Japan's international position in research has declined, ranked tenth with the top 10% of papers over a three-year average, and falling outside the top 10 when considering individual years. Although firms' internal reserves are increasing, investment in new R&D is not as advanced as in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, we have yet to see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. How will we confront these times? In the second New Year Interview, we spoke with Michinari Hamaguchi, president of the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
He graduated from the School of Medicine, Nagoya University, in 1975 and received his PhD in 1980. He became an assistant professor at the Disease Control Research Facility attached to the School of Medicine, Nagoya University, in 1984, a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Rockefeller University, in 1985, a professor at the School of Medicine, Nagoya University, in 1993, director of the Graduate School of Medicine and dean of the School of Medicine in 2005, and president of Nagoya University in 2009, and has held his current position since 2015.
Creating an environment where young people can play an active role - The energy of universities is declining
The decline in funding is one factor, but the other is an environment where the potential of young people is not fully realized. For example, only 5% of university researchers in their 30s have more than three years of experience abroad. It is also only 10% even for those in their 40s. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were about 200 Japanese studying for their PhD in the United States, but the number has now decreased to about 120. On the other hand, the number of Chinese nationals has increased to 6,000, Indians to 2,000, and South Koreans to 2,000.
Did the DNA of young Japanese researchers change, turning them all into people who are secluded and feel closed in?
Actually, that is not the case. Since the start of the emergent research support project, about 500 people have been chosen over two years, and 40% of them have had three years or more of overseas experience. The money that goes to emergent research isn't that high, but it's enough to cover running costs and hire graduate students as RAs. However, universities are asked to create an environment in which they can become self-reliant.
The review consists of two document reviews and an interview. Some reviewers have to hold discussions with young researchers from morning to evening for four days, but they all say, "It's fun," "There's a lot of very challenging bold research," "There are proposals that you'd never see with other competitive funding topics," and "I'm filled with energy." Perhaps their overseas cultural experiences are giving rise to bold ideas. We have asked the reviewers to "choose from all over Japan as much as possible" and to "make sure to choose women as well in order to maintain diversity."
As a result, there is almost no prefecture that has not produced researchers, and the ratio of women is 20%. The ratio of women in the strategic basic research promotion project is 5% to 7%, so when I was looking at that alone, I thought "I wonder if there are not that many female researchers in Japan?," but the Jun Ashida Award, which started four years ago, made me realize that this was a mistake. If Japanese female researchers who are active overseas serve as reviewers, female researchers will probably think, "These people will review the proposals without any glass ceiling," so there will be more applicants and the level will be so high that they will struggle to choose each time.
Every year, the JST President's Award is given without being able to narrow it down to one person. For example, the person who is researching the origin of life in the universe and won the award in 2020 had a different career path from men. She graduated from a private university, did a master's at a different university, studied chemistry for her master's and space for her PhD, and now researches the origin of life in the universe. It's a very strategic approach to career building. Quite a few men become postdoctoral fellows in the same lab where they were undergraduates, master's students, and PhD students, turning 40 without getting to know the rest of the world. Compared to that, women have more diversity in their careers. Rather than gathering people from different fields to create diversity, there is diversity in that person's being. This is a new model.
There are more and more people in Japan who go into their essential work while experiencing various things. Such people will apply for emergent research; so in 10 or 20 years, there will be people who become the next Dr. Syukuro Manabe and Dr. Isamu Akasaki. I feel hope for their future. The challenge is to make these people self-reliant first. The age at which the Nobel Prize winners were inspired to publish their papers was from their 30s to early 40s. There is a season for researchers who do groundbreaking work. In that season, if an independent research environment is not guaranteed, the talent of that person is likely to wilt. It's a major job for old people like us to arrange an environment where they can bloom. In addition to sowing seeds, we must pour water, add fertilizer, and create an environment where large flowers can bloom. We have made a lot of progress on this in the last few years.
New funding initiatives
If Japan is unable to develop new technologies and start new industries, it will become a matter of life and death in the long term. For this purpose, discussions about methodology, such as funding and how to support science and technology, are necessary. It's true that there are few investments, but many times the methods are also old-fashioned.
The Millennium Challenge of the moonshot project invited young people to submit proposals on research themes. 21 teams were chosen from a total of 120. Over six months, discussions were held within the proposal teams, among the teams, and so forth, to identify various issues, and the number was narrowed down to seven teams, which were then merged into five teams. Finally, two proposals were chosen. One of them is to directly confront typhoons and hurricanes that are becoming massive as a result of climate change. Young generations have proved in simulations that damage can be prevented if the force of the typhoon is reduced. Increasing the pressure of Typhoon No.19 in 2019 by 5 hectopascals would have reduced the amount of damage by 180 billion yen. Though methodological problems remain, the proposal has a degree of reality in thoroughly thinking about this difficult problem and taking it on head-on.
With emergent research, we don't simply select and give research funds to excellent researchers. That's where we start, and the teachers who make the selection take the lead in gathering the selected people to create a forum for various discussions. In addition, we are trying to create a kind of support system to facilitate fusion and form diversity among individuals by incorporating various information and stimulation for talented people through interactions that go beyond expertise.
A culture of mutual understanding
We have made quite a lot of progress in preventing the serious health effects of COVID-19, but it will not disappear as an infectious disease, due to it being a common disease. In this context, what strategies must be developed? We are entering a phase in which we need to change the level of science and technology and risk management a little more. Japan was efficiently manufacturing vaccines in the 1980s, but we lost that at some point. This is something our society as a whole should reflect on. There were too many emotional arguments, and there were too many things that caused serious damage with opinions not based on quantitative analysis.
A recent example is the cervical cancer vaccine. More than 10 years have passed since it was implemented in Europe and the U.S., and it is clearly effective. Without vaccination, Japan will become a country with so many cases of cervical cancer that hundreds of people will die annually. Including the limitations of science, as a whole, we need to have a calm debate about how our majority can live safely. At the same time, there is a very strong social pressure. This is why Dr. Manabe doesn't want to come back to Japan. If this situation continues, no more Nobel Prizes will go to Japan. We need a culture that has a little more tolerance for things that are different and where we build relationships of mutual understanding through calm discussion.
New momentum in the third transition period
Historically, the present age appears to be a third transition period. The first transition period was the Meiji Restoration, the second was the postwar period, and now we have the present period. In the first and second transition periods, it was young people who drove the transition. For example, the first principal of Nagoya Prefecture's provisional hospital and medical school (established in 1871), which are the earliest origins of Nagoya University, was Shinpei Goto, who was 24 years old at the time. The next principal was Takayuki Kumagaya, aged 26. Looking at the postwar period, a typical example is Sony. Sony was created by Masaru Ibuka in his 30s and Akio Morita in his 20s. This is a time when we must listen to the youth's sharp perceptions of the times. The ones driving the postwar universities were those who survived the Pacific War and returned after crossing the line of death. They had different views of life and death from the next generation. People in those days were calm, had solid values, and weren't obsessed with honor. Although death has become scarce in modern society, COVID-19 has made Japanese society as a whole realize that death is all around us. There will probably be momentum to discover new values from there.
This article has been translated by JST with permission from The Science News Ltd.(https://sci-news.co.jp/). Unauthorized reproduction of the article and photographs is prohibited.