Asia-Pacific Week 2006 Japanese Studies Graduate Summer School ABSTRACT

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"Aka-hara" is a shortened form of "academic harassment" in Japan. This word includes not only sexual harassment but also different types of non-sexual unfair treatments in academic settings, such as bullying among faculty, discrimination against international students, appropriation of other's scholarly achievements, etc. While it has been several years since aka-hara became an object of public concern, few academic studies on it have been accumulated. How to describe the interrelation between the micro aspect of human relationship in each harassment case and the macro structure of Japanese academia as a whole in which harassers are condoned or harassment is justified is one of the major problems.

Through the document research I have done so far, I found that what was showed as the "causes" of aka-hara, such as sexism, the apprentice system, and negative aspects of personality formation in academic trainings, were often empirically described as traits peculiar to "Japanese" without showing persuasive analyses. In order to examine this point further, according to the advices from the seniors, it is imperative to study by the comparative to other countrie(s). I am not certain yet if I really take the comparative method for the doctoral thesis, or, if I do, which county or area I choose as a comparison, but it is worth being considered. In this summer school at ANU, I hope I can gain some clues to the point above by communicating and exchanging information with other participants and scholars from different areas.

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