“Make Japan Great Again” #1_Abstract

A Philanthropic Scholarship Program and Transnational Youths’ Yaritaikoto for “Social Good”

This is an excerpt from my 81-page anthropology thesis titled “‘Make Japan Great Again’: An Emerging Class of Transnational Youths and Their Yaritaikoto for ‘Social Good’.”

<Table of Contents>

1. Abstract
2. “What Do You Want to Do for ‘Social Good’?” (Introduction)
3. Collaborative Methodology (Research Methods)
4. Brief History of Japanese Political Economy (Historical Background)
5. The Extremely Vague Approach to “Social Good” (Data Analysis #1)
6. The Disparity between the Foundation and Scholars (Data Analysis #2)
7. “What is Your Version of ‘Social Good’?” (Conclusion)
8. Recommendations to the Yanai Community (Appendix)
9. Bibliography

In 2016, Tadashi Yanai launched a scholarship program to grant $380,000 each to about 40 students who attend a US or UK university per class. The scholarship admission evaluates applicants’ potential and yaritaikoto (roughly translated as curiosity, passion, and aspiration) to “develop Japanese society and the world.” However, the Foundation provides admitted scholars with little to no guidance regarding their education and career choices. As a result, a significant portion of Yanai scholars choose career paths in management consulting or investment banking, which many Japanese youth in general deem “conventionally popular options.”

This research unpacks the neoliberal logics of “social good” as expressed by a transnational elite higher education program that aims to make stagnated Japan “great” again. I compare and contrast how the Foundation narrates ambiguous descriptions of “social good” and how scholarship recipients interpret such a concept within the neoliberal value regimes they encounter in their social lives. In order to center students’ experiences over the Foundation’s intention, I ask: How do Yanai scholars discover and pursue their yaritaikoto during and after higher education?

I argue that the Yanai Foundation’s deliberately ambiguous model of “social good” serves to maintain, and sometimes exacerbate, societal obstacles for elite youths to identify and practice their yaritaikoto. However, the program administrators focus on individual efforts as a key component for “social good,” failing to recognize structural problems many Yanai scholars cannot overcome. Despite the disparity between the Foundation’s public mission and its scholars’ disengagement with “social good,” the administrators dismiss any constructive criticism as irrelevant. By blurring a temporal bound for “social good” and analogizing the student body to a long-term investment portfolio, the Foundation frames the program in a way that unfailingly enables itself to remain consistent with its alleged mission of “social good.”

Next >> “What Do You Want to Do for ‘Social Good’?” (Introduction)