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In this paper, I reflect upon my journey of learning to do comparative education research over the last decade and half. It involves transnational moves from Japan, Canada, US, Australia and back to Japan where I encountered numerous 'others'. I use my story of a series of relocations as an entry point for theorising what I mean by 'negative' comparative education. Drawing on Andrea English and the Kyoto School of Philosophy, I use the term 'negativity' in the philosophical sense. That is, it refers to affective experiences of discomfort, perplexity and confusion as an important catalysis for generative learning and unlearning. It is a story of learning to let go of the familiar language and frame of seeing the world and embracing disruption as a critical moment for new learning. In conclusion, I argue that negative comparative education offers a methodological stance that enables us to undertake comparative research in a manner that challenges the Eurocentric geopolitics of knowledge and hence to contribute to the pluriverse world.

This paper examines how social isolation in a non-Anglophone context where English is not the main language of instruction for local students but is for international students, has unintended consequences for social capital formation among the latter. What factors influence international student network formation in such places where linguistic barriers are institutionalised and what are their consequences not only during college but beyond, in shaping students' career plans? Using qualitative interview data with 67 international (originating from Asian countries) and domestic students in Japanese universities, we find that such institutional barriers negatively promote greater isolation of international students but positively encourage the formation of diverse multinational ties -- a process through which international students gain ideas, confidence and direction regarding their post-graduation career plans to work transnationally.

This paper explores how bureaucracy impedes the implementation of higher education (HE) policy at Japanese universities. Administrative systems employ Weberian legal-rational bureaucratic practices that are central to the institutional identity of a university. Rather than the means to internationalisation and reform in general, these systems themselves become the end, usually in direct opposition to not only innovation and change but, indeed, the university mission itself. After first outlining the macro-level processes and policies of the internationalisation of Japanese HE, I take an ethnographic approach to illustrate the micro-level administrative practices and assumptions at the university, framing them within the social theory of bureaucracy to allow for comparison with HE in other parts of East Asia and worldwide. As a way forward, I propose we borrow theories on social entrepreneurship to potentially resolve the challenge of embedded administrative practices and static institutional identities, a bureaucratic "utopia of rules" [Graeber, D. 2015. "The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy." New York: Melville House].

Globalisation and convergence in educational policy worldwide has reinvigorated, while rendering more complex, the classic theme of educational transfer. Framed by this wider pursuit of new understandings of a changing transfer/context puzzle, this paper explores how an ethnographic "thick description" might complement and extend recent research. Specifically, it relates findings from extended ethnographic work on an attempt by a prominent Japanese university to "import" the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This rare case of explicit "borrowing" from a supranational space directly to the domestic institutional level, when approached in such a way, suggests new insights to help the field refine understandings of the processes, "shape-shifting", and "success" of international policy migration. (Contains 3 notes and 1 figure.)

This paper notes that universities are mobile. That is, models of universities are transferred or borrowed or move around the world and in the process of moving or being moved they tend to change or be changed from the kind of university they were--either in practice or as ideals at the point of origin. To explore these themes the article discusses the mobility of "the German university" with special reference to the creation of Japanese and American universities in the late nineteenth century. Different social actors undertook the "transfer" of the German university in both cases for somewhat different reasons, and the mobility took place at different speeds and with different kinds of struggles. The ways in which "the German university" was fitted into its new contexts was also different, and by the time the mobility process was well underway, it had become clear that it was not the same version of "the German university" which was being "borrowed" in the two places. In its new contexts, the new university later helped to shape the emergent systems of higher education in Japan and the United States and, much later, its political and social roles also diverged.

The economic, social, and educational history of the Burakumin--a Japanese minority group--is traced since 1603. The role of Burakumin activism--plus increased national awareness and economic well-being--in promoting economic, social, and educational improvement is reviewed. It is noted that Burakumin progress toward further social and educational equality remains to be seen. (BRR)

Provides historical background for understanding social changes and the resulting problems facing Japan's schools. Topics include resistance of youth to society and its schools, the breakdown of regional communities, the impact of competition for grades, and the changing role of teachers. (JHZ)

Democratization of education in Japan is still recent, and women continue to lag behind men in higher education. However, women's expectations of social participation are increasingly higher, and in another 10 years women graduates of the mass stage of higher education will reach the age for influential decision-making positions. (JHZ)