What College Students in the United States Want to Know about Japan

Some eight years ago, an international specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology observed that Americans had become more interested in learning from Japan than simply learning about Japan.His audience, of which I was a member, was composed of academic specialists and administrators in science and engineering, and we certainly agreed with him.At that time I was promoting efforts at a state university to improve scientific cooperation between the United States and Japan, which included promoting the learning of Japanese language and social organization among students majoring in engineering and natural sciences.The university (North Carolina State University) had large departments in those fields, and a core of interested students -modestly sized but of high quality -was just coalescing.They were young people who believed that more knowledge about Japan's way of doing research and development could help them put together more competitive professional careers offering more opportunity.A subsequent career move gave me the chance to see what other kinds of students would find interesting about Japan.Some six years ago I left the engineering-oriented university to begin a teaching career that took me to a university with a liberal arts