Japan’s scientific community is celebrating two Nobel wins this week, but the accolades have also reignited concern over the country’s ability to retain its top researchers amid growing competition from overseas.
The wins have renewed scrutiny of the country’s research system, with observers citing poor funding, job insecurity and rigid institutions as factors driving talent abroad – particularly to China.
On Monday, the Nobel Assembly announced that Shimon Sakaguchi and two American colleagues had been recognised for their “groundbreaking” discoveries on how the human immune system was kept in check. Two days later, Susumu Kitagawa became Japan’s 31st Nobel laureate for jointly developing with American and Australian colleagues porous materials that can store and release gases.00:29
While the awards have been applauded domestically, an editorial in the Sankei Shimbun on Wednesday suggested that Sakaguchi’s work had been “generously supported” by the US scientific community and that his award “would not be possible in Japan’s current research environment”.
The editorial pointed out that Sakaguchi’s research was “unconventional” and that it took the 74-year-old 20 years to prove his theory, followed by a further 20 years before he won the Nobel.
“Scientific research in Japan has slowed significantly since the beginning of the 21st century,” it added. “In contrast to China’s rapid progress, Japan’s international ranking in the number of high-quality papers published has fallen to the lowest rank among developed nations. The situation is critical.”
The recognition that came with Nobel Prizes was “an opportunity to quickly strengthen basic research and rebuild the foundations of science in Japan,” it said, adding that the government “must also do its utmost to stem the brain drain”.
China beckons
While some academics characterised the Sankei’s editorial as slightly alarmist, they agreed that more could be done to promote the sciences in Japan as other countries with deeper pockets were actively looking to lure top talent away.
“I received an invitation from a Chinese institution about a year ago, but I never had any intention of going because I am a graduate of Waseda University and I really want to help educate the next generation of young scientists,” Hideyuki Sawada, a professor in the School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Tokyo’s Waseda University, told This Week in Asia.
“But a colleague who had been working at a US university was also approached at the same time, and he has moved to China. For him, a big part of the appeal was the huge amount of research funding that was available, a very good salary, really good laboratory facilities and the chance to work with other experts in his field.”
Chinese institutions were particularly keen to attract scientists in the areas of astrophysics and quantum physics, Sawada said, and had research budgets that dwarfed those available at Japanese universities and even private companies.
Concern at the loss of Japan’s brightest and best to its economic rivals is not new, with the Asahi newspaper publishing a series of stories in 2023 examining the problem and declaring that the nation’s “brain drain is bound to continue if Japan doesn’t wake up”.
The biggest problem was a lack of stable funding for research, it said, with many scientists moving on from their positions at top-tier government research institutions at the end of their 10-year contracts, after which they shifted to positions with no guaranteed terms.
This insecurity is a factor in Japan falling from fourth in the world for scientific papers in 2000 to 12th in the world in 2020. In the same period, China rose from 13th place to outstrip the US to become the undisputed leader in 2020.
Chinese researchers published more than 46,000 highly cited papers in 2020, nearly 10,000 more than US scientists.
The lack of job security in Japan combined with better pay, facilities and conditions elsewhere was putting a generation of young people off science as a career, the Asahi claimed.
Kazuto Suzuki, a professor of science and technology policy at Tokyo University and a member of the government’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, agrees there are challenges in the sector but believes the media is overstating the problem.
“There are a number of scientists and engineers who choose to study abroad, mostly in the US, but in most cases they tend to come back to Japan after a few years,” he said, pointing to Sakaguchi, who is today a professor at Osaka University.
“But yes, there has been a strong push from China to get Japanese scientists. They are going for the money, but also the more generous research environment, bigger and better laboratories, state-of-the-art equipment and more students,” he said.
“For a lot of Japanese universities, that is just not possible. Even at Tokyo University, we face problems. So it is clear why these offers from China are attractive.”
The science and technology council has called on successive governments to invest more in advanced research, but prime ministers have recently been too busy trying to handle crises such as the soaring cost of living, the contracting population and security challenges, according to Suzuki.
And he fears that incoming Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will be similarly focused on dealing with those same issues while trying to keep on good terms with her political rivals so that her minority government can survive.
Japanese scientists also faced unique challenges, Suzuki added. One of them is a long-held policy of the Science Council of Japan that forbids research at universities into technology that has military applications or dual military-civilian uses.
“The US has no such limitations and nor does China,” Suzuki said. “So the concern should not be just about a brain drain, but how these scientists being attracted to China will help improve their military capabilities.”
