ABSTRACT
This is a book about the careers and aspirations of Japan's scientists, with special attention to its bioscientists (the laboratory scientists who study the workings of the cell through biology, chemistry, and physics). At first glance, Japan would not be a particularly interesting country in which to study any of the sciences. As the twentieth century closes, Japan has yet to capture more than 1 per cent of the Nobel Prizes ever awarded in the sciences. And many commentators, Western and Japanese, have stated that good science, after all, requires original and innovative expression, which Japanese society seems to suppress in the name of consensus and group discipline. But what if there were Japanese scientists in an area of research that, despite a lackluster showing in the past, had the potential to attain world leadership, given a different organizational configuration? A closer look at the organization of those scientists' efforts - in particular, the ways in which individual scientific careers are rewarded - would tell us something about the makings of an internationally competitive science community as well as the place of the individual in Japanese society.
