Japanese universities ‘closed to foreigners’, say overseas staff

I am very fortunate to have worked for three years at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. This is a Japanese university which is run in English, in order to attract foreign staff and students. We incomers are brilliantly supported by bilingual colleagues. Many of us are trying hard to learn Japanese. Sadly it is becoming clear to me that I will never be able to write Japanese properly, I'm too old and I'm too busy working. i think the language is the core problem.

It sounds like they have a healthy balance between learning from abroad and being rooted in your own culture and language. Other western countries could also learn from Japan's strict immigration policies.

My father was a visiting professor at a top Japanese University in the 1990s. I cannot say that he felt very welcome. Talking with a few Japanese colleagues working in Europe what I understood is that it is very difficult even for them to get back into the Japanese system, so language only explains part of the story. But Japan is less of an exception that we might think - many countries of continental Europe have an academic system that is substantially closed to foreigners, who might be accepted as temporary visitors but not as tenure-track staff.