On 10 June 2024, UNU will host “Lessons from Japanese Education and Health Care”, a conversation with Professor Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, Warden of St Antony’s College, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. This event will start at 18:30 in the 2F Reception Hall at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.
From an ageing population to low birthrates, Japan has been at the front of a demographic transition that is accelerating across the developed world. As education and health-care policymakers in the UK and other advanced economies search for innovative ideas to improve their areas of responsibility, are there any lessons that they can take from Japan, which has largely been ignored as a source of policy models since the 1980s? Or are the underlying social, cultural, political and economic bases of the systems in each country so different that policy transfer would prove impractical?
Prof. Goodman will join UNU Rector Tshilidzi Marwala for a conversation exploring the policy lessons from Japan in education and health care. What innovation has occurred in Japanese policymaking since the 1980s in the face of its economic and demographic challenges? Are there lessons for policymakers in other advanced economies which are undergoing similar transitions? Has Japan shifted from policy inertia to a model for the rest of the world?
The UNU Conversation Series aims to foster audience participation; you are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all event attendees are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts.
Please note that this event will be in English. Advance registration (by 9 June at 15:00) is required.
Please be prepared to present identification at check-in.
About the speaker
Professor Roger Goodman has been the Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies since 2003 and the Warden of St Antony’s College and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford since 2017. Before taking up his current roles, he was the Head of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division from 2008 to 2017 and the inaugural Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies (SIAS) from 2004 to 2007.
He was elected a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2013 and was Chair of the Academy’s Council and President from 2015 to 2021. In 2024, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Social Science.
Professor Goodman holds a BA in Social Anthropology and Sociology from Durham University (1981) and a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford (1987).
His research has been mainly on Japanese education and social policy. His most recent book, co-authored with Jeremy Breaden, is entitled Family-Run Universities in Japan: Sources of Inbuilt Resilience in the Face of Demographic Pressure, 1992-2030 (Oxford University Press, 2020). Other monographs include Japan's International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren (1990) and Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan (2000).
Edited books include: Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (1992); Case Studies on Human Rights in Japan (1996); The East Asian Welfare Model (1998); Family and Social Policy in Japan (2002); Can the Japanese Change their Education System? (2002); Global Japan (2003); The 'Big Bang' in Japanese Higher Education (2005); Ageing in Asia (2007); A Sociology of Japanese Youth (2011) and Higher Education and the State (2012).
He has supervised nearly fifty doctoral theses on Japan on topics ranging from Shinto shrines to volleyball coaches, teacher unions to karaoke, hikikomori to firefighters, crying therapies to agricultural revitalization programmes, and rakugoka to SDF recruits.
