I don’t teach it, but I’ve seen it. If you have the CV and a solid history of publishing, you can teach almost any subject at universities here. Having very strong Japanese opens doors beyond the English-taught programs.
Are asking about it as being taught in Japanese, or English?
[deleted]
Are you referring to positions specifically for non-Japanese nationals?
If so, I am sure they exist, but I haven’t personally seen them… so they may not be that great in number.
There are certainly Japanese professors who teach philosophy and related subjects in most universities in Japan.
I saw this post and created a reddit account to respond.
>Do you have any trained Western philosophers teaching philosophy at universities in Japan?
If you mean, did **anyone** get a PhD from a university in the anglosphere to teach philosophy in Japan? Then, the answer is yes.
At the same time, your question seems to be primarily something else, and I think I can address that. In fact, I joined reddit just to do that, because I felt the other answers seem to misunderstand the situation.
I have a PhD in philosophy and live in Japan and know roughly 30 to 40 philosophers in Japan. I personally know two non-Japanese employed as tenured or tenure-track philosophers in Japan. I know many Japanese people with PhDs who have been adjuncting for years and don’t have stable employment.
I’ve had interview from Kyoto and a couple of other places for non-tenured positions but not landed anything good myself after several years despite the PhD and a good set of publications.
There’s a few different things to be aware:
The job prospects for teaching philosophy *in English* are
* isolated to the top-tier of universities (the former imperials, high national hiroshima and tsukuba , the elite privates such as sophia, icu, waseda, aoyama). * At such institutions, hiring will be based on Japanese perceptions of the prestige of your PhD-granting institution (think Harvard , not Leiter). * The competition here will be graduates of these universities in Japan, Japanese who did PhDs abroad at high prestige places, and non-Japanese coming from high prestige places.
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The job prospects for teaching philosophy *in Japanese* are bleak in general, but they’re practically non-existent for non-Japanese natives.
At both types of institutions, philosophy is almost never a required class for others to take. So the demand is not very high. (on the plus side, that means the students do want to study philosophy).
I guess it’s possible that some low-tier private Christian or Buddhist university has a philosophy requirement and thus a need to hire someone and would hire someone who fits their views, but expect an extremely high course load, no tenure, and an institution that might collapse soon due to increasing drop in 18-year old population.
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I don’t teach it, but I’ve seen it. If you have the CV and a solid history of publishing, you can teach almost any subject at universities here. Having very strong Japanese opens doors beyond the English-taught programs.
Are asking about it as being taught in Japanese, or English?
[deleted]
Are you referring to positions specifically for non-Japanese nationals?
If so, I am sure they exist, but I haven’t personally seen them… so they may not be that great in number.
There are certainly Japanese professors who teach philosophy and related subjects in most universities in Japan.
I saw this post and created a reddit account to respond.
>Do you have any trained Western philosophers teaching philosophy at universities in Japan?
If you mean, did **anyone** get a PhD from a university in the anglosphere to teach philosophy in Japan? Then, the answer is yes.
At the same time, your question seems to be primarily something else, and I think I can address that. In fact, I joined reddit just to do that, because I felt the other answers seem to misunderstand the situation.
I have a PhD in philosophy and live in Japan and know roughly 30 to 40 philosophers in Japan. I personally know two non-Japanese employed as tenured or tenure-track philosophers in Japan. I know many Japanese people with PhDs who have been adjuncting for years and don’t have stable employment.
I’ve had interview from Kyoto and a couple of other places for non-tenured positions but not landed anything good myself after several years despite the PhD and a good set of publications.
There’s a few different things to be aware:
The job prospects for teaching philosophy *in English* are
* isolated to the top-tier of universities (the former imperials, high national hiroshima and tsukuba , the elite privates such as sophia, icu, waseda, aoyama).
* At such institutions, hiring will be based on Japanese perceptions of the prestige of your PhD-granting institution (think Harvard , not Leiter).
* The competition here will be graduates of these universities in Japan, Japanese who did PhDs abroad at high prestige places, and non-Japanese coming from high prestige places.
​
The job prospects for teaching philosophy *in Japanese* are bleak in general, but they’re practically non-existent for non-Japanese natives.
* **Reduced number of positions**. The falling birthrate already means a continuous decline in the number of 18-year olds, which matters here because universities reduce faculty through retirement. Unlike in the US where different majors aggressively compete to get people to join their major, many Japanese students *enter* university with a pre-decided major. Philosophy is not a particularly popular choice because odds on they never had it in high school and many universities responded with a bit more enthusiasm than appropriate to a MEXT minister saying “let’s get rid of the humanities” = less jobs available
* **properly understanding the job**. Compared to a job in an American university, much more of the job is committees, paper-pushing, and running a “seminar” (group of students you guide through their BA thesis). It’s one thing to lecture in philosophy in Japanese; it’s another thing to fill out reams of paperwork in Japanese to prove to the government that your university isn’t bogus. Since much of the job isn’t about philosophy per se, they’re going to much prefer the Japanese candidates. (note again that the philosophy seminar is pretty much easy to cut once the guy retires rather than replace).
* **increased competition**. Japan in order to raise the ranking of its elite universities expanded its graduate programs and started pumping out a bunch of PhDs. As I stated above, I know quite a few of Japanese philosophy PhDs. Some are gainfully employed; others scrape a living together with little prospect of anything forming. I know someone who has been adjuncting for > 10 years and applies to everything. On top of that, the programs that employ these people part-time feel kind of sorry for them and would throw them a bone if they could, but often they lose out to more elite graduates.
* **low understanding of international publishing.** The standard model for Japanese humanities is that publication is done through local ç ”ç©¶ä¼š “research seminars”? or the national equivalents. Basically, to be published you must present and impress the local group. There’s little comprehension of the international model where conferences and publications are basically completely separate.
* **timewarp** I can’t speak for other humanities but Japanese research in philosophy even at some of the elite places is time-warped. It’s like you stepped in the 1930s and only a small sliver of further research has been read — and it’s been read and interpreted through a lens of Japanese scholars who haven’t been communicating with others abroad. *Why doesn’t your work on justice cite Yamaguchi’s critique of Sandel*? Yamawho? Here’s his book with this esoteric interpretation… Umm.. because he doesn’t even seem to understand what he’s talking about … ? (part of this is that a decent percentage of the people at lower-tiered places can’t read/understand non-Japanese sources)
​
At both types of institutions, philosophy is almost never a required class for others to take. So the demand is not very high. (on the plus side, that means the students do want to study philosophy).
I guess it’s possible that some low-tier private Christian or Buddhist university has a philosophy requirement and thus a need to hire someone and would hire someone who fits their views, but expect an extremely high course load, no tenure, and an institution that might collapse soon due to increasing drop in 18-year old population.