as rights or contractual responsibilities.

As a result, the percentages of scholars under forty at national universities who are hired for specific research projects and those who are not have flipped in the past ten years.²

Sato: There are a lot of people who see being hired for a specific project as one step in their career, expecting that they’ll be hired for a permanent position next. This image is correct, and things are actually done in this way. However, thinking realistically, it’s not that easy. We can see that it would be impossible for there to be no project-specific posts that provide the labor for large research projects. However, this ratio should be the opposite of what it is. This is because the number of chances for people to be absorbed at some point into higher job classes from such posts decreases. Professors are driving a vehicle, so they hire scholars to provide such labor. However those hired almost have no right to select their own research topic, and it’s hard to think that a post at a major university will open up for the majority of them. This relates to what we were talking about before. While the approach of the government using tax money to engage in focused investment is fine, this shouldn’t make up the majority of research funding, and it’d be a mistake to shrink other fields by doing so. With that said, there are lots of posts at engineering departments because they are expected to do work that will be useful in the world, and they have a duty to meet such expectations. However, I would like it if in this context each scholar tried to think about what is important. For example, the number of posts for foundational research in engineering is being rapidly reduced right now. However, if this field is not cultivated then the future of “immediately useful research” will also be wiped out. This way of thinking only comes from scholars themselves.

Say that the ratio of scholars was returned to what it was ten years ago. What would happen?

Sato: Universities would be unable to do “immediately useful research.” People who want to do it could do it at companies or national research institutes. Since what is “useful” and the like can’t be known until thirty years later, research is very inefficient. If inefficiency is not allowed, then research at universities doesn’t work.

In postwar Japan there was no focused investment and research funds were only fixed-amount operations grants. Five to six million yen. Research was done with this, and while professors and younger researchers had an apprenticeship relationship, there was freedom. However, now it’s an era in which equipment that costs hundreds of millions of yen is necessary when one wants to do something. Productivity cannot be increased like it was in hunter-gatherer Society 1.0 or agricultural times.³ Since one cannot buy equipment with operations grants, there are fields in which people need to compete to acquire funds. 2007’s major reforms grew out of the need to protect scholars’ human rights amidst the repercussions of things having gotten tighter due to funding primarily going to large projects. Scholars must each keep in their mind that things getting tighter for professors should not translate into straitjackets for young people.

Scholars Are Solitary Beings: Being Prepared To Do Things On One’s Own

There are also some scholars encountering difficulties in research offices in which the professor is not around and for all intents and purposes it’s just them.

Sato: When it comes to both problems in research groups and concerns regarding education, I think that there is a need for a non-research organization that one can get advice from. While there are some young people who only talk about rights, instead of going to mediation immediately, I first think that there’s a lot that can be improved by first having people from such an organization objectively introduce examples from a variety of research offices. It’d be great if universities could set up this kind of service. With regard to education, since we probably can’t expect that know-how will be acquired from professors as it has been in the past, it’d probably be best to actively use university resources.

With regard to education, first try applying for research funds to get money. I think that by doing so one will acquire the information and ways of thinking needed to work as a scholar at a university. This is the first step for determining how you’re going to live as a scholar. When writing an application you will probably experience culture shock, finding out what you lack. You’ll probably come to understand when being assessed by others that to live as a researcher is not to do what one wants. When it comes to research topics as well, insofar as it is not project research, there will be no other scholars working on the same topic as you, no companions, at your university. Since academic associations today are rapidly becoming subdivided, dive in—there will be someone doing something very similar. If there is no one in Japan, then look to oversees. Please go outside of your university—the networks that one creates when one is young will later serve as a base. Problems like expensive equipment that I mentioned earlier might be able to be addressed with them.

If one chooses the profession of a scholar, one needs to be prepared to in the end do things on one’s own. If one is not prepared to do this, then I think it would be better to be a company researcher. While company researchers basically have no freedom, instead they have a good environment. There is money and equipment. This also means that there are goals to be reached. Conversely, it might be good to support scholars who came to universities from companies because it is said there is a need for scholars to be able to engage in management that is unrelated to research and development funds.

(Interviewer: Asa Nakano)