Introduction

In recent decades, Japan has pursued policies of internationalization and globalization in many aspects of both private-and public-sector affairs. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, many Japanese universities added an ‘international department’, and generous budgets were allocated for these. Also, many Japanese firms began investing more heavily overseas. Nevertheless, internationalization as a concept, and interest in this, in Japan substantially pre-dates the 1980s. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 opened up Japan to foreign countries,1 and internationalization in the sense of learning from the West was of the utmost importance to the Meiji government. The Meiji view was that Japan needed to catch up with the West in order to avoid being colonized. Another wave of internationalization initiatives swept the nation after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. Japan was gripped by an urgent national urge to learn about Western perspectives and standards, and about institutions such as democracy and competitive markets. In addition, increased interest in internationalization accompanied successive attempts within Japan to liberalize the nation’s trade rules.2 All along, however, some Japanese feared internationalization; they worried that some of the new ways brought in from abroad might harm Japanese society.