Boundaries of Japanese-ness: Narratives and everyday nationalism among Japanese bioscientists in the era of commercialization

• In Event: 2254 - Culture and Narrative

Abstract

How do people retain and reproduce their claims for distinct cultural identity when global pressures create more similarities between “here” and “there”? Using the case of policy-changes in the commercialization of university research in Japan—changes that were explicitly modelled after its American counterpart—this article traces how Japanese university bioscientists make the new practices “Japanese” through narrative work. When explaining the difference between America and Japan, scientists spoke both of “culture” and of the institutional environment in Japan to justify why the different outcome was inevitable. Yet even the institutional environment was claimed to be a result of a very “Japanese” history and culture, instead of economic or structural constraints. This, then, made such narratives circular: things are such in Japan because it is Japanese. As I argue, using such narrative strategies, any imitation and implementation of a foreign structure can be made “Japanese” thanks to a Wittgensteinian rule-following paradox: because every instantiation of the model is unpredictably original, the adoption can always be claimed to be the very Japanese version of the original model.

Author

• Nahoko Kameo, New York University