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AN ARTICLE in the journal Nature is rocking Japan’s scientific establishment.
The article*, by a professor of chemistry at a government research institute,
carries a blunt statement that Japan is starving research at its universities.

The Japanese government will be embarrassed by the article. Its author,
Akio Yamamoto, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is the first to criticise
his nation’s science policy in an international journal. His attack comes
at a time when Japan’s Ministry of Education is anxious to show that it
is encouraging its own research. The US has criticised Japan for allegedly
taking a free ride on the work of American scientists.

Yamamoto is well known among Japanese chemists as a campaigner for more
support for research. The nation’s spending on research and development
has soared since the 1960s, making the country a major force in R&D.

But university scientists, Yamamoto says, have seen little of the new
wealth, most of which has come from increased spending on research by industry.
Over the past 20 years, the government’s contribution to the research budget
has dropped from 30 per cent to less than 20 per cent.

Over the same period, resources available to academic researchers have
fallen, Yamamoto says. ‘The amount of money spent per person for research
and development in companies increased from 14 million yen (Pounds sterling
64 000) to 20 million yen, whereas that for university researchers dropped
from 10 million yen to 8 million yen.’ One sign of declining support is
the ratio of support staff to researchers: the ratio fell from 0.85 technicians
per researcher in 1965 to 0.31 in 1985. The result, says Yamamoto, is that
young researchers and students spend their time doing chores that could
be done by less highly qualified people.

Yamamoto was one of the organisers of a survey carried out by the Chemical
Society of Japan earlier this year which showed strong dissatisfaction among
university chemists. He says that the conclusions reflect conditions in
other fields of research. One finding was that 85 per cent of researchers
were dissatisfied with their budgets or equipment.

A similar survey in the US found that about two-fifths of scientists
felt that their research equipment was insufficient. The survey and Yamamoto’s
article in Nature suggest a new willingness by Japanese scientists to criticise
the academic establishment which controls their working lives.

The most famous critic of the system is Susumu Tonegawa, a Japanese
Nobel laureate who works in the US. After winning his prize in 1987, Tonegawa
shocked the Japanese establishment by condemning the rigid hierarchy of
Japan’s university system. Yamamoto agrees that young Japanese scientists
have less freedom than their American counterparts: ‘Brilliant individuals
may find it difficult to try out their own ideas, especially when they are
supervised by mediocre, unsympathetic professors.’ On the other hand, the
Japanese system means that young researchers do not have to spend much time
applying for grants, making it ‘reasonably effective in sustaining research
activity’. One sign that the quality of Japanese research is improving is
the number of contributions to international journals.

Japanese scientists have written an increasing percentage of the papers
published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in recent years.
They now write 10 per cent of them, compared with 2 per cent in 1970. Nevertheless,
Japanese officials are sensitive to the charge that they have enjoyed a
free ride by exploiting research undertaken overseas.

The government in Tokyo is trying to encourage science that is more
creative through schemes such as the Erato programme, which pays for ‘blue-skies’
research by joint teams of scientists from universities and industry. However,
any fundamental attempt to reform university research is likely to fall
foul of the Ministry of Education, one of the government’s most conservative
departments.

One source of new ideas is the large number of foreign scientists coming
to work in Japan. A survey published last week revealed that 1800 foreigners
from 106 nations are working in Tsukuba science city alone.

*’Japanese universities feel the chill’, Nature, vol 339, p 575.