Japanese Bonanza

Some of Japan's corporate executives are amused at the way they keep running into each other these days. They meet at fund-raising luncheons where their unlikely hosts are a succession of scholars and officials from American universities. Harvard's Far Eastern Specialist Edwin O. Reischauer (Beyond Vietnam: The United States and Asia) was back in Japan recently for the third time in five months, "to thank them for what they have done and to ask them for more."

What the Japanese have done is shower money, in sums of $1,000,000 or more, on a handful of U.S. universities that offer at least some Japanese studies. The total so far is $16 million, but there is almost certainly more to come. While the Japanese government has given $1,000,000 to each of ten U.S. universities,* the fund raisers have their sights set on the great industrial combines that do extensive business with the U.S. The universities have already discovered that they can sometimes get money from such Japanese firms simply by asking.

The first corporate million came from giant Mitsubishi a little over a year ago. Harvard's Jerome Alan Cohen, who was teaching at Doshisha University in Kyoto, suggested that Japan's largest trading house might spare that amount to endow a chair at Harvard Law School, and Mitsubishi agreed. Not to be outdone, the rival Sumitomo group gave $2,000,000 to Yale in June; four months later, Mitsui promised $1,000,000 to M.I.T. (from which a Mitsui founder graduated in 1878).

Although Japan's multibillion-dollar zaibatsu will hardly miss the money, they have no tradition of corporate giving and get no tax exemption for it. So why the sudden generosity toward U.S. higher education? The motive seems to be one of enlightened self-interest: anything that improves Japan's image in the U.S. is not likely to hurt sales of Japanese goods. Says Sumitomo Executive Giichi Miyasaka: "The Americans get angry about the seemingly obtrusive attitude of the Japanese, but they have not made much effort to discover why the Japanese act like that." He hopes that expanded studies of Japan in the U.S. will help create more understanding and good will.

Nobody has tapped this sensitivity to image more than Harvard's Reischauer. In Japan six weeks ago he accepted a check for $1,000,000 from Nissan Motor Co.; a similar sum was soon pledged by Toyota, Japan's other leading carmaker. But the former Ambassador to Japan (1961-66) will need all his diplomatic skill to achieve his ambitious goal: he is seeking funds to set up a $15 million Japan Institute at Harvard, and he hopes to get two-thirds of the money from Japan.

This month the United Nations General Assembly is virtually certain to approve a plan that would expand the range of Japanese largesse to international education. The Japanese government wants a United Nations University to be built at the new academic town of Tsukuba, 45 miles northeast of Tokyo. First proposed by U Thant in 1969, U.N.U. would have no formal classes or degrees but would be a sort of international think tank for the study of world problems. In addition to its main campus, it would have branches round the globe.

Several nations, including Canada and Tunisia, have offered to provide a site for the university's headquarters. But Japan recently won the overwhelming approval of the General Assembly's Economic Committee by pledging $100 million toward the university's proposed endowment of $400 million. It will also pay half the yearly operating expenses and the entire cost of land and buildings.

Some Japanese complain that the project is too costly, even for prosperous Japan, and that the money would be better spent on the country's own overcrowded universities. To be sure, none of the other interested nations felt that they could afford anything like the Japanese pitch. Which is, of course, why the Japanese offer seems to be one that the U.N. Assembly can hardly refuse.

* Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Michigan, Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, Stanford, Hawaii and the University of Washington at Seattle.

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