THE JAPAN PRIZE WINNER'S PROGRAMME

The posters appeared last Autumn. A sudden eruption like late flowering
poppies. Mount Fuji shrouded in cloud in the middle distance. The rising
sun behind. A bullet train hurling through the foreground. Obviously Japan.
But not for tourists. The call was for twenty outstanding students --
uitblinkers no less, and not only outstanding but blessed with talent,
ambition, and grit. No mean requirements. Plainly this was to be no
holiday. In fact, the call came from the Dutch Ministry of Education,
Culture, and Science and the intention was far from touristic. The posters
advertise the Japan Prize Winner's Programme -- the single major
educational initiative on Japan in the Netherlands in recent years. 

By Richard A. Boyd

The programme is the outcome of discussions involving the Ministry, the
Federation of Dutch Employers (VNO) and leading Dutch universities. Those
discussions were born of a sharp awareness that the centre of gravity in
world affairs has shifted eastward, and that Asia and particularly East
Asia has come to have a significance which cannot be ignored without
detriment to the Netherlands. The conclusion was that where once
educational programmes and exchange schemes were developed to prepare
leading Dutchmen and women for a world centred upon the United States of
America, with the result that American attitudes and behaviour became
familiar, and Dutchmen and women in all walks of life came to have close
and regular contacts with American colleagues, the challenge is now to do
the same for Asia and, specifically, for Japan.
The task of equipping a generation with a broad and serious knowledge of
any country is formidable. It is all the greater when that country is such
as Japan -- a complex, sophisticated, dynamic, and elusive civilization
articulated in terms simultaneously stranger to and familiar to the Western
tradition. And then there is the language -- a difficult writing system
(which the Japanese themselves take quite sometime to master) and a dense
grammar. Plainly Japanology and Japanese studies, imaginatively conceived
and well taught, cognizant of the facts of fundamental and constant change,
undeceived by a society which mimics its own traditions with the same wit
and ease as it does those of others, is a substantial part of the answer.
But constraints of time, finance, aptitude, and interest dictate that other
solutions be found for those young scientists, economists, engineers, and
lawyers who will not become 'Japan specialists' but who will inhabit a
professional world in which Japan is a significant force. In the
Netherlands, as elsewhere, the preferred solution has been for 'immersion'
in the form of a one year post-graduate course -- the Japan Prize Winner's
Programme -- together with an extension of existing exchange schemes, to
complement the traditional BA and MA programmes.

The Ministry is to make available 20 scholarships a year to Dutch nationals
who graduate from a wide range of discipline, with excellent grades, within
the statutory four years. The 20 'uitblinkers' will undertake a period of
intensive language work in the university of Leiden prior to their
departure for Japan. The language programme is specifically designed for
the purpose and is to be taught by native speakers qualified in teaching
Japanese as a foreign language. This preparatory period will be completed
by lectures and seminars on a range of aspects of contemporary Japan --
from the most basic and factual (economic, geographic, and demographic
statistics etc.) to the more analytic and interpretive. The lectures will
combine the comments of academic with the experience of officials, business
people and others. Specialist language and lecture work (again featuring
both academics and practitioners) will be continued in Japan under the
aegis of the Japan-Netherlands Institute. The core of the programme in
Japan is the placement -- not only in companies, but also in local and
central government, scientific agencies, law firms etc., in accordance with
the professional interest of the individual student. The programme will be
concluded in the Netherlands where the 'prize winners' will report on their
experience and communicate this to a wider Dutch audience.

The programme is scheduled to run initially for five years. The intention
is to continue it beyond that date and to internationalize it, that is to
open it to foreign nationals. The first group of students will start in
September 1995. Nearly seven hundred enquiries have already been received.
The posters will come down at the end of January -- the closing date for
entries. Classrooms are being prepared in Leiden. The Japan-Netherlands
Institute in Tokyo has had a fresh coat of paint. Local residents have been
warned: the Dutch are coming!

For more information, please contact:
Dr. R.A. Boyd
The Inter-University Programme for Modern Japan
University of Leiden
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands