ABSTRACT
Superficially, Japanese universities have a structure quite similar to their counterparts in western countries: they have the same faculties, divisions and departments, the same type of staff hierarchy with professors, associate professors and lecturers or instructors, and a legally established institutional autonomy similar to that of western universities. Competent Japanese professors are as superior in ability and achievement as their western colleagues. Foreign observers therefore who are in touch with the formal structure of Japanese universities and their distinguished scholars, who are full members of the international academic community, may conclude that Japanese universities have little peculiar about them, and that if they have their problems, these must be of the sort common in western universities.
