¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

‘The research environment in the institute was stifling and depressing.
Young researchers were treated like slaves by their superiors, and often
had to follow the dictates of their professors even if they had better ideas
of their own.’

‘There are some excellent, well-funded and fully-staffed laboratories
here, on a par with if not better than those in the West. Foreign scientists
can perform top class research in Japan.’

THE COMMENTS are from members of a new community in the research world,
that of the gaijin scientists. Over the past few years, Japan has become
a land of opportunity to thousands of European and American researchers,
who have joined the country’s public and private research laboratories on
fellowships and, occasionally, as permanent staff. Experiences are varied
and often startling.

Ten years ago, virtually no foreigners came to Japan to do research.
Today, according to official figures, 4468 American and 1458 British researchers
now live in Japan. This may be a generous estimate – the government is embarrassed
by the fact that the US (with twice Japan’s population) and Britain (with
half) are hosts to 10 times as many Japanese scientists – but no one can
deny that the growth has been explosive.

This influx of gaijin, a common Japanese abbreviation of the words gaikoku
jin, or foreigner, will grow as Japan’s scientific influence strengthens,
as its companies become more internationally minded and as political pressure
mounts on the country to encourage a two-way flow of scientific know-how.
Some of the opportunities now available offer high tax-free salaries, free
accommodation and a chance to work with the latest equipment. But conditions
vary widely, as do the experiences of the people who have so far worked
in Japan.

A new guidebook, Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ*, examines the story so far. The book’s
editors, who included ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Japan correspondent, are members of
a voluntary organisation called the Science and Technology Action Group,
a sub-committee of the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan. They contacted
British researchers working in Japan and invited them to write about their
experiences. More than 20 replied with detailed case studies. The survey
promised anonymity, an important consideration in a society that discourages
the expression of strong personal opinions.

Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ identifies nearly 50 organised opportunities for foreign
scientists to work in Japan, ranging from one-off grants to large, well-organised
fellowships in academic and private-sector laboratories. But the STAG’s
survey found that not all institutes and companies have adjusted to the
idea of employing non-Japanese staff.

The most common source of frustration that emerged in the survey was
not living in Japan, despite its high prices and alien language, but the
place of work. A frequent complaint was that scientists ended up on projects
either less ambitious than or quite different from the ones they envisaged.
Some frustrations may be due to misunderstandings – one researcher who wanted
to study the soiling of buildings by air pollution found that her Japanese
counterpart had mistranslated this as soil science. Others found it a struggle
to fit into the different way of working of Japanese institutions, especially
in those not used to dealing with foreigners. Some found greater surprises.

Visiting scientists were often shocked at the physical state of their
host institutions and the way they were run. One postdoctoral fellow reported
of one of Japan’s most prestigious national universities: ‘I expected to
see gleaming, new, well-equipped laboratories. Instead I found a crowded,
underfunded laboratory in a shabby building which has not been decorated
for 20 years and which contained a lot of equipment that would be better
housed in a science museum . . . There is no technical support at all.’

Another British postdoctoral fellow had a terrifying experience at a
government oceanographic institute. ‘One of my first memories . . . was
being shown into a filthy room full of dust which housed the X-ray diffraction/X-ray
fluorescence machine that was to form one of the key elements of the research.
The research assistant who showed me into the room, and who was nominally
in charge of the machine, picked up a book listing previous users, blew
off the dust and found the name of the last user. He then called him up
to ask how to operate the machine.’ After a long battle with the instruction
manual, which the Japanese scientist could not understand, the machine sprang
to life. ‘All seemed to be going well, but after about an hour a warning
buzzer went off, a red light started flashing and the XRD shut itself down.
I looked down at my feet to see a huge pool of water emerging from underneath
the high-voltage machine,’ recalls the British expatriate. ‘The lesson to
learn from this is that there is a chronic shortage of technicians in nearly
all of Japan’s national universities. Any postdocs coming to a Japanese
national university should be prepared to get their hands greasy.’

Several postdoctoral fellows working in universities had similar experiences.
A physicist reported: ‘There are no technicians to speak of, and the computing
service, like many other things, is plagued by bureaucracy.’ A geologist
commented: ‘The main problem with getting research done is the lack of technical
back-up. Collecting samples and mapping are two basic requirements of many
projects in the earth sciences, and the lack of funds for these has meant
work here has been on a smaller scale than I originally planned.’

Some of the British researchers also had difficulty dealing with Japan’s
very different type of academic organisation. Even a university library
turns out to be different in Japan: each research group may have its own
budget for books and journals, and central facilities may be small or non-existent.
‘If you are in one library and want to look up a book in another, it can
be very frustrating,’ a university biologist wrote. Others found that an
institution’s libraries all subscribed to the major journals while the more
obscure publications were unobtainable.

The most satisfying stays in Japan, in terms of the work done, were
those in institutes with strong international links and world-class scientists.
‘Everyone in the high-energy astrophysics group speaks good English, is
friendly, helpful and used to working with non-Japanese researchers,’ said
one expatriate at an internationally-known institute near Tokyo. Another
found that: ‘The way I conduct my research and my working hours are exactly
as they were in Britain.’

A large number of respondents, however, complained of feeling cut off.
‘You must be prepared to live in relative isolation,’ warned a researcher
at Tsukuba science city, just outside Tokyo. A chemist at Nagoya University
wrote: ‘I would not advise anyone who feels incapable of working alone to
come to an institute of which they have no knowledge.’ A geologist at Kyoto
University wrote: ‘Many of the foreign students and researchers I have met
here complain of isolation.’

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs who came to work in Japanese companies had very different
experiences to those in academic or government institutions. Japanese companies,
which shoulder four-fifths of Japan’s spending on R&D, have enormous
research budgets, so laboratories are usually well equipped. Some foreign
researchers said they had sole use of equipment that would have to serve
an entire department at home.

Opportunities to work in Japanese companies are growing all the time.
A survey of more than 300 companies by the US National Science Foundation
in 1985 found that three quarters of them were ready to accept or already
employed foreign researchers. The survey predicted that the number of vacancies
for foreign scientists would grow by between 150 and 200 a year. This now
seems conservative. A serious shortage of scientists and engineers in Japan
has made skilled foreigners welcome. A few large companies, such as Toshiba,
have gone beyond hiring individuals and launched well-organised programmes
for accepting foreign researchers. The Japanese government is now considering
special tax incentives for companies that accept foreign researchers into
their laboratories. Researchers with skills in areas with potential commercial
applications are most in demand: Japanese companies are always hungry for
expertise in electronics, new materials and computer software.

Joining a Japanese company is not something to be considered lightly,
however. One respondent wrote: ‘The most important thing to say about social
life is that there is not much of it.’ An engineer with an electronics company
observed: ‘For a researcher with a full-time job, Saturdays and Sundays
are mainly designed for recovering from the previous week. I was permanently
tired for at least 18 months after coming to Japan.’ Even joining for a
short fellowship may involve a completely different way of life. Many companies
expect younger employees to live in dormitories, with restrictions on visitors
and no hot water at weekends.

The ability to speak Japanese is probably even more important than in
universities, yet practising the language at work can be difficult. ‘I got
angry when people wouldn’t speak in Japanese to me. I asked them to speak
in Japanese, which they would do and then immediately repeat it in English.
I asked them why they did this and they said when they spoke to me in Japanese
I frowned and this worried them. I realised that I was contributing to the
situation that made it difficult for them to speak in Japanese.’

Hierarchy is important, even in the comparatively freewheeling atmosphere
of a research laboratory. One engineer recalled an impossible relationship
developing with an all-powerful section chief, or kacho. ‘My first kacho
was directly involved in the decision to hire me and hence was very supportive
of my efforts to carry out research. My next kacho was a good English speaker,
thoroughly understood the working methods of Western scientists and was
a nice man to boot. My final kacho was a martinet and over the period of
a year our relationship deteriorated into mutual antagonism. The end result
was that my final six months in the company were completely wasted.’

Another peculiarity the foreign scientists found in Japanese companies
is the cult of the generalist; employees are encouraged to have a broad
range of experience rather than to concentrate on a specific field of knowledge.
‘It is not uncommon for researchers to be required to change their field
of research every few years. The tremendous amount of work involved in entering
a new field does not appear to dampen my colleagues’ enthusiasm.’

One danger is that in many Japanese companies, a foreign employee is
still a novelty, more a fashionable accessory than part of the team. ‘I
got the feeling that they wanted to employ me as a publicity stunt, with
no real need for my specialisation.’ Another said: ‘My group made me feel
welcome during the first few weeks but unfortunately this welcome was purely
at a social level. After lengthy discussions with my group leader, over
a period of time, it became clear that I was free to choose my own research
interest but that there would be no collaboration or guidance.’

One researcher who came to Japan on a fellowship scheme organised by
a very large electronics company found himself cut virtually adrift from
the work he wanted to do. ‘Soon after my arrival we had a major equipment
failure which lasted about a year. I asked to be sent to another facility
to get involved in experiments and this request was granted. I was accompanied
by a colleague, whose spoken English was the best in my group. Here we were
allowed to watch but participation was severely limited. Matters were made
worse by the fact that people refused to speak to me directly and always
went through my interpreter. After a few visits totalling about three weeks
I finally abandoned this course of action and began doing computer simulations.
My work was carried out in almost total isolation with very little input
from anybody apart from the group leader.’

Another cause of frustration comes from working, almost inevitably,
on the fringes of a research team. This may have more to do with the short
time that most expatriates expect to stay in Japan than with any cultural
prejudice. ‘If foreign researchers want to get into actual research projects
and work closely with Japanese researchers they would have to stay at least
five years,’ one respondent said.

Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ identifies several practical obstacles that most researchers
have to overcome during their stay in Japan. The first is getting the right
visa. Many researchers found that the message about the opening of Japan’s
laboratories had not reached the country’s embassies overseas. Obtaining
a visa often took three months or more. ‘My phone bill increased by about
Pounds sterling 200 due to continual requests for extra documents for the
visa, my contract starting date was delayed by four months and my nerves
were badly frayed.’

On arriving in Japan, the first crisis was usually a financial one.
Accommodation, apart from company dormitories, was often completely unfurnished,
sometimes without even light bulbs. The guidebook recommends taking at least
300 000 yen (Pounds sterling 1200) to see recruits through the initial stages.
Getting a loan in Japan is not a realistic alternative. Asking an institution
for an advance against salary is unheard of.

Learning Japanese was another worry. ‘I have come to believe that the
key to success or failure in Japan is the language,’ one researcher wrote.
Another commented: ‘One wonders why a company employs a scientist on a high
salary who can converse only at the level of a 10- to 12-year-old.’ Many
advised newcomers to start learning basic spoken Japanese before going to
Japan. Even the commoner greetings, plus ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’, will
go a long way. The study of the written language is much more difficult
than conversational Japanese, but even here the 55-character Japanese phonetic
alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are easy enough to learn before departure.
Any acquaintance with the Chinese characters that make up most written Japanese
will also help, but mastering them takes much more time and effort than
most people with full-time jobs can comfortably manage.

At work, essential books were often not available and computers were
mysterious. Most personal computers in Japan run on a proprietary operating
system developed by NEC, which is not compatible with IBM’s. And of course
screen-prompts and error messages are all in Japanese.

Despite all the cultural and practical problems, a remarkable proportion
of young researchers seem to stay on in Japan after their first fellowship
finishes. This is not always an encouraging sign. Officials of the Royal
Society in London, which administers the main official fellowships under
which British scientists can work in Japan, believe this may reflect the
difficulty of finding a job in Britain as much as the attraction of Japan
itself. To help such people, and to make sure that Britain receives something
in return for sending scientists to Japan, the Royal Society last year began
offering fellowships in Britain to scientists returning from Japan. The
scheme, called the Return Fellowships Programme, has an annual budget of
Pounds sterling 120 000 to support five or six returnees for a year in any
British scientific institute. Only one person received a fellowship in the
scheme’s first year. This year, the society has offered five grants, although
one recipient decided instead to stay in Japan .

Finding a job at home might be easier for researchers who have spent
time in Japanese companies, particularly in industries where Japanese firms
have a technological lead. One researcher told the Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ survey
that towards the end of his two and a half years in Japan, he wrote letters
to about 20 companies in Europe and received ‘positive replies’ from 80
per cent of them. There is a twist, however. ‘It was pointed out to me that
being able to speak Japanese or having experience of working in a Japanese
company is not something for which you will be employed directly. Thus,
on the negative side, the inevitable retardation that your professional
development will suffer due to language difficulties and lack of stimulation
while working in Japan will decrease your chances of a good job offer. In
addition, your high (by European standards) Japanese salary may deter some
companies from considering you for a job.’ Another wrote of his experience
after doing research in opto-electronics at a Japanese university: ‘British
companies appear uninterested in the Japan ‘experience’, even though my
research subject is regarded as a strategic technology in which Japan is
a world leader.’

This article has extracted some of the more memorable statements from
the Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ survey, which were inevitably the more negative ones.
Overall, however, perhaps the most surprising aspect of the survey was that
virtually none of the respondents regretted going to Japan. Almost all felt
that the experience had its rewards, although not necessarily the ones expected
when the scientists set out. Many remarked on the unexpected hospitality
of Japanese people towards foreigners and felt they had made valuable friends
and learnt something of a rich and distinctive culture.

Professionally, however, the gaijin scientists were more equivocal.
‘Try to do your postdoc as part of an international project involving Western
scientists,’ suggested a visiting fellow at Tokyo University. ‘There are
two reasons for doing this. One, you will have contact with people who are
truly interested in and understand your research. They will give you the
feedback, criticism, encouragement and stimulation necessary to make progress
in your research. And two, you will make the links necessary for your future
employment.’ For example, expatriates recommend the Institute of Space and
Astronautical Science (ISAS), the Ministry of Education’s space research
institute, which has long-standing relationships with foreign universities.
If such a placement is not an option, would-be gaijin scientists should
do a lot of homework. One respondent ‘strongly advised’ applicants to check
the publication record of their host institution. ‘In my case, a check would
have revealed that most of the research coming out of the institute, and
in particular, from the division I was to work in, was pretty mundane.’

Others advised caution when corresponding with potential hosts. A researcher
who went to Nagoya University found that expressions such as ‘we will be
happy to do work with you’ and ‘we are interested in your field of study’
did not mean ‘we are active in your field of work’. A visiting fellow at
a national institute in Tokyo advised: ‘The potential project should be
worked out in as much detail as possible beforehand. Past publications are
a gauge by which you can judge the suitability of the host institute. It
is also useful to get an idea of the facilities available to perform the
proposed work.’

Much the same goes for scientists contemplating a stay in a Japanese
company. ‘Two pieces of advice. First, meet the people who you will work
with, check on their English ability and whether you will be able to work
with them on a day-to-day basis. Secondly, carefully examine the job they
want you to do. Japanese companies tend to be indiscriminate about the people
they hire because they train them on the job. However, due to language difficulties,
on-the-job training will be difficult for you, so you should choose a job
where you can make the most of your skills.’

The group surveyed for Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ may have been a self-selecting
sample – those who really could not cope with Japan had already left. Nevertheless,
the message seems to be that Western scientists are benefiting from the
Japan experience, although not always in the way they expected – but then
that is nothing new to people prepared to experiment.

* * *

Still time to apply for a temporary posting

SALARIES and allowances in Japan reflect the fact that the country is
the most expensive place to live in the developed world. Expect prices to
be double those in Britain and rent – if you have to pay it – to be many
times higher.

The most generous research fellowships are those organised by private
companies, such as Toshiba. More typical are two schemes that the Royal
Society runs, one with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and
the other with the Science and Technology Agency.

The JSPS scheme offers fellowships of 12 months for postdoctoral research
in Japanese universities or institutes belonging to the Ministry of Education,
Science and Culture. Under the STA scheme, researchers may spend between
six months and two years in Japanese national laboratories and public research
corporations.

Each offers one economy class return fare to Japan, plus a stipend of
270 000 yen per month. (When this article went to press, there were about
280 yen to the pound.) In addition, there is a housing allowance of 100
000 yen per month and, where appropriate, a family allowance of 50 000 yen
per month. There is also a settling-in allowance of 200 000 yen and fellows
on the JSPS postdoctoral scheme may receive 500 000 yen for lessons in Japanese.
Medical and accident insurance are free, and visiting fellows are not liable
to Japanese income tax.

Applications for next year’s intake for both schemes, which run from
April 1991, are due by the end of this month. The Royal Society says it
will consider serious applications that miss the deadline.

*Gaijin ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, by the Science and Technology Action Group of the
British Chamber of Commerce in Japan, will be published on 10 September.
The STAG meets in the British Club, Ebisu, Tokyo, once a month. Contact
¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Tokyo office for further information.