It is to be hoped that readers will gain much from these 25 chapters, which range widely but admittedly cannot cover every single aspect of HE in Japan. Readers are encouraged to engage in further investigation of any item that is included, or not included, here. It is also to be hoped that this book will reach a wide range of readership, from expert scholars to those with a less profound but equally curious interest in things Japanese.

Here are a few words about how the book is put together.

• • Each chapter has its own endnotes, followed by a bibliography in alphabetical order of author’s or institution’s name.

• • Before this Foreword, after the list of contributors, comes a list of abbreviations with a direct connection to HE in Japan; toward the end of the book are three appendices: one in the form of a short essay on the chronology of Japanese history, and two lists of national and public universities respectively. Then follow a glossary of Japanese expressions, and the index.

• • The Roman alphabet is used throughout. For the Japanese language, Hepburn romanization is standard in this book (e.g “Shinjuku Nishiguchi,” not “Sinzyuku Nisiguti”).

• • In principle, Japanese words appear in italics, while proper nouns do not. Japanese personal names are generally given in the conventional Japanese order of family name first (e.g., “Okuma Shigenobu,” not “Shigenobu Okuma”)—except by request or in other special circumstances. The name order in the Notes and Bibliographies is as in the original publications. Length marks when necessary appear over the vowels in Japanese words, but not in proper nouns.

• • Some statistics, such as numbers of private universities, may vary slightly from chapter to chapter. This is due to fluctuations in those statistics, and the various timings or sources on which each author has chosen to concentrate.

• • Plans for the book were made before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and little mention is made here of its effects on what was the “normal” of Japan’s HE. It remains to be seen how long-lasting those effects will be, and indeed what shape they will take.