The Application of a Western-Style Liberal Arts Education Model in a Non-Western Environment

Abstract

This essay investigates the need for and the challenges associated with the establishment of western style liberal arts education in a non-western nation. Two such programs in Japan are examined: Akita International University and Yamanashi Gakuin University’s International College of Liberal Arts or iCLA. The authors have been deeply involved in the establishment and administration of both of these all-English language liberal arts ba degree programs. The difficulty of establishing a liberal arts education curriculum in a country like Japan is explored by examining the cultural and institutional obstacles within the Japanese system of higher education. The two case studies are presented to highlight the establishment problems and subsequent successes of these programs in a nation with little tradition of liberal arts education at the university level. Finally, the questions of how to justify a liberal arts education program and how to design such a program are discussed by an examination of the utility of area studies as an organizing framework for liberal arts education in a non-western society.

* This paper was originally presented at the symposium: “The Global Dialogue on Liberal Arts and Science Education (LAS)” at the Harvard Center Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China, May 20-21, 2015.

Introduction

This paper presents two case studies of the establishment of western-style liberal arts programs in Japan over the past 15 years. The first case is that of Akita International University (aiu), an all-English language public university established in 2004 in Akita prefecture, one of the most isolated, economically challenged regions on the main island of Japan. aiu obtains roughly 65-70% of its funding from the Akita prefectural government. It has been recognized as a real success story in Japanese higher education. Within five years of startup, 100% of its second graduating cohort received at least one job offer or acceptance to graduate school prior to graduation, which vaulted it into the number one ranking among all universities in Japan. Within eight years of startup, it ranked first among Japanese public universities in the humanities and social sciences in terms of selectivity (difficulty of entrance)—higher even than the prestigious University of Tokyo.

The second case is that of the International College of Liberal Arts (iCLA), which is building on the experience of aiu and other universities to establish a western-style liberal arts college in Japan, including mechanisms to institutionalize interdisciplinary education at a rigorous global standard. iCLA is a four-year college established within Yamanashi Gakuin University, a private university located two hours west of Tokyo at the foot of Mt. Fuji. iCLA was accredited by Japan’s Ministry of Education in October 2014 and welcomed its first cohort of students in April 2015.

If liberal arts education had ever existed in Japan, it virtually disappeared from the Japanese higher education landscape by the early 1990s. In the last five years, it has experienced a widespread comeback in liberal arts education. These two cases explore attempts to innovate in liberal arts curriculum design and internationalization in the context of Japanese culture and values, Japan’s regulatory system, and other Japanese institutional forces, and by Japan’s place within the larger, emerging global economy.

Background

Today, Japanese society stands at a major historical crossroad as it faces economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geo-physical tremors that are altering Japan’s future. This point in time may be no less important than two other key turning points in Japanese history: the Meiji Restoration and the early post-World War ii period. Both periods saw the emergence of young, ambitious, highly spirited visionaries, who steered the country to a new future. 1

The economic and political vitality of a society is largely determined by the nature and quality of its education system. Education also has the power to change national culture, albeit slowly. Key features of Japanese traditional national culture have been discipline, harmony, patience, loyalty, moderation, teamwork, a strong work ethic, and respect for seniority. Such values and norms produced one of the world’s largest economies and most stable political systems. However, these values may be inconsistent with certain features of the western-style liberal arts education model, such as the manner in which liberal arts education develops the capacity for, and free expression of, critical thinking.

The awkward challenge for Japanese education today is to leverage the many strengths of Japan’s traditional culture while producing a young generation of leaders capable of critical, creative, independent, global, and entrepreneurial thinking, combined with high proficiency in English, to lead Japan to a bright future.

According to the influential, former president of Akita International University, Dr. Mineo Nakajima, by the early 1990s, liberal arts education had almost completely disappeared from the Japanese higher education landscape as university curricula became more and more specialized. As education became more specialized it tended to produce university graduates that were narrow in their thinking—exactly the opposite of what is being called for in today’s rapidly changing and globalizing world, where the capacity for critical, creative, independent, global, and entrepreneurial thinking are critical factors to sustain a healthy economy. (Based on several private conversations with Dr. Nakajima between 2007-2009. Also, see Nakajima (2012)).

Attributes Central to Institutions that Provide a Liberal Arts Education

The conception of the International College of Liberal Arts (iCLA), began with researching five outstanding liberal arts colleges in America 2 and identifying five features common to these institutions that we felt were central to institutions that provide a high-quality liberal arts education today. These five features are: (1) a wide-breadth curriculum, from “right-brain” courses in the performing and fine arts: dance, drama, music, drawing and others to “left-brain” courses in quantitative reasoning: mathematics, logic, physics, and natural sciences, (2) the requirement that every student experience all the areas of knowledge across the entire breadth of the curriculum, (3) the institutionalization of interdisciplinarity (connectivity of knowledge) and intercultural understanding that enables students to see problems from different perspectives, (4) a residential campus, and (5) the delivery of the curriculum via “active learning.”

Historical Development of Liberal Arts-Based Programs in Japan and the Case of Akita International University (aiu)

The development toward a fully articulated Liberal Arts College curriculum within a Japanese university context has proceeded as a gradual process of refinement upon earlier curricular models brought to Japan from abroad in the past. Arguably the case could be made that such foreign educational influences have been present in Japan for a very long time and have accordingly led to present day efforts to apply, with greatly-varying degrees of success, concepts ultimately derived from the Liberal Arts tradition in Europe to the Japanese context: specifically we have in mind Japanese educational practices dating from as early as the Meiji period. However, since we are concerned with understanding the presence of, and the specific form taken by higher education as it is currently evolving in Japan, our attention must be focused upon the postwar developments within universities in Japan.

In Japan the outcome of the war led to many universities being organized and shaped on a Western (and in particular, an American) model during the long period of reconstruction following World War ii.

We can identify a core (but not frequently stated) set of principles drawn from the Liberal Arts curricular model if we look further back to the way that American universities themselves evolved, from the early colleges of Colonial New England, which were founded upon an explicitly European Liberal Arts College tradition, then to the creation of Land Grant-colleges, which were built all across the Midwestern u.s. to serve as a means of educating and training school teachers for an expanding national population, then all the way to the present diversity of public and private universities found in the u.s. today. While these principles are not found to be uniformly and consistently operating in this diverse collection of institutions, the positive influences of the Liberal Arts tradition are unmistakably and universally present in college and university curricula, and even faintly reflected in some course distribution requirements at technical colleges.

Educational institutions operating with a set of General Education requirements try to build their own version of such requirements based upon an intuitive sense of what being an educated person requires and what being a college graduate means. Thus the specifics of the general education requirement for a given institution will reveal (and state) what that institution values most highly among the standards found and maintained at Liberal Arts colleges. The General Education requirement thus becomes a routine method of assuring partial adherence to Liberal Arts college standards. However, connections between disciplines are often lost, as emphasis is placed upon simply adhering one-by-one to individual course distribution requirements. But the interdisciplinary links so vital to, and ideally revealed throughout, a Liberal Arts college education are often the most long-lasting, valuable, and sometimes life-changing dimensions of that education.

The reason for the use of General Education requirements on a widespread basis in American higher education is that the educational ideals of the Liberal Arts College have become part of the very standards of what it means to gain a college or university education and what one needs in order to be recognized as a university graduate.

From the American Branch Campuses to the New Emphasis on International Liberal Arts University Education in Japan and the Founding of Akita International University (aiu)

In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, Japan’s Bubble Economy made possible many impressive public works, from newly commissioned public artworks and buildings, to major inter-regional highways. Also part of this process (in specific relation to the themes of this paper) was the creation of new and innovative experiments in international education. These experiments included the creation of new post-secondary educational institutions in the form of American university branch campuses, which aspired to, and in some cases achieved, university-level teaching and learning. Many of these programs received regional accreditation in the U.S. and received recognition as university programs or university campuses located in Japan.

Although they were typically “new and innovative”, they were often riddled with flaws and weaknesses. The lure of profit gave rise to many of the American University Branch Campuses in Japan. But a large number of these were not worthy of the recognition and prestige, which the generally well-qualified home institutions in the U.S. deserved. And some of the “innovations” included methods of generating large financial profits for the Japan sponsor by overcharging and then (in the worst cases) not even providing the educational services contracted when the Branch Campus closed. 3 Such “Profiting from Education” became a model of bad educational practices, much to the disgrace of the perpetrators.

The main initial motivation for the creation of the American Branch Campus movement was the series of meetings held in 1986 as a spin-off from the Summit Meeting discussions that year between former Prime Minister of Japan, Nakasone and the President of the u.s., Ronald Reagan. At certain points in their discussion, university-level education was discussed in terms of trade imbalances and the attraction of American universities providing a “high quality product” and a way toward full fluency in English and international communication skills for Japanese students.

Their jointly-articulated aim was to import American higher education into Japan. They also anticipated that these campus programs would promote greater international and intercultural understanding among the Japanese and international students, with the hope of creating new patterns of friendship, business contacts, and leadership between Japan and the U.S. This strategy, it was hoped, would create an increase in numbers and a better balance in foreign student numbers in both Japanese and u.s. universities. 4

In one of the best treatments of the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese higher education, entitled Japanese Higher Education as Myth, by anthropologist, Brian J. McVeigh, the author demonstrated case after case of failures to meet basic educational standards in many Japanese traditional universities and also failures in the American Branch Campus institutions in Japan. However with regard to this issue, McVeigh accurately summarizes his overall evaluation of the whole set of American Branch campuses in Japan by stating “Two notable success stories are Temple University Japan in Tokyo and the Minnesota State University—in Akita.” 5

At the peak time in the development of the Branch Campus movement, there were more than 30 of these American Branch Campuses open and legitimately operating in Japan. However, by the late 1990’s, most of these institutions had decided to close their operations and return to the u.s. This decision was made for a wide variety of reasons. Perhaps the most frequently cited reasons for closing were financial losses (with little hope of recovery) and lack of expected financial gains. And of course, it is true that some of the Branches continue to operate today while maintaining quality, most prominently, Temple University Japan.

The Branch Campuses were designed to train Japanese high school graduates in English, making use of carefully and rigorously-designed courses taught by professional English as a Second Language faculty, followed by university-level courses in many cases taught by faculty temporarily relocated to Japan from the home campuses in the u.s. to provide at the Branch almost the same courses taught at the home university. However, what many of the Branch Campuses provided was certainly not designed and delivered at a professional level, which would have met the appropriate international educational standards. For example, many used some esl faculty who had little or no specific training in esl methodology, testing, and measurement of learning outcomes. Some faculty offering college credit courses were teaching outside of the field of their highest degrees or were otherwise unqualified. Courses carrying full academic credit were in many cases taught (in those programs which were sub-standard) in a watered-down, linguistically oversimplified fashion. All such problems interacted with one another and reinforced one another. Quality was generally reduced and profits fell and then deficits were generated. The result in such cases was often an educational disaster. Enrollments were generally far less than what had been anticipated in campus plans and budgets. One reason for this was that, in the words of Professor McVeigh, “like other foreign daigaku, these are not recognized by the state. Rather they are categorized as ‘Miscellaneous Schools’.” 6 To clarify further, this meant that there were no university campuses or programs located in Japan that were recognized by the Japanese Ministry of Education as a bona fide university (daigaku). This affected student eligibility for public transportation, eligibility for scholarship support, and so on. No policy change was made on this matter until 2004, when limited recognition and eligibility conditions were granted by the Ministry. 7

In 1990 Minnesota State University-Akita (msu-a) was founded in cooperation with Yuwa Town in Akita Prefecture. Originally it was a campus of the Minnesota State University System (msus) and later, after a central administrative re-organization, it became one of the campuses of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU). In addition to Minnesota State University-Akita, other, earlier examples of American public universities partnering with Japanese local governments included Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus in Niigata, and Texas A&M University in Koriyama. It is to the credit of these campuses that in addition to expressed concerns about maintaining high academic standards, faculty generally made a self-conscious effort to take into account cultural constraints on student performance and classroom style in Japan. Later, these three campuses, along with Temple University-Japan took leadership roles in founding the aacuj, the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Japan. Membership was extended to all regionally-accredited universities which agreed to affirm a core set of educational standards and principles.

Local Japanese authorities were charged with recruiting students, maintaining the campuses, reducing costs, and working for balanced budgets, which would require fewer subsidies from local resources. Thus the local towns hoped to recruit as many students as possible, without full regard for the academic preparation and level of candidate students. The American university administrators were charged with insisting on admitting only fully qualified students. Conflicts on this point and related points having to do with budget decisions were on-going disputes. Another one of the serious problems was what to do about failing students who did not meet a minimum performance standard. American-style university education passes students only if they meet a minimum standard. This view was generally not accepted on the Japan side.

Ultimately, Akita Prefectural Government decided to accept the closing of the Minnesota State University-Akita Campus and decided to itself open up a new university on the same site. A research committee of educators, scholars, business leaders, and others from various areas of Japan was created in Akita to meet during the year 2001-2002 and to propose possible structures, ideas about curriculum, etc. for a new university to be submitted to the Japanese Ministry of Education for approval before the new university could open.

Dr. Mineo Nakajima, head of both the Research Committee and the Founding Committee for the new university, was selected to be the first President of the new university: Kokusai Kyoyo Daigaku 8 [Akita International University (aiu)].

What also became clear during the final year of preparation for opening aiu, is that aiu’s curriculum was organized so as to enable the free transfer of college credits between aiu and the state university campuses located within Minnesota which were chosen as aiu’s first group of overseas partner institutions. This made it possible that aiu students would be able to study in Minnesota during their one year of required study abroad and would be able to easily transfer credits in a way that fit into aiu’s curriculum.

The State of Minnesota had established a single set of requirements called The Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (mtc) that met the General Education Distribution Requirements that were placed within the aiu curriculum because of the early affiliation of aiu with MnSCU. So the curriculum of aiu was first organized to meet the conditions of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum.

The Liberal Arts basis in all of these cases, from MnSCU to msu-a to aiu, is largely derived from the way basic subject areas and standards of a Liberal Arts program are maintained and reflected in a minimal way within the general education requirement presented in the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. And as presented earlier: the main reason for this is that the educational ideals of the Liberal Arts College have become part of the very standards of what it means to gain a college or university education and what it takes to be recognized as a university graduate. But as philosopher of education and political scientist, Charles W. Anderson, has so convincingly argued, what is called for today is not another re-examining of whether general education requirements properly convey the standards of Liberal Arts education, nor whether a “new core” is needed, but rather “an effort to take stock of the contemporary university.” 9 Anderson believes the core values of Liberal Education are continuous with those of philosophy: critical application of reasoning and intelligence in problem-solving and especially the role of our sense of purpose in all that we think and do.

Anderson challenges us to clarify our understanding of the purposes of the university and to rigorously ask about the place of the core values of practical reason and seeking coherence through collaborative inquiry in the improvement of the quality of the educational programs we offer. 10

Central to such improvement is the working understanding that a Liberal Arts education must include training of the imagination as it is revealed in creative activity: in the sciences, as well as in the artistic uses of the imagination, which can be best revealed to us through guided experience in musical, dramatic, or other artistic performance. 11 As John Dewey saw it, we learn best when we learn by doing, enacting, being involved intimately in practical activity. 12

Writing more recently and with careful attention to the current much-needed issues of concern regarding multiculturalism, pluralism in society and in democratic organization of communities, the prominent philosopher, Classics scholar and professor of law, Martha Nussbaum has rearticulated the Liberal Arts tradition for today in a most illuminating, compelling and challenging pair of books on education. The first, Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, presents ways that have actually been used successfully to address foreign cultures, minority populations, minority issues, and contributions of diverse cultures to our present, more global, context today. 13 No short description will suffice to present even the core ideas of these inspiring books, however we must point out that her more recent work, Not For Profit,—Why Democracy Needs the Humanities is extremely valuable in its articulation of the place of the humanities and the arts within the Liberal Arts curricula of universities. 14 Using vivid examples from several actual innovative university programs from all across North America, Nussbaum is able to show how, and sometimes why, programs succeed, or in some cases fail, to meet our new educational challenges while trying to maintain the vision and motivation of Liberal Arts education. Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity is regarded as essential reading for anyone now engaged in international university-level education and anyone interested in the Liberal Arts tradition.

The Genesis and Development of International College of Liberal Arts (iCLA)

The origin of iCLA owes much to the vision of certain individuals associated with Minnesota State University-Akita (msu-a) and the establishment of Akita International University (aiu). Specifically, Mr. Sukeshiro Terata, the former governor of Akita, Ms. Kumiko Bando, his lieutenant governor, who was seconded from Japan’s Ministry of Education (mext), Dr. Don Nilson, the former msu-a provost, and Dr. Mineo Nakajima, the founding president of aiu. Without their energy and courage, iCLA would not have materialized. They were the key individuals to conceptualize the transformation of the branch of an American university in Japan (msu-a) into a full-fledged Japanese university, Akita International University (aiu), with accreditation from the Japanese Ministry of Education (mext).

The new aiu resembled msu-a in several important respects: the curriculum was entirely in English, all students were required to study abroad, aiu used the classrooms, faculty, and administrative buildings, which previously comprised the campus of msu-a, and many of the aiu faculty, particularly from the msu-a English as a Second Language Department, were previously members of the msu-a faculty, including msu-a Provost, Dr. Nilson.

Although within about 5 years of aiu’s establishment the University was beginning to receive national recognition as one of the top public universities in the country in terms of “selectivity” and job offers prior to graduation, 15 there was a feeling among some members of the faculty that the quality of education was far below the rigor found for example at even average liberal arts colleges in America. Certain members of the faculty, under the leadership of the then Director of aiu’s Global Business Program, Dr. Michael Lacktorin, undertook to study the curricula at top liberal arts colleges in America and as early as two years after the launch of aiu, they began to lobby aiu President Nakajima for changes to the curriculum.

From the beginning, aiu has offered only two majors: Global Business and Global Studies. After one year of negotiations with the president, Dr. Lacktorin, and senior members of aiu faculty, the Global Business major was significantly restructured along the lines of top liberal arts colleges in America—courses with a heavy business vocational orientation were replaced with a wide range of courses in economics. However, internal politics prevented a similar restructuring of the Global Studies curriculum.

aiu had been plagued by institutional culture difficulties from very early in its evolution. These difficulties reached a particularly destructive level in late 2006, less than three years after aiu’s establishment, when management decided that a significant number of faculty employment contracts would not be renewed. While there may have been some reasonable justification for this decision in some instances, the manner in which it was carried out damaged the institutional culture and it could be argued that the institution has never recovered from this.

A number of aiu’s most popular, mostly international faculty began contemplating leaving aiu to “continue the dream” at another institution in an environment more conducive to progressive change. It was thought that ideally the “dream” could best be materialized at a brand new institution. But, one estimate was that this would require an investment of about usd100 million. The alternative was to search for an existing university that could serve as an incubator for an innovative, international liberal arts college. The concern in regard to this latter option was that there would be various kinds of inertia at an established university—historical, political, cultural, managerial, and financial—which might have proven to be even more resistant to progressive change than the situation at aiu.

Good fortune and serendipity brought this dream into contact with leadership at a private, regional university in one of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures. Presentations were made to the senior management of Yamanashi Gakuin University (ygu) and a marriage of values and ambitions was consummated in 2013.

It was decided that the English name of the new institution would be International College of Liberal Arts (iCLA) and that the Japanese name would be 国際リベラルアーツ学部 (Kokusai Liberaru Ahtsu Gakubu). For the Japanese name, the founders decided not to follow Japanese convention, which uses the Japanese word kyouyou (教養) as the translation for the English word “liberal arts.” Rather, katakana (カタカナ), the special-purpose alphabet for imported words and concepts, would be used. The reason for this is that the concept of liberal arts, as defined above and augmented below in connection with a discussion of the design of the physical structure of the iCLA buildings, did not exist in Japan until the introduction of iCLA. The Japanese expression kyouyou (教養) seems to lack the concepts of interdisciplinary education, active-learning, and the requirement that students experience the wide-range of knowledge—from art, dance, music, drama to mathematics, and physics, and everything between; there appears to be in kyouyou (教養) institutions little or no awareness of the importance of institutionalizing the connectivity of knowledge, which is a core feature of liberal arts institutions. 16

iCLA received accreditation from the Japanese Ministry of Education (mext) in October 2014 and the first cohort of students matriculated in April 2015.

ygu is an educational institution that provides the entire vertical of education from kindergarten to graduate school, and this has made possible the exciting opportunity to introduce core concepts of a liberal arts education, such as the nurturing of critical, creative, independent, and global thinking, and acquiring of English language skills, at the earliest stages of Japanese formal education.

The open-mindedness and bold, decisive leadership of the Furuya family, which has provided the entrepreneurial vigor of ygu since its inception in 1946, was absolutely critical to the launch of iCLA. It is doubtful that any other private university in Japan would have had the vision and courage to commit usd30 million equity capital to the establishment of a new college one-and-one-half years before accreditation by the Ministry of Education, without whose approval success in Japan is unthinkable.

The 2013 winner of the Pritzker Award for architecture, Toyo Ito, was commissioned to design state-of-the-art classrooms, faculty and administrative buildings with two adjoining internationally-integrated residence hall towers with vistas of Mt. Fuji and Japan’s southern Alps.

In a meeting with architect, Mr. Ito, in Tokyo in the fall of 2012, iCLA founding dean, Dr. Lacktorin made the following statement and described the following eight concepts as the founding philosophy of iCLA:

We wanted the design of the buildings to reflect as much as possible the philosophy and educational model that are fundamental to our conception of international liberal arts education.

• Diversity and connectivity of humans and knowledge

• Education of the whole person—brain, body, and soul

• Serious study environment with warmth

• Active, multi-directional learning

• Borderless world with diversity

• Japanese culture—Yuugen 幽玄

• Transparency and openness

• Global residential village 17

In its architectural manifestation, the end result was a mostly glass structure for administrative and faculty offices and classrooms to reflect the concepts of transparency, openness, and borderlessness, and likewise this helps to institutionalize the concept of interdisciplinarity. Classrooms are also glass-walled and hexagonal-shaped to promote openness and active, multi-directional learning; it is not obvious which of the six walls is the front of the classroom. The rooftop of the classroom building features a Japanese garden, a small martial arts dojo, and a tatami classroom for Japanese tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and other Japanese culture-related courses. The seven-story, culturally-integrated residence halls have three wings on each floor, with private rooms for each student. Most rooms have spectacular views of Mt. Fuji or Japan’s Southern Alps mountain range. The rooms without mountain views face hilly vineyards. (The city of Kofu is situated in the center of Japan’s main wine-cultivation region.)

The curriculum is comprised of 140 new courses modeled after top liberal arts colleges in America with major adjustments in order to be consistent with Japanese cultural values, and to be delivered in an active, multi-directional learning environment. An international faculty body was recruited with advanced degrees from the world’s finest universities. All students are required to study abroad at universities all over the world for one year under one-for-one student exchange and cross-waiver of tuition arrangements whereby students pay their home institution and study abroad tuition-free. A world-class Japan Studies Program was created and imbedded within the framework of an international arts curriculum to give logical structure to the Program and to ensure that all disciplines were covered. The crucially important concept of interdisciplinarity was institutionalized primarily through the mechanism of a Writing Across the Curriculum program and secondarily through intercultural and historical themes that run across the curriculum. Workshops were created largely in the Humanities and Japan Studies areas to provide students with experiential learning opportunities. An intensive, front-end English program was instituted to get Japanese students up to a level of English language skills where they could handle our rigorous liberal arts curriculum. And a Japanese Language Program ensures that all non-Japanese degree-seeking students will have working-level proficiency in Japanese language at graduation. An Advisory Board was created populated by international leaders in education and the business world to provide critical feedback and guidance toward the achievement of the ambitious goals to be the best liberal arts college in Asia and one of the most innovative liberal arts colleges in the world.

In addition to the traditional goals of liberal arts colleges, the core value of our student-centered institution is to help students discover their passion in life and their unique aptitude. It is at the intersection of passion and natural talent that individuals can reach their true potential.

Ethical Issues

If we agree that liberal arts education has the aim to “free students from the bondage of habit and custom” 18 and to support the development of the students’ independent mind, 19 and therefore expect that the students find their own answers to the central human questions, 20 then we can identify “autonomy” as the core value of liberal arts education.

In contrast to liberal arts education, the core value of Japanese culture is not autonomy but something that might be best described as harmony or, in Japanese, wa. 21 Harmony was identified as the main characteristic of the Japanese management system, managerial welfarism, and the organization of agricultural communities. 22

The realization that the moral values of Japanese culture are fundamentally different from the core values typically supported in liberal arts education leads to the conclusion that the application of liberal arts in Japan could create a severe ethical problem. The problem is to justify an education, which might have a negative impact on the graduates. Graduates, who are trained to use their autonomous mind and practice critical thinking, are in danger to be regarded as troublemakers by the rest of the society in Japan. This problem leads furthermore to the question of how to justify an education, which probably has a subversive and possibly even destructive impact on certain aspects of Japanese culture.

Most of the supporters of liberal arts education would probably reply that the underlying values of this type of education are cosmopolitan and universally relevant. 23 But this is not the case. Not only are most of the American liberal arts colleges oriented towards the Western tradition but the core value of autonomy is itself rather unimportant in non-Western (non-Protestant) cultures. 24 From this point of view the approach to justify liberal arts education in non-Western cultures based on the claim of universalism appears to be ethnocentric. 25

A more reasonable approach to justify liberal arts education in non-Western cultures is related to the concept of area studies. Area studies in liberal arts colleges are not oriented “toward general truths but toward multiple particularisms.” 26 The aim is here to understand another cultural area and to compare it to counterparts in one’s own culture. Asian studies is especially popular at American liberal arts colleges, because the regional high cultures there produced results in literature, art, and religions match the achievements of Western tradition. 27

This approach has the benefit that it does not require giving up the aim to support students to find their own answers to the central questions about their own existence without committing to a specific set of cultural values. Students would have a chance to learn different cultures and to choose which one is more suitable for their own life or their society. This is actually the approach adopted by the iCLA. The next section explains how this idea was translated into the curriculum. For a theoretical elaboration of how liberal arts colleges in North America and Europe are pursuing ways to overcome the ethical challenges of an education which brings different cultures into contact and opens learning opportunities in the process, please see Martha Nussbaum’s outstanding Cultivating Humanity. 28

A Comparative Area Studies Curriculum

One of the fundamental design ideas of the iCLA curriculum was that the learning experience at our college should not only be interdisciplinary but also intercultural. The reason for this broader approach is that students can then learn to change perspectives by analyzing a problem from different subject areas and from different cultural points of views.

The strategy used to achieve this goal was to integrate two area studies (in the Western tradition and Japan Studies) into each concentration area. Often introductory level courses in a field that are offered twice a year are related to one area in one semester and the other area in the following semester. Both courses introduce basic concepts of the subject, but the cases would be taken from either the West or Japan. For example, the introductory-level courses in Performing Arts are Western Film & Theater and Japanese Film & Theater. Higher-level courses in Performing Arts also focus either on the West (Film History) or Japan (Manga & Anime Studies and Japanese Traditional Theater). And finally the upper-level course would compare those different traditions (Comparative Theater Aesthetics) by comparing Western film and theater with Japanese film and theater. Higher-level courses in Performing Arts offer the chance to actively experience Western-style acting and directing as well as Japanese Noh Theater.

The important difference from area studies programs at American liberal arts colleges is that the iCLA does not offer any concentration in area studies. Instead the area studies are built into the subject areas (literature & linguistics, art, performing arts, music, philosophy, economics, political science, and sociology). In other words, no student can avoid being confronted with different cultural perspectives. Supporting this goal is the mandatory one-year study abroad and the large percentage of non-Japanese students at the iCLA. The theoretical knowledge of cultural differences is very important, but the experience of those differences in the daily life is even more important.

The iCLA can support students’ development by impartially presenting the advantages and disadvantages of the Japanese as well as Western cultures to the students. As a result, Japanese and Western students alike would receive a very solid foundation for answering the central questions about their existence. They can make an informed decision about which values they each want to pursue in their life. And the iCLA cannot be accused of cultural imperialism, because it would not educate students to become American-like, although it uses an educational model drawn largely from refinements on American liberal arts colleges.

iCLA has adapted the educational process for its students, who come primarily from Japan, while also including in its student body international students from around the world. The College seeks to provide opportunities for each of these students to find their own path in life, drawing on the rich traditions opened up through a liberal arts education. However, sensitive to global needs today for finding greater understanding between members of diverse cultures, iCLA aims to provide something, which broadens the cultural horizons of each student. Here the area studies and comparative approaches provide to our students perspectives that would not otherwise be available, including insights coming from the cultivation of each student’s own creative gifts. The iCLA style of liberal arts education takes into account the background cultural context (Japan) and asks each student, independently and in small-group work, to learn through critical and active engagement in the teaching/learning process in the ways presented above. The College thereby adapts Liberal Arts Education to the cultural setting of Japan and to the new challenges of our world today.