Transnational identity: The struggles of being and becoming a Japanese female professor in a neo- kokusaika phase of Japan

Abstract

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics approached (though now tentatively postponed to 2021), Japan stepped up on its nationwide kokusaika (“internationalization”) campaign to prepare for the big moment. This frenzied internationalization movement is not a new trend for Japan, particularly in the education sector where since the 1980s, the government has advanced a number of megaprojects in the name of kokusaika. Having completed my PhD in the United States on the internationalization of Japanese higher education, and having returned to Japan to begin working as a faculty member at a national university, I look into the development of my transnational identity through incidents, moments, and practices against the rhetoric and realities of kokusaika. This article argues that my analysis of the kokusaika phenomenon has shifted along with the changing tenor of my transnational experience from being a PhD student in the United States to becoming a Japanese female professor back in Japan. My transnational experience, as demonstrated in the article, helps put my own theorization of kokusaika in perspective, while also posing questions regarding “shifting transnationality” in knowledge production.

Introduction

Situating itself within a larger field of identity studies, this article engages with the following three key signifiers: Japanese, female, and professor. Although I see myself as more than just a “Japanese” “female” “professor” in my current official capacity at the university, they are epistemologically important when I discuss my identity, particularly within the context of Japan’s kokusaika (“internationalization”). I treat kokusaika not simply as an ongoing and ubiquitous phenomenon in the higher education sphere of Japan and elsewhere (e.g. Kirkpatrick, 2011; Yonezawa and Meerman, 2012), but as a distinctive site of struggle where my identity has been challenged, negotiated, and (re)shaped. For instance, in the context of Japan’s kokusaika, the above signifiers (i.e. Japanese, female, professor), either independently or in combination, seem to symbolize my identity both internally and externally. In other words, I am most often defined as such by my international students and colleagues alike at the university while I also find myself referring to my identity as such. This has helped to trigger my curiosity as to how and why such a label seems to read more naturally than do other supranational, gender-free, and/or informal ones.

Against the above backdrop, two specific questions I aim to address in this article are: (1) How has my identity changed and developed along my transnational, academic, and professional trajectory? And (2) How has such a development and negotiation of my identity shaped my ongoing research on the internationalization of Japanese higher education?

These questions are formulated in order to examine the complex interplay between academic mobility and knowledge production in transnational contexts—the two overriding themes of this Special Issue. While addressing these two questions, this article aims to contribute to a larger field of identity studies at the nexus of language and culture. Specifically, while identity development and negotiation have been extensively studied in various fields including language education and culture studies (e.g. Hall, 1996; Norton, 1997; Rivers, 2010), I offer a renewed aspect of identity studies by focusing on the transnationality of my personal and professional experiences through an autoethnographic lens. Put differently, I will not simply discuss a collection of my experiences in a foreign place as an “international” individual, but I will also closely examine the two-way transitions between “home” and “host” countries as well as between my Japanese, female, and student/professor identities over the years.

In what follows, I will briefly discuss the rationale for using an autoethnographic approach for this article. Subsequently, I will introduce two bodies of literature regarding identity and kokusaika, respectively. For the first part of the literature review, I will discuss key theoretical frameworks that help to explain what I mean by being defined and defining myself as a “Japanese” “female” “professor,” to help outline the trajectory of my academic mobility over the years. As a second part, I will open a discussion on the current landscape of kokusaika in Japan, particularly focusing on the higher education context. This section helps prepare for the subsequent discussion on how my epistemological position may have shifted as my research unfolded and evolved. Finally, in the analysis section, I bring together the two bodies of the preceding discussions in, first, trying to understand what entails “being” and “becoming” a Japanese female professor in the kokusaika-infused university context. In the process, a series of specific “incidents,” “moments,” and “practices” of kokusaika in my workplace are analyzed and discussed. Ultimately, through autoethnographic data, I will highlight how these incidents, moments, and practices of kokusaika have challenged, negotiated, and (re)shaped my identity and, similarly, how my transnational experience has helped put my own theorization of kokusaika in perspective. As such, this article aims to bring forward the complex interplay between academic mobility and knowledge production in transnational contexts.

Autoethnography as a method

For this article, I employ an autoethnographic approach to review two bodies of literature, and later to examine specific incidents, moments, and practices in my workplace. Autoethnography can be utilized as a powerful tool to explore and understand specific issues from the perspective of a researcher (Spry, 2018). While I use “I” in this autoethnographic text, the “I” may not be “about the self at all; perhaps it is instead about a willful embodiment of ‘we,’” according to Spry (2018: 1091). As such, autoethnography provides a uniquely personalized space where I narrate my take on specific incidents, moments, and practices while readers with their own knowledge and experience attempt to make sense of my narrations, which then helps to situate and contextualize specific stories in a larger social framework. As such, it is a personal yet collective process through which I strive to present my own “narrative reality” (Chase, 2008, 2011) that gives shape to the social realities of the readers.

Due to the highly personalized nature of its narrative-driven texts, some question the validity of autoethnography as a research method. For instance, my own sense of reality(ies) may strongly influence the ways in which I interpret, analyze, or report my experiences (Chase, 2008, 2011; Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011: 552–554). Some of the possible factors that impact my sense of reality(ies) include but are not limited to my family and academic backgrounds, such as nationality, ethnicity, race, language, gender, class, and, perhaps most relevant to this article, my prolonged experience studying and working abroad.

In order to address such concerns and critiques regarding autoethnography as a legitimate research method, I aim to stay as honest and transparent as possible in my own writing. In addition, I acknowledge this writing as a here-and-now text that is in flux and open. As mentioned earlier when I described myself as constantly changing and evolving, no text can comprehensively capture and present me in the fullest or purest sense. Therefore, the aim of this writing is to narrate my experiences in the way the readers can relive them imaginatively, as well as emotionally, in my shoes. That is, instead of claiming my experiences as a fact, I present my experiences as one of the many realities that exist in the context of Japanese higher education today, in the hope of encouraging readers to gain, challenge, or renew their understanding of kokusaika in Japan as well as of similar internationalization practices outside of Japan.

The transnational identity of being a Japanese female professor

Having discussed the rationale as well as some of the concerns and critiques of autoethnography, I will now introduce key theoretical frameworks for this article. In the process, I purposefully employ an autoethnographic lens in that I address scholarly gaps and links between various bodies of literature while interweaving my own personal and professional experiences over the years in my home and host countries to demonstrate the process of my identity development and negotiation.

My background

Born and raised in a small city, hundreds of miles away from Japan’s major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, I had always felt more or less comfortable with the people around me and my surroundings. It was not until I left for a summer program in Sydney, Australia during my junior year in high school that I started to identify myself as “Japanese.” Realizing that I was physically and culturally very different from the majority of people I encountered in Sydney, I tried to understand who I was, and the convenient label available was “Japanese.” While I now acknowledge the fluidity and multiplicity of being Japanese (Lebra, 2004, discussed later), the label remains a suitable shorthand to encapsulate my otherwise indescribable emotional state and experiences in Australia.

Though I was terrified to step outside the comfort zone of my preceding 18 years, my curiosity surpassed my fears and I made the decision to study abroad for college. Consequently, I spent the next five years in Hawai‘i, USA, completing my undergraduate studies and an internship. A series of reverse culture shock experiences hit hard when I moved back to Japan afterwards. I strived to reorient myself and to be re-accustomed to the social norms and expectations in Japan, but at the same time, I started to accept the fact that those efforts did not always pay off. Although, as a child, I had never wanted to be different or seen as different, as a young adult who returned to Japan after spending several years in Hawai‘i, I became less embarrassed about being different or seen as different. This may be due to the fact that I had spent my formative years in a place like Hawai‘i where diversity was the norm; I was older and more experienced; and after all, I did not have much of a choice other than to accept it.

Another 5 years passed, and I decided to return to Hawai‘i, this time for graduate studies. During my MA and PhD student years I also worked as a course assistant and later an instructor. Having completed my PhD in Education, I accepted a postdoc position without a moment’s hesitation because it was at one of the leading universities in Japan and, more importantly, it was conveniently located a short drive from my parent’s house. I later assumed my current faculty position as a coordinator for a short-term inbound exchange program at the university.

Defining “signifier” for this article

In preparation for examining the three key signifiers for this article, I would like to clarify what I mean by “signifiers.” The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) famously argued that language is fundamental to how we perceive and interact with the world around us. Whether it be for emotion, communication, or human relations, language is the faculty to convey meanings that we would not be able to otherwise (de Saussure, 2011). For example, when we wish to communicate about an object (i.e. sign) which may carry different meanings (i.e. signified) in our minds, we resort to a sound, image, and word (i.e. signifier). While it is impossible to ensure an object being talked about means exactly the same to all the people involved in the conversation, a signifier such as a sound, image, or word is used in an attempt to narrow down the target. In other words, although the target object itself may innately carry multiple and diverse connotations to the ears and minds of the people involved, a signifier helps to bring our meanings and understanding closer and make communication smoother.

In applying the notion of sign, signifier, and signified to the discussion for this article, allow me to posit that I am the object of focus. Accordingly, “Japanese,” “female,” and “professor” are the three common signifiers used by my students and colleagues alike as well as myself to describe me. What this means is that, while I as an object may carry different meanings and connotations to the people in conversation, for one reason or another, they resort to the three specific signifiers to pinpoint me in their understanding or their so-called “conceptual map” (Hall, 1997). As explicated by Stuart Hall (1997), people from the same culture tend to share a similar conceptual map through which they understand a particular object based on the relationship between what it represents (i.e. signified) and how it sounds or looks (i.e. signifier).

It is important to highlight here that the students and colleagues who employ the above three signifiers to describe me may not necessarily be considered those who belong to the same culture sharing a similar conceptual map. As I am a faculty coordinator of a short-term inbound exchange program at the university, my students and colleagues are of diverse backgrounds in terms of nationality, language, ethnicity, race, gender and sexuality, and more.

Further, what may add more complexity to this already entangled state is the fact that I feel that I (as an object) am constantly changing and evolving (see Hall, 1996) as I grow older and more experienced, both physically and emotionally. Yet, at the same time, I renew my experience and feel afresh each time I meet new people, encounter new experiences, and visit new places. Given these inconsistencies, the three signifiers above may be what help ground me and provide a feeling of stability to some extent.

Incorporating the above understanding of signifiers, in what follows, I will introduce foundational identity studies, particularly with their focus on “Japanese,” “female,” and “professor” respectively. By doing so, I aim not only to clarify the theoretical frameworks employed in the subsequent analysis and discussion sections, but also to demonstrate why an autoethnographic approach is deemed appropriate and effective for this article.

On being “Japanese”

The so-called “Japanese identity” has long been studied in multiple and occasionally overlapping disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. In such fields, Japanese identity is discussed as being “relational” (Araki, 1973), “ambivalent” (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1990), or a tri-layer self, which includes “social,” “inner,” and “cosmological” dimensions (Lebra, 2004). While classic studies on Japanese identity tend to highlight its uniqueness and exclusivity, some scholars have advanced a more nuanced discussion. For example, Jane Bachnik (1992) has analyzed the oft-contested dual “faces” of self in Japanese society as a continuum instead of the otherwise-widely perceived dichotomy. By employing ethnographic vignettes, she argues for the need of “pluralistic perspectives . . . that could encompass disunity and chaos as well as unity and order” (1992: 4). Similarly, Takie Sugiyama Lebra (2004) has carefully untangled the stereotypes about being Japanese through her own transnational experience of moving to the United States as an “irreversibly Japanese” individual in her late 20s. In the process, she demonstrates the fluidity and multiplicity of the Japanese self across time and space. At the same time, Lebra problematizes the critical dialogue against nihonjinron (theories about the Japanese uniqueness and distinctiveness) which tends to simply dismiss nihonjinron as ridiculous or exaggerated. She questions:

If there is nothing unique about Japan, nothing that distinguishes Japan from other countries or cultures, how can we talk about Japan and why do we study it at all? The ultimate verdict would be that we can no longer mention “Japan” or “Japanese culture” because “there is no such thing.” Yet in the same breath we turn to talking and reading about Japan, retrieving things “Japanese” from the trash can. Why? Because the label, as much as any other, remains a useful shorthand, allowing us to conceptualize and represent our experiences having to do with that name. (Lebra, 2004: 256)

Lebra cleverly treats labels such as “Japan” and “Japanese culture” as mere shorthands, helpful in discussing and contextualizing our otherwise-nameless experiences. Drawing a connection to the previous discussion on Saussure’s concepts, labels, and signifiers alike may carry different meanings and connotations to the people who use them. However, what is relevant here is that people indeed opt to use these specific shorthands, labels, or signifiers to denote an object that they all believe can be best described using such shorthands, labels, or signifiers. As such, while I decidedly refrain from generalizing or defining “Japanese” or the Japanese identity for the purpose of this article, what I aim to do from this point on is to narrate my observations and experiences regarding “Japanese” so that the readers themselves may confirm, challenge, and further their own understanding of what is “Japanese” to them in reference to their own conceptual map.

On being “female” in Japan

Debates around gender and sexuality have long remained largely untouched in Japan. However, with the drastic expansion of social media and ever-intertwined world politics in recent years, Japan is no longer immune from the ubiquitous LGBTQ+ and other social movements. For example, the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault has spread around the globe via social media and it has also helped to give voice to the traditionally silenced victims of sexual violence in Japan. In a similar vein, a Japanese female journalist Shiori Ito came forward in 2017 to speak about her experience as a rape victim in 2015 and this has since sparked both support and backlash. A Japanese version of #MeToo called #WeToo also emerged to bring concerted efforts in fighting against sexual violence as well as other harassment such as power abuse, maternity harassment (mistreatment of pregnant women in the workplace), discrimination based on SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity), career harassment (mistreatment of those who utilize the child and family care leave in the workplace), cyber-bullying, moral harassment, racial discrimination, and discrimination against people with disabilities. ¹ More recently, another social media movement called #KuToo surfaced, campaigning against company dress codes that require female workers to wear high heels in Japan. This movement has inspired female workers in other countries as well, proving to be a modern, innovative, and influential form of feminism in action.

As the general public continues to grapple with the new and changing gender roles and expectations in Japan, popular culture in the form of manga comics stays a step ahead. Japan has recently seen a growth of interest in BL (boys love: homoerotic relationships) and Yuri (lesbian relationships) comic genres that defy the traditional Japanese gender and sexuality norms. Interestingly, the readers of these comic books are not necessarily gender-bending or sex-changing individuals themselves. At the same time, while most of the audience are said to be heteronormative females, more and more scholars are investigating such manga genres and their readership which open doors “to further gender liberation” (Nagaike and Yoshida, 2011: 22). On this note, Welker (2011) explains that some readers consume a genre like BL “not as merely a fantastic escape or a straightforward critique of patriarchal romance paradigms in Japan but rather as part of a larger sphere of consumption of male homosexuality” (2011: 223) where new meanings and understandings are progressively being negotiated.

Furthermore, within the realm of the manga industry, cosplay [costume-play: dressing up as their favorite manga character] may be understood as a discursive yet performative act to subvert and even transgress gender norms in Japan (Nagaike and Yoshida, 2011). In fact, this performative nature of gender has been most famously theorized by Judith Butler (1990). In Gender Trouble, Butler (1990) examines the very process of performing a gender identity as it helps to regulate, substantiate, and continue to reinforce how a specific gender ought to be viewed in a particular society. The socially-constructed displays of gender in the public sphere indeed shape the discourse on gender and sexuality which in turn further informs the individual understanding and behaviors regarding gender. As such, gender performance in diverse forms including a cosplay may be understood not simply as a representation of the performer’s symbolic gender and sexual identity, but also as their personal statement which may add to the current momentum of gender and sexuality movements in Japan. Given today’s ever-evolving gender diversity in the world and Japan’s sociopolitical reactions to the transitional time, being “female” in Japan means more than just fulfilling the socially-expected and performative roles of being a woman. It is indeed contingent on the very assumption that there is a “female” gender among others and that the individual is defined as such and not as any other gender identity.

On being a “professor” in Japan

For this section, I draw from the influential work on social structures of Japan by a renowned anthropologist. Chie Nakane (1967, 1972) has analyzed Japan as a vertical society where hierarchical relationships are negotiated within a specific frame in which the individuals are situated, and not necessarily based on the attributes or qualifications of the individuals involved. Although Japan is often simply viewed as a collectivistic society and not an individualistic one, the reality is more complex than the mere collectivism v. individualism, says Nakane (1967). To belong to a certain group, the members share a set of attributes (such as name, family background, academic achievements, social status, or occupation) that underwrite their affiliation to the specific group. Ba or a frame is of most importance in maintaining and enhancing group consciousness as well as separating themselves from outsiders (Nakane, 1967). To borrow from a social identity theory, an in-group identity (Stets and Burke, 2000) is maintained and reinforced by the individuals sharing common attributes while dismissing out-group members as those who lack such attributes. However, once within the group, shared attributes do not carry as much weight in the way hierarchical relationships are being built or negotiated because the hierarchy within the group is determined and controlled by the group’s specific and contextual rules (Nakane, 1967: 41–47). This is, by no means, exclusive to Japan, as Liam Kelley in this Special Issue (2020) has described the hierarchical structure and the specific process of academic socialization in the case of Asian Studies at American universities.

Further, similar observations have been made by some of the most influential social identity pioneers (Tajfel et al., 1971) who ingeniously theorized inter-and intra-group behaviors. For one, a group’s specific rules and regulations may appear completely illogical or even ridiculous to those outside the community. However, these rules define the group in the sense that they closely monitor and censor the beliefs and behaviors of the group members (Tajfel et al., 1971).

An example in a Japanese context may be the seniority rule that many Japanese companies and organizations abide by. According to Nakane (1967), seniority trumps meritocracy in the Japanese corporate culture. For instance, professors of a university can be further classified into different categories, depending largely on their age and, to some extent, their experience and achievements (1967: 72). Even those with the same qualifications and status, seniority (age) plays a vital role, inducing a large impact on the hierarchical relationships among group members.

Taking this into consideration, being a professor in a Japanese university may not be as straightforward as being a professor elsewhere. There are certain expectations, rules, and regulations that often remain unspoken and unwritten. In fact, having relatively little career experience and still in my 30s, I find myself to be in a precarious position as an associate professor within the traditional system of my current workplace. Put differently, I am in some ways defying the unspoken and unwritten rules regarding associate professors who are, for example, most typically in their 40s, mid-career, and overwhelmingly male (Kyushu University, 2019). In that sense, although the previous job title I held in the United States was an instructor and not a professor, I had never felt as aware of the job title as I am now in my current workplace. Being addressed as Nonaka-sensei ² (“professor”) by my students and colleagues on a daily basis, I am made aware both internally and externally that I am a faculty member and not a staff member or a student at the university. This experience stands in contrast to how my students and colleagues in the United States would casually address me by my first name. If truth be told, I still prefer to be called “Chisato” than the high-flown “Nonaka-sensei,” and this very point will be analyzed later.

To synthesize the preceding discussions for this article, while positioning “signifier” as a container that carries symbolic or diverse meanings to its users, I have paid specific attention to the three following signifiers: “Japanese,” “female,” and “professor,” respectively. Although I as an object in this article may carry different meanings to the people around me, for one reason or another, students, and colleagues alike in my current workplace resort to these three specific signifiers to identify me. In this sense, despite the diversity of my students and colleagues, they might be sharing a similar “conceptual map” (Hall, 1997) through which they choose to describe me as a Japanese female professor while paying less attention to other supranational, gender-free, and/or informal labels.

On being “Japanese,” I have drawn from previous studies including one by Lebra (2004) to demonstrate fluidity and multiplicity. As such, I will treat “Japanese” as a useful shorthand while carefully narrating my observations and experiences regarding “Japanese,” leaving a space for the readers to confirm, challenge, and/or further their understanding of what is “Japanese” to them. This dialogic practice in fact mirrors Phan and Mohamad’s (2020) collective self-(re)discovery process in this Special Issue which on the one hand has endorsed a binary view yet has overcome it on the other.

With being “female,” recent events and research have signified the changing landscape of what it means to be a female in Japan and beyond. Building upon the classic work on gender performativity by Butler (1990), on the one hand, the socially-constructed displays of gender in public informs the gender and sexuality discourse in a given context. On the other hand, such displays must be understood as more than just symbolic or socially-constructed meanings, taking into account the ongoing and converging movements in the global arena. SAs for being a “professor,” leveraging the influential work by Nakane (1967, 1972), I have outlined the complexity of being a part of a hierarchical system (i.e. a “university” for this article) via a social identity point of view (Tajfel et al., 1971). Particularly with the title of “Nonaka-sensei” as how I am addressed by my students and colleagues on a daily basis, I am made aware of my specific identity and expectations attached to the title.

While adopting the above key concepts in my analysis, for this article, I propose to focus on some of my “incidents,” “moments,” and “practices” against the backdrop of kokusaika. That is, for these narratives to be properly situated for an in-depth analysis, it is necessary to offer a theoretical and empirical overview of the kokusaika-focused literature. As such, in what follows, I will introduce the background of kokusaika policies and practices in Japan, followed by some findings and discussion from empirical studies including my own PhD thesis.

The kokusaika of Japanese higher education

Now, as the other important body of literature for this article, I open a discussion on kokusaika as an ongoing and ubiquitous phenomenon in the higher education sphere of Japan as well as elsewhere. As mentioned earlier, I treat kokusaika as a distinctive site of struggle where my identity has been challenged, negotiated, and (re)shaped. In that sense, kokusaika is not simply an academic subject or a research interest of mine in itself, but it has become a framework through which the development and negotiation of my own identity may be discussed.

Kokusaika in the past and present

While it is challenging if not impossible to define the concept, kokusaika has long been used as a slogan for Japan to compete and survive in the ever-globalizing world. Kokusaika is in many senses perceived positively, often invoking an image of a Japanese self speaking English to non-Japanese other in international settings (cf. Rivers, 2010). This also relates to the nihonjinron debate (criticized by Lebra, 2004, previously) that there is a unique and distinctive character for being Japanese that the non-Japanese other lacks. In addition, while kokusaika is, in the original sense, not simply about English teaching or learning, in the context of education, the Japanese government has treated English as if it is the remedy to all the kokusaika-related matters and issues (details discussed later).

In the name of kokusaika, the government has implemented a number of measures aiming to drastically internationalize the higher education sector since the 1980s. Starting with the “Plan to accept 100,000 foreign students” in 1983, Japan has strived to present itself as an open and friendly country for international students. Subsequently with the 2008 “Plan to accept 300,000 foreign students” and the “Global 30” project in 2009, universities have endeavored to design and present their own internationalization strategies so that their kokusaika projects would be funded by the government. Also, the “Global Human Resource Development” program in 2012 and the highly touted “Top Global University Project” in 2014 have encouraged universities to revisit and reform their traditionally closed research and education ecosystem as well as to send off more Japanese students and scholars overseas for studies and research. Despite such a national commitment and concerted efforts, however, Japanese universities continue to falter in world university rankings, placing the public in doubt of the effectiveness as well as the necessity of such costly enterprises.

On a more pragmatic note, kokusaika-minded students are few and far between. Based on my previous study (Nonaka, 2017), even those who study or teach at a Top Global University (TGU)-ranked institution ³ may not necessarily be interested in kokusaika projects. Moreover, if by some remote chance that students are interested in studying abroad, taking a course in a foreign language, or even participating in an international event on campus, there are numerous hurdles for the students to overcome. For example, from the financial perspective (e.g. to study abroad), university students in Japan are said to be chronically cash-strapped and are dependent on their family’s support and financial aid, be that in the form of a scholarship or a loan (Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), n.d.), while most students also work part-time (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2018). Alternately, the Japan-specific academic and job-hunting calendar may cause a delayed graduation or missed job-hunting opportunity if a student chooses to study abroad for a semester or a year. Japanese students’ physical and emotional unreadiness to break out of their comfort zone can also be a reason why kokusaika is not everyone’s cup of tea (Yonezawa, 2011).

Policy versus practice of kokusaika

Accordingly, there seems to be a rift between the top-down kokusaika policies and the actual situation on the ground. By and large, the kokusaika practice at the institutional level is assessed based on the number and percentage of international students and faculty as well as of Japanese students participating in international short-term study away programs. Meanwhile, there is very little, if not zero, attention given to the disinterest of Japanese students who opt out of studying abroad or even intercultural communication opportunities and learning within their campus (Yonezawa and Meerman, 2012).

What is more concerning is the fact that the international students who are currently studying in Japan as a result of kokusaika policies often suffer from adjustment and communication issues (Onishi, 2016). On this point, scholars have called for efforts to address the existing needs and cries-for-help on campuses. A clinical psychologist at the University of Tokyo pleads, “We must not simply dismiss or give special attention to the needs of international students as those in the minority. We need to acknowledge and respect the diversity and demonstrate our willingness to move toward a transition” (Onishi, 2016: 235, author’s translation).

A number of the existing kokusaika studies (McVeigh, 2002; Rivers, 2010; Yonezawa et al., 2020, to name a few) have indeed shed important light on Japan’s problematic treatment of English as the international language (or the so-called “Englishization” of kokusaika policies, to borrow Kirkpatrick’s (2011) phraseology) as well as the economically and politically driven schemes to increase Japan’s presence in the global marketplace (Hashimoto, 2018). In fact, the identity politics of using English as the international language has been extensively discussed by applied linguistics scholars. Notably, Bonny Norton (1997) has examined and problematized the taken-for-granted meanings attached to the English language for teaching, learning, and research.

As Japan’s kokusaika continues to welcome an influx of international students and scholars, accelerated further by the recent relaxed policy on immigration in Japan (Kyodo, 2019), it is time for the nation to reexamine the status-quo and the future trajectory. At the global scale, as kokusaika policies and efforts are bringing forward new and emerging issues in Japan, and as nationalism and nativism gains momentum in the world (e.g., Brexit, America First, U.S.–China cold war), a simple universal brotherhood type of ideology no longer stands.

Based on the discussions thus far, I propose that kokusaika policies and practice may need to be better realigned to meet today’s specific needs and priorities of society. That is, while the kokusaika practice at the institutional level is often assessed simply on the number and percentage of international students and faculty as well as the international mobility of Japanese students and faculty, a closer look at the effects of kokusaika reveals different and conflicting realities. As such, this article aims to reexamine what I would like to call “neo-kokusaika” realities on the ground, while at the same time adopting an autoethnographic lens to highlight the transnationality of my personal and professional experiences.

To that end, I will situate kokusaika in this article, not simply as an ongoing and ubiquitous phenomenon in the higher education sector of Japan and elsewhere, but also as a distinctive site of struggle for the development and negotiation of my identity. In what follows, I will begin my analysis and discussion of various narratives in order to address the two research questions: How has my identity changed and developed along my transnational, academic, and professional trajectory? and How has such a development and negotiation of my identity shaped my ongoing research on the internationalization of f Japanese higher education? I will do so with a particular focus on how, for example, my understanding of kokusaika has been confirmed at times yet disrupted at other times since the beginning of my appointment at my current university.

Incidents/moments/practices

By showcasing specific incidents, moments, and practices, I aim to make contributions to the preceding two bodies of literature on identity and kokusaika, respectively. Most importantly, I will narrate my experiences to illustrate my identity negotiation process of being and becoming a Japanese female professor against the backdrop of different kokusaika realities.

Am I Chisato or Nonaka-sensei?

Having spent about 1/3 of my entire life in Hawai‘i, I am both consciously and subconsciously influenced by the knowledge and experiences gained both inside and outside of Japan. Most of the time, such knowledge and experiences in concert help to shape and reshape my views and guide my decisions (cf. Hall, 1996).

However, there are times when I find myself in a dilemma due to the disparities within my collective knowledge and experiences. For example, when I introduce myself to a new acquaintance in a Japanese setting using the Japanese language, I mention the name of my university first, then explain that I work as a professor (associate professor, to be exact). In an American setting, using the English language, however, I used to first mention that I am an instructor, followed by the name of the university. This is more than just a linguistic difference (e.g. syntax) between Japanese and English, as it signifies the difference in the cultural and social protocol of both contexts. Drawing from Nakane’s work (1967, 1972) discussed earlier, the individual’s affiliation to a specific group is highlighted when interacting with others outside the group while their attributes are subdued within the group. By this logic, what I am on the more official layers such as being a Japanese national or being an employee at the university may carry more weight than what I am on the more personal layers including my name or exact job title.

And even when it comes to something more personal like addressing a professor by name, there is a protocol which likely helps shape the very relationship between the professor and the interlocutor (e.g. a student). Earlier, I explained my frustration with being called “Nonaka-sensei” instead of “Chisato” by my students and colleagues. Having spent all my undergraduate and graduate years and serving as a university instructor in the Hawai‘i context, the Japanese form of address in university settings—Last name + sensei—appears stifling and overly formal to me. For me, being Chisato comes more naturally and intuitively than being a “sensei” while, at the same time, I strive to conform to the expectations and responsibilities attached to being a professor in Japan.

Gender as a significant element of my professional identity

In addition to my “sensei” identity, being a “female” academic in the Japanese university context has been much more complicated than in the Hawai‘i context. Interestingly, I did not give too much attention to my gender identity while I was studying and working in Hawai‘i except when I engaged in scholarly conversations or writing on the topic of gender. Once back in Japan, I began to notice the gender imbalance in the workplace, especially in the management and supervisory positions. At my current university, females constitute less than 30% of the student population, less than 40% of the staff members, and less than 20% of the faculty members (Kyushu University, 2019). This is in stark contrast to the nearly perfect gender balance at my previous university in Hawai‘i.

On the bright side, there are ongoing efforts at the national as well as at the university levels to increase the number of female scholars and professionals in management positions (Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, 2016). In addition, especially at our university, the gender composition looks quite different depending on the academic field (e.g., more female scholars can be found in the social sciences than in the natural sciences) (Kyushu University, 2019). Therefore, setting a gender quota needs to be carefully planned. Moreover, as argued by Butler (1990), the very act of treating gender as a binary undermines the complexity and multiplicity of being a male, female, or other in a given society. In this sense, while implementing a gender quota may be the necessary baby step for Japan in improving the existing gender inequality, how the public understands the concept of gender needs to be carefully evaluated when planning the next steps.

To be honest, I was not particularly interested, well-versed, or involved in any gender-related activism in Hawai‘i. Nevertheless, the current male-dominant and controlled campus has disturbed my sense of self so much so that I impulsively began to spend much time researching about the types of support available for women as well as gender nonconforming individuals in the university setting. If I had not spent time in Hawai‘i where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2013 and gender activism is pervasive around college campuses and beyond, I would have remained unaware that these choices were even available or that rights can be defended. Also, this newly found passion and interest of mine may be greatly influenced by the fact that some of my international students have continuously shared with me their cultural and emotional adjustment issues in Japan due to their LGBTQ+ backgrounds. As demonstrated by Alshakhi and Phan (2020, this Special Issue), teaching across cultures, languages, and values often presents a complex interplay of teachers’ “transnational emotion(al) labor and their affective displays.” This is certainly one of the realities of kokusaika in Japan that have largely been overlooked. With more kokusaika comes greater diversity, not simply in terms of nationality, race, and ethnicity (as focused on in the current kokusaika policies in Japan), but also of gender, sexuality, religion, social class, and emotional capital.

Kokusaika realities of Japanese higher education

Elaborating on different realities caused by kokusaika, for my PhD thesis on the internationalization of Japanese higher education (Nonaka, 2017), I surveyed and interviewed over 200 students, faculty, and staff members of various Japanese universities. At the time of research, I had considered myself more of an insider than an outsider because of my national, ethnic, linguistic, educational, and career backgrounds. However, since the beginning of my appointment as a faculty member at my current university, I have become keenly aware that there are so many more layers of realities around kokusaika than I had uncovered for my thesis.

A divide between Japanese students and international students on campus

Most importantly for my thesis, I had treated kokusaika as ongoing and central to the operation of universities in Japan. However, since becoming a cog in the large machine that is a university, I have realized that there are equally if not more important and urgent matters that require attention than simply kokusaika-oriented issues. For example, the discrepancy between the curriculum and career readiness, the predominantly unidirectional lectures (lacking groupwork, discussion, or other hands-on activities), and the ever-increasing costs of education are known issues at the university. On the one hand, in theory, I am at the forefront of kokusaika because I work at one of the privileged TGU-ranked institutions which supposedly “help [international students] achieve higher goals and maximize [their] potential” (MEXT, 2019). On the other, an insider-look at the university operation presents a sobering reality beyond the kokusaika fervor.

For instance, serving as a faculty coordinator of a short-term inbound exchange program at the university and teaching EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) classes, I interact with a large number of international students—the very product of kokusaika. These students come from diverse backgrounds in terms of nationality, language, ethnicity, race, gender, and more. While existing studies have widely critiqued the overreliance on English in kokusaika practices (e.g. Breaden, Steele and Stevens, 2014; Burgess et al., 2010; Phan, 2013; Rappleye and Vickers, 2017, to name a few) that seemingly safeguard the “‘us–them distinction’—that is, foreigners should speak English and Japanese should speak Japanese” (Rivers, 2010: 451), there may be more than just the government’s scheme to protect the Japanese identity from the so-called outsiders. In other words, it is not simply the top-down policy that seems to further the divide between the Japanese students and international students on campus.

In fact, I regularly experience this invisible yet enduring divide between Japanese students and international students on campus. As I teach EMI courses at the university, I am often surprised by the fact that there are usually no Japanese students who enroll in my EMI courses. In an ideal kokusaika picture, international students who are studying in Japan have Japanese classmates, who in turn experience the world without stepping outside the country. Moreover, having a diverse mix of students (Japanese and international students alike) in one classroom seems to make a practical as well as pedagogical sense that it helps to promote diversity, intercultural understanding, and the internationalization of Japanese higher education at large. However, the current kokusaika practice in Japan (or at least in the context of my workplace) paints a different reality (Nonaka, 2020).

Looking back on my study and teaching experiences in Hawai‘i, a typical classroom has always consisted of local and international students with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In comparison to this melting pot imagery, my EMI classrooms in Japan are quite “international,” yet sorely lacking local (= Japanese) students. I have therefore made efforts to “recruit” Japanese students to participate in or even observe my EMI classes: from networking with Japanese students, to advertising my courses in public talks around campus, to posting course information in Japanese, to explicitly stating on syllabi that I provide assistance in Japanese if necessary.

However, a Japanese student’s carefree comment one day struck a shattering blow to my ideological and perhaps short-sighted attempts above. During a conversation with a Japanese student who serves as a peer supporter for international students at the university, I casually asked why he thinks his Japanese peers may be reluctant to take EMI courses on campus. He responded matter-of-factly, “if I can get an A for a similar course offered in Japanese, why would anyone wanna take an EMI course to get a C or worse?” As glaringly obvious and logical as this response may sound, it actually led me to acknowledge how “off the track” I was in understanding the kokusaika reality on campus. For me with my transnational experiences, taking EMI courses has been nothing special or extraneous. It is the default and the norm; therefore, it did not occur to me that those who do not wish to enroll in EMI courses have reasons other than their overall unfamiliarity with such courses. I simply assumed that by helping to level the language and cultural ground, more Japanese students would be willing to take my EMI courses. However, as pointed out by the above student, if a student understands the content and fares better in a course offered in Japanese, why would anyone choose an EMI course that likely requires additional energy, devotion, and concentration while such efforts may not lead to a high mark as they would achieve in a Japanese equivalent course?

At the same time, international students who enroll in my EMI courses frequently voice their disappointment in having no Japanese classmates during their “study in Japan.” This is quite frustrating and painful for me that I cannot seem to meet either side’s expectations. If the international students would like to have Japanese classmates, a quick fix would be for them to improve their Japanese skills so that they can enroll in regular courses offered in Japanese. For the Japanese students to naturally lean toward EMI courses, they would have to be near bilingual in Japanese and English. Both scenarios, at least in the context of my current workplace, seem unrealistically ambitious, to put it mildly.

This dilemma is caused by one of the many, what I would like to call, “neo-kokusaika” realities of Japan. Given this neo-kokusaika reality, I suggest, we need to not only support the international students on campus (= the very product of kokusaika), but to also better identify and leverage the needs and wants of Japanese students whose learning and networking opportunities can be amplified via interacting with international students on campus.

Strain on human resources

Another neo-kokusaika reality I have observed and experienced as an academic in Japan is that the current kokusaika endeavors seem to cause a serious strain on the human resources at the university. At the moment, my current university operates several major government-funded kokusaika programs which run for a set period of time and once the funding period ends, the university reluctantly terminates contracts of valuable and talented employees who have for the past several years made contributions to the internationalization of the institution (cf. Hirose, 2016).

Since the beginning of my employment at my current university, I have observed that these fixed-term employees take on as much or more responsibility and labor as do their permanent counterparts at the university. However, their salaries and benefits along with job security cannot even compete with those of the permanent employees. This disparity understandably has surfaced as a misunderstanding or conflict among employees with different contract types. In fact, one of my former colleagues who was on a fixed-term contract used to address him/herself as a “disposable human resource” in a self-deprecating manner. Eventually, the said colleague left the university due to an overall dissatisfaction with job responsibilities and a sense of undervaluation by the office. In my view, this was such a loss for the university because this former colleague not only had extensive previous work experience and skills that were necessary for the position, but had also built great rapport with students. As such, with the current kokusaika project funding protocol in place, the university will likely continue to hemorrhage talented employees.

Kokusaika in a New Light

While I had previously positioned kokusaika as ongoing and central to the operation of universities in Japan (Nonaka, 2017), I recently began to see beyond the face value of the kokusaika fervor. As a result, for this article, I have crystalized what I would conceptualize as “neo-kokusaika” realities in Japan by examining my personal and professional accounts of the current workplace.

Kokusaika as a renewed field of study

The firsthand experiences of “reality checks” on site, as discussed so far, have constantly challenged my understanding of kokusaika and Japanese higher education in general. Previously, as a PhD student situated in the U.S., I strategically and willingly joined in the “sexy,” scholarly trend of critiquing the intent of kokusaika, without questioning the very tradition of critique culture that I had perhaps been socialized into while being trained in the United States. A similar example has been raised in this Special Issue by Joel Windle (2020), that the Western tradition of academic practice is often taken for granted while when implementing those theories (produced in the global north) into practice, a locally situated interpretation and felt experiences must be applied. What is more, I had claimed my “binary” insider/outsider positionality maintaining affiliations to both sides and believed that the effects of kokusaika were imminent and real to me. However, immersed in the day-to-day operation of the current university, I became aware that kokusaika is simply one of the many facets through which we choose to discuss, examine, or even leverage locally situated issues and experiences. In that sense, I have come to engage with the scholarly debates on kokusaika differently and in ways that are more personal and realistic to my current positionality.

Put differently, while there are ongoing large-scale projects in operation and top-down policies being implemented, I now perceive kokusaika in a post hoc manner. Specifically, I understand that we are currently at the “neo-kokusaika” phase where different and specific realities as a result of kokusaika policies and practice coexist and intersect with one another, as demonstrated thus far. I refrain from simply calling it a “post-” kokusaika phase because kokusaika can and should be understood as both completed yet ongoing in policies, projects, and practices at the national, institutional, and individual levels. This is to me the latest and most sound (re)interpretation of kokusaika phenomenon in relation to my “embeddedness” (cf. Karakaş, 2020, this Special Issue) or my “grounded transnational” self through the process of “existential commitment” as coined by Phung (2020, this Special Issue).

Realities in the current kokusaika phase

In this section, I would like to reiterate some of the neo-kokusaika realities that deserve academic attention. They are the lack of support provided to the international students who are already on campus and the generally overlooked needs and wants of Japanese students whose learning and networking opportunities can be amplified via interacting with international students on campus. I have discussed the complexity of the invisible yet enduring divide between Japanese students and international students on campus. Based on my observations and interactions with students, the divide may run deeper than the oft-assumed “disinterest” of Japanese students or their lack of language or other intercultural skills. This divide seems to be of a physical as well as psychological nature in a sense that international students hardly have opportunities to interact with Japanese students on campus, in an academic or a personal setting due to the program designs and mismatched expectations and needs of both student populations. Such a divide continues to affect the emotional as well as physical reality of the so-called “international” campus that the university otherwise touts.

Another neo-kokusaika reality that has yet to receive scholarly attention is how the ongoing kokusaika funding protocol causes a serious strain on the human resources at the university. On the one hand, kokusaika-oriented positions require individuals with specific talents and skills. On the other hand, most of these positions are fixed-term appointments due to the nature of the kokusaika funding. Resultantly, the university is momentarily equipped with highly skilled workers during the funding period, however, these talents are often immediately ejected when the money ends. This practice of employing “disposable human resources” (as discussed earlier in the case of my former colleague) is unsustainable as it prevents the university from realizing any of the goals set for the government-funded kokusaika programs.

In addition to locating the above neo-kokusaika realities, my transnational experiences and continuous reflections have helped to shed light on gender as a significant element of my professional identity as it is of kokusaika practice. On the one hand, while some of my international students confided in me their cultural and emotional adjustment issues due to their LGBTQ+ backgrounds, my professional identity as being a female academic in Japan has correspondingly shifted and become augmented. On the other hand, situated in the kokusaika context, Japan’s view on the so-called “diversity” needs to be expanded from the current fixation on nationality, race, or ethnicity and include multiple and complex understandings of other equally important identity categories such as gender, sexuality, religion, and social class.

Conclusion

With transnational knowledge production and academic mobility as overriding themes of this Special Issue, this article has endeavored to foreground their complex interplay. Specifically, I have first outlined the trajectory of academic mobility over the years, then focused on kokusaika as a grounding to show how my epistemological position may have shifted along my research activities. In the process, while building upon the existing bodies of literature in identity as well as kokusaika-related studies, I have offered a renewed aspect of identity studies by focusing on the transnationality of my personal and professional experiences through an autoethnographic lens. It is “renewed” in the sense that I have not simply discussed a collection of my experiences in a foreign place as an international individual, but I have also closely examined the two-way transitions between home and host countries as well as between my Japanese, female, and student/professor identities over the years. Further, for this article, I have positioned kokusaika not only as an ongoing and ubiquitous phenomenon in the higher education sphere, but also as a distinctive site of struggle for my identity development and negotiation.

I have analyzed the development of my transnational identity from being born and raised in a small city of Japan to spending a significant amount of time in Hawai‘i as an undergraduate and graduate student, and later as an instructor, and now being and becoming a Japanese female professor back in Japan. I have demonstrated how my analysis and understanding of kokusaika phenomenon has shifted along with the changing tenor of my positionality from being an outsider looking in to becoming a cog in the large university machine.

In fact, I am now painfully aware that when I conducted my PhD thesis in the United States on the internationalization of Japanese higher education, I may have been a know-it-all outsider, looking in. This realization has indeed casted some doubts and second thoughts about myself as a researcher and resultantly I am in the process of redirecting my future research as being a transnational academic situated in the Japanese higher education context. In this sense, my transnational experience from being a PhD student in the United States. to becoming an academic back in Japan has helped to create a unique trajectory toward reevaluating the legitimacy and integrity of my previous research as well as my researcher identity.

As for the kokusaika-related studies in the higher education sphere, I have demonstrated that we may now be at the “neo-kokusaika” phase where multiple and competing realities exist and intersect with one another due to the effects of specific policies, projects, and practices. Based on the examples of what I would conceptualize as “neo-kokusaika” realities, I propose that kokusaika policies and practice need to be better realigned to meet today’s specific needs and priorities of society while at the same time engaging with locally situated issues and experiences at the institutional level.