Japanese Culture Challenges Visiting U.S. Scientists

Two years ago, Joseph Alexander, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University, returned to his Nashville, Tenn., position after a six-month stay in Japan, during which he learned how to apply nonlinear systems theory to models of biological systems. It's a new field, but one in which his hosts at Kyushu University already excel. Today, Alexander's fond memories of his NSF-sponsored visit are still very much alive. Indeed, about his life in the city of Fukuoka, where Kyushu University is located, he says: "A part of me feels most at home there. I love the experience I had in Japan." Alexander continues to study the Japanese language, he writes in Japanese to friends he made there, and he plans to make annual visits to the country he now considers a second home. Craig Van Degrift, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has turned a life-long interest in the Japanese language into a small business. It's all part of his attempt to help his native country remain on top in science. Several years ago, Van Degrift joined a small Japanese language study group at NIST, which used as its text the University of Wisconsin's Comprehending Technical Japanese, a book especially suited to the needs of scientists. In 1988 Van Degrift packed up his wife and two daughters and spent a year at Tsukuba, Japan's rapidly growing "Science City" outside Tokyo. His prior language training was a great help to him there, and when he returned to the United States he decided that others might benefit from a computerized version of the textbook. The result is a software program called Kanji-Flash/BTJ, a flash-card program that helps students learn the 500 most important characters in the written Japanese language (called kanji characters) as well as 4,000 technical words. The University of Wisconsin Press has licensed the program and plans to use it as a companion to a new textbook, Basic Technical Japanese. --R.S.J. Alexander is among a small but growing contingent of United States scientists going to Japan for the intellectual opportunities it affords them. They are returning not only with new skills, but also with an appreciation for alternative ways to do science, as well as a sense of how the two countries can coexist economically. "The Japanese taught me to look at problems from a different point of view," says Dean Ebesu, a mechanical engineer at Fusion Systems, a high-tech firm in Rockville, Md., who spent a year at a Nissan engineering laboratory in Yokosuka as part of a program run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Westerners tend to have specific ideas about the distinctions between research, design, and manufacturing. In Japan, the boundaries are not so clear cut. But it is important to go there yourself to see how they do it." U.S. bookstores are filled with volumes explaining and extolling ways in which the Japanese have acquired their formidable technological prowess. But there's no substitute for seeing the Japanese in action, agrees physicist Craig Van Degrift, who returned two years ago to his job at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., after working in Japan for a year on the development of new international standards to measure electrical resistance. "I'm convinced that Japanese science and culture is accessible," he says, "but only to those who pursue it." These scientists are reversing a tradition of one-way scientific communication between the U.S. and Japan that, for two generations, witnessed Japanese scientists coming by the thousands each year to learn and work in U.S. universities and government laboratories. But the confluence of Japanese technological advances and Japan's dominant position in the global economy has prompted growing numbers of U.S. researchers to look to that country as a source of scientific enrichment. The National Science Foundation is trying to help scientists seize the opportunities they perceive. With the financial support of several Japanese agencies, NSF has created programs to support researchers in Japan for periods ranging from three months to two years. Since 1988, the agency has sponsored extended visits by approximately 220 scientists, a major increase over the annual handful of scientists that visited Japan for more than a few weeks in decades past. There are also several university-based programs for scientists who wish to prepare themselves for their overseas assignment (see accompanying story). More than a dozen universities have programs for scientists and engineers who would like to work in Japan. The programs typically offer language training and information about the culture and business practices there, followed by a stint of up to two years in a Japanese laboratory. A partial list of universities offering such programs includes the following: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University, University of Washington, Cornell University, University of Tennessee, University of Texas, University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh, Indiana University, University of Cincinnati, Ohio State University and North Carolina State University. Each program has its own focus. The University of Cincinnati program is preparing engineering students to complete a six-month co-op exchange in a Japanese facility after three years of classroom preparation in Japanese language and culture. Students are first placed in one of 50 manufacturing plants in the Cincinnati area that are owned by Japanese companies, and then go to work at a similar facility in Japan. --R.S.J. One of the reasons for the growing popularity of such long-term visits, say those who have participated in them, is the hospitable environment that U.S. scientists are likely to encounter in a Japanese laboratory. "He was brilliant and courteous," says Alexander, who first met his Japanese host, Kenji Sunagawa, while Alexander was completing a joint M.D.-Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Sunagawa was a visiting researcher there. "Even when I was a graduate student at Hopkins, he treated me as an intellectual equal. In America, people who are successful, intelligent, and hardworking also often are aggressive, inaccessible, and sometimes rude." Alexander and others say that U.S. scientists are more likely to have a positive experience if they take the time to study the language and culture of their host country. Robert Young, a geneticist at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, recalls fondly his participation in a festival in which he and 100 other men carried a two-ton shrine down a road lined with cheering throngs of Japanese. He also watched the sun rise from the peak of Mt. Fuji as part of a two-day climb with his teenaged son to celebrate the boy's 16th birthday. Since returning to South Carolina from a six-month NSF-sponsored stint at the National Child Medical Research Center in Tokyo, Young has hosted several Japanese scientists in his laboratory. While his Japanese colleagues pursue the most sophisticated molecular biology research, he says, they are slow to apply that knowledge to clinical medicine. One of Young's goals, in fact, is to bring his familiarity with such new prenatal testing procedures as chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and the entire field of genetic counseling to Japan. NIST's Van Degrift's education took place in Tsukuba, the Japanese "Science City," located some 40 miles northeast of Tokyo. "I gained a great deal of insight into what the Japanese are doing," he says about his time spent helping rebuild a laboratory to study the Quantum Hall effect, a material-independent electrical method of measuring resistance. Tsukuba is home to 125 private and 43 government research laboratories, and the number of private labs is expected to nearly triple by the end of the century. "The Japanese are serious about doing basic research," says Van Degrift, "and they have the money and the will." While these scientists say they have benefited from their Japanese experiences, the rewards seem more personal than professional. While most made progress on their research goals, none reported any boost to their careers based on academic or corporate interest in their travels. There were no rapid promotions, they say, nor even institutional pats on the back for taking the risk. "The record so far is not very good," said Justin Bloom, a former science attach‚ for the U.S. government in Tokyo who is now a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on Japanese science and technology. "People go there with government and corporate support, and some come back to find they are not given any credit for making the extraordinary effort." Douglas McNeal, who is an analyst in the Division of International Programs at NSF, says he believes a research experience in Japan can enhance the careers of U.S. scientists if they take the time to learn enough Japanese before or during the visit. But he acknowledges that he has no firm data to support that contention. "This is all so new and has grown so quickly," he says. "There is no systematic survey, and most of the participants have not been back in this country long enough for us to measure any effect on their careers." For a few scientists, however, the professional rewards of their Japanese experience were offset by personal discomfort. "I would definitely go back; it was almost the ideal research environment for me," says Michael Frace, a physiologist who returned to Emory University after spending year at Kyushu working on ion transport across membranes. "However, I don't think there is much opportunity to integrate myself into the Japanese science establishment. My impression is that Japanese academia is not open to Americans. Every foreigner I met was only there temporarily." Frace and others say Japanese culture is an insurmountable barrier to scientists who wish to blend in. One small but dramatic example of that, according to many visitors to Japan, are the local children who frequently point at Westerners and shout, "Gaijin, gaijin" ("foreigner"). But Van Degrift disagrees. He says the scale is clearly tilted in favor of those who are willing to integrate themselves into the culture. "I believe there really are opportunities for Americans to participate fully in Japanese basic research," he says, "but you have to learn the language well enough so that people there don't have to hold your hand." Van Degrift is also enthusiastic about professional opportunities in Japan. "They're not as likely to pay high salaries," he says, "but they offer first-class equipment and laboratories. We've taken scientists from the world for the last 40 years. But American scientists are ready to be plucked." Still, Van Degrift does not want to live there permanently. "When I was a kid," he says, "I dreamed of going to an alien culture. Japan is a close approximation. I have found an invigorating and fascinating culture, but I wouldn't want to live there full-time. It is too constrained in space and time. You can't just go off into the country on a wild drive." For U.S. scientists who hope to build ties to Japan, one alternative to working overseas is a career with a Japanese company that operates research facilities in the U.S. These companies tend to hire mainly U.S.-born scientists, and the number of such facilities is growing rapidly. There are also indications that U.S. corporations are beginning to value scientists who have experience in Japan. For such scientists, their investment may well lead to other opportunities. "I hope to stay involved and return to Japan," says geophysicist Tom Wilson, who went to Japan with his Japanese wife and three children for eight months while on sabbatical from West Virginia University. He worked with Japanese scientists on a study of geological features along the major fault lines beneath Honshu, work that already has led to three papers. He found his host open and generous with data and resources. Vanderbilt's Alexander has similar plans for future collaboration with his Japanese colleagues. "There is no way I would sever my connections there," Alexander said. He would like to be part of a vanguard of scientists working to bring the two countries closer together. "I've gained a tremendous insight into that culture by way of the language." he says. "When one side adjusts by learning the [other's] language, there is a limit to their understanding. But when both sides work on the [other side's] language, we gain so much. Any activity pursued passionately will benefit and embellish all other pursuits." Roger S. Johnson is a biochemist and writer in the Washington, D.C., area.

Japanese Culture Challenges Visiting U.S. Scientists

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