A note on terminology: Japan has three major categories of universities, national, (kokuritsu), public (kōritsu), and private (watakushi ritsu, usually shortened to shiritsu). These terms will be used here, though there is sometimes confusion, as of course national universities are also public universities. It is best to think of public universities as local universities. According to the Japan Association of Public Universities (JAPU), kōritsu daigaku kyōkai, or Kōdaikyō for short, 62 percent are prefectural universities (including urban metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Osaka), 30 percent are city universities, four percent are consolidated city/prefectural universities, and four percent are some other form of incorporation.

Introduction

In the fall of 2003, while serving as Provost and Chief Operating Officer of Becker College in Worcester MA, I was contacted by an old friend and mentor from my days at Keio University about whether I would be interested in returning to Japan and working with a public university. In a very Japanese way there were no specifics mentioned, but I was very interested and after a few months of discussion and learning that the university was Yokohama City University, following a visit to YCU, I agreed. I was appointed president elect and worked, first from the US and then from Yokohama from September 2004 in planning a drastic reform of the university to be enacted following its entry into the new category of “independently administered public university entities” or kōritsu gakkō hōjin. The national and public university gakkō hōjin was created by the National University Corporation Law of 2003 with the rationale for creating them embedded into the descriptive title of an “independently administered” (dokuritsu gyōsei) entity. A detailed description on the incorporation of national public entities will be given later in the chapter, but the basic idea was for them to become more independent from their government entities and also to develop more of an individual character. Until gakkō hōjin incorporation, a foreigner would not have been able to become president of a public university, as when Yokohama City University was directly governed by the City of Yokohama, those employed in the university were public servants, kōmuin, and foreigners could not become public servants.