Japan-based education experts discuss how rising geopolitical tensions are reshaping the internationalisation of higher education in East Asia, highlighting the need to balance security concerns with collaboration, social responsibility, and intercultural engagement.
Japan’s Former State Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Professor Kan Hiroshi Suzuki outlined Japan’s shift from SDGs to Sustainable Well-being Goals, arguing that education in the AI era must prioritise well-being, agency, authentic assessment, inquiry, and human-centred skills.
Dr Marcos Centeno-Martín illustrated how Japanese wartime newsreels were repeatedly circulated in Spain to serve shifting political agendas, utilising media to shape propaganda and collective memory.
Professor Brian Victoria of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, United Kingdom, argues that history in Japan was deliberately suppressed by the American occupation forces after 1945, who wanted a capitalist leader to serve as a fortress against Soviet communism in Asia.
At KAMC/MediAsia2025, scholars highlighted how Japanese newspaper coverage is shaped by systemic biases, resulting in an inward-looking press that disproportionately focuses on a few countries and neglects other nations. The discussion revealed how structural issues like the Japanese kisha club system and reliance on Western agendas contribute to shallow international reporting and declining public engagement.
Using the example of collage and montage artworks, Olga Isaeva illustrates how found everyday objects and fragments of reality provided 1920s Japanese avant-garde artists with tools to grasp the modern time and the role of art, the artist and the audience.
Professor Frances Shiobara examines whether Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule can be applied to language learning and examines opportunities for maximising students’ second language acquisition in the context of the Japanese education system.
Bilateral relations between China and Japan have historically been positive, yet the two countries have formed a situation of mutual distrust regarding both strategic and moral issues. Shi Chen discusses the reasons for the “locked” status of Sino-Japanese relations.
Japan’s election on July 10, 2016 for the House of Councillors saw yet another decisive election victory for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, making him one of the most successful leaders in the democratic world.
In the final part of Professor Stuart D. B. Picken’s “Death in the Japanese Tradition” monograph, he explains how Japan’s death system has been developed far beyond that of any Western civilisation, serving the needs of social control, nationalism and militarism, as well as the preservation of the family and the maintenance of the stability of Japanese society.
In Part 16 of Professor Stuart D. B. Picken’s monograph “Death in the Japanese Tradition”, he examines case studies of the different types of suicide present in modern-day Japan, from group and pact suicide, to forced suicide.
Professor Stuart D. B. Picken explores the influence of Nogi syndrome and post-World War 2 survivor syndrome on modern-day Japanese work culture, in Part 15 of his “Death in the Japanese Tradition” monograph.
From the 1932 “Three Human Torpedoes”, followed by a growing trend of group suicide, to the kamikaze suicide pilots of World War 2, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken examines the ways in which the militarist tradition of suicide has survived into Japan’s modern history.
Professor Stuart D. B. Picken explains the ways in which Japan’s Confucian social structures of harmony, duty and loyalty relate to its history of loyalty-inspired suicide in Part 13 of his “Death in the Japanese Tradition” monograph.
In Part 12 of his “Death in the Japanese Tradition” monograph, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken explains the apparent influence of the mentality of bushido, the way of the warrior, on Japanese attitudes towards death.
In Part 11 of Professor Stuart D. B. Picken’s “Death in the Japanese Tradition”, he compares and contrasts the Christian view of death with that of the Japanese Buddhist.
From suicide cults and self mortification to the worship of benevolent cultic figures such as Jizo and Amida, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken looks at the ways in which Buddhism in Japan provided a metaphysic of death that enabled the people to endure the hardships of life in the hope of a better hereafter, in Part 8 of “Death in the Japanese Tradition”.
Professor D. B. Picken looks at the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, how it was received and how it influenced the cultural mentality of the Japanese people in Part 7 of his “Death in the Japanese Tradition” series.
Professor D. B. Picken examines the history, formation, evolution and continuing importance of death systems in Japan in Part 6 of his 20-part series, “Death in the Japanese Tradition”.
In Part 5 of his “Death in the Japanese Tradition” monograph, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken looks at kami, and how the concern of the Japanese for the welfare of ancestral spirits is a feature that runs throughout their history and permeates every aspect of Japanese culture.
In Part 4 of “Death in the Japanese Tradition”, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken looks at the themes sounded in the classics that continue into modern Japan, and at the ancient folk beliefs, customs and rituals that are still maintained in many places today.
In Part 2 of his serialised monograph, “Death in the Japanese Tradition”, Professor Stuart D. B. Picken looks at Japanese attitudes to death through the ages, from primal awakenings to Prehistoric perceptions.
The first instalment of Professor Stuart Picken’s serialised monograph “Death in the Japanese Tradition: A Study in Cultural Evolution and Transformation”, explains where his study of the subject began, and outlines where he will go with it.
Alexander Krieg outlines the misconceptions surrounding hikikomori, and the ways in which social withdrawal may be best explained by existing psychiatric disorders.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
