“Make Japan Great Again” #8_Appendix

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

7 min readMay 31, 2022

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>

8. Recommendations to the Yanai Community

As an anthropologist, I have been trained to describe what is happening on a day-to-day basis in a specific community rather than prescribing standardized advice (which inevitably fails to address each person’s unique and nuanced conditions). However, I do believe that anthropologists can and should offer useful insights that encourage people to think differently about their social lives. Since I started this project hoping to help my fellow Yanai scholars and the program administrators achieve their own versions of “social good,” I would like to propose five potential directions which our community could take: (1) engage in genuine self-reflexivity; (2) change the language around “social good”; (3) interrogate the invisible gatekeeping throughout the admission process; (4) maintain long-term accountability; and (5) actively stay involved in the Yanai community. Although these suggestions may seem common sense, I argue that the Yanai community as a whole (i.e. both the administrators and scholars) has never practiced them enough. Some of you may question the concrete actionability of my recommendations; however, my goal here is not to provide a standardized to-do list for a passive audience but to push each member of the Yanai community to contextually rethink what they need to change within their own specific sphere of influence.

Suggestions to Both the Administrators and Scholars

1. Engage in genuine self-reflexivity

Reflexivity, in its simplest term, involves self-critically reflecting on the relationship between oneself and others (Zurn & Shankar 2020a). In other words, reflexive individuals question how they are facilitating or challenging the ongoing reproduction of neoliberal priorities, supremacist logics, reductive assumptions, and colonial social relations through their daily behaviors, let alone yaritaikoto. All too often, our socially inherited biases remain unchallenged, which might end up turning our altruistic intentions into harmful impacts. When we are genuinely reflexive, however, we can undertake self-critique and acknowledge shortcomings associated with our personal and professional actions. As I described in Chapter 5, for example, no matter how much we hope to help people, most Yanai scholars — including myself — still implicitly attempt to keep or improve our socioeconomic status (e.g. I’m not donating all of my stipend to charity). If we hope to address “social bad” in the world, we need to look no further than ourselves because we are all so deeply entrenched in oppressive systems that we cannot critique any problems without undoing our own. In order to be genuinely reflexive, I suggest reflecting on our own identity that privileges some aspects of our lives while disadvantaging others’ and conscientiously changing harmful practices as far as possible and practicable. As my favorite activist anthropologist once told me: “If you wish to be a part of the solution, then you must understand how you are contributing to the problem.”

2. Change the language around “social good”

Throughout my interviews, the vast majority of the administrators and scholars agreed upon one thing: the idea of “social good” does not have to be as grandiose as the scholarship website’s marketing language indicates. Many students reported that the grand narratives of “social good” discourage them from doing anything at all because nothing they try would meet that high expectation. Meanwhile, those who have successfully practiced “altruistic yaritaikoto” stressed that they never helped people for the sake of society; instead, they worked hard simply to support their neighbors or those whom they personally cared about. Like those students, we can first shift our own understanding of “social good” instead of pressuring ourselves to make significant achievements. Our everyday communication activates mental shortcuts that are less helpful than others in discussing possible ways to improve a given problem. In order to frame “social good” more wisely, we should stop reproducing the overwhelming vision of revolutionary change and ground ourselves in more actionable and self-critical approaches to “social good.”

Suggestions to the Administrators

3. Interrogate the invisible gatekeeping throughout the admission process

When I pointed out the socioeconomic homogeneity of Yanai scholars and their self-identified disengagement from “social good,” a few administrators acknowledged that they should adjust the admission process in order to find more diverse individuals who already empathize with the Foundation’s mission of “social good.” To be honest, I am not sure how to effectively recruit students who believe in “social good,” when it merely means “doing anything for anyone.” However, several scholars and I identified two potentially discriminatory practices in the admission process. Surely, there must be far more approaches to mitigate the gatekeeping than we can currently identify, but I hope these two points serve as a starting point for further discussion.

First, several interviewees mentioned the lack of diverse academic and professional backgrounds among the admissions officers, whose preconceived knowledge about applicants’ yaritaikoto (or lack thereof) could influence their admission decisions. For instance, senior administrators may be well-aware of how some fields, such as medicine and international affairs, can contribute to society, whereas they might even doubt the very necessity for emerging disciplines like gender studies or drama education. Also, my informants attributed the admissions committee’s lack of diversity to junior volunteers from HLAB, many of whom currently work or previously worked in the so-called “conventional industries.” Since the Yanai Foundation accepts a wide range of yaritaikoto, members of the admissions committee must reflexively examine how to minimize the negative impacts of their own subjective views.

Second, another controversy regarding the admission process was the narrow definition of “Japanese identity.” Assuming that the Yanai Foundation’s broad definition of “social good” contain issues about diversity, inclusion, and equity, I believe that unwarranted discrimination fundamentally contradicts with your alleged mission. When I questioned why the eligibility requirements include legal citizenship, both the administrators and some scholars explained that foreigners can apply to many other scholarships that Japanese citizens are not eligible for; thus, expanding the eligible pool would be unfair to Japanese applicants who have limited financial aid opportunities. Although I sympathize with such a reality, I must shed light on those who have even fewer options, such as immigrant students who have never lived outside of Japan despite their non-Japanese citizenship. If the Yanai Foundation truly cares about “Japanese society,” why would you exclude those with perfect fluency in Japanese or those who have received all of K-12 education in Japan solely based on their non-Japanese passports? I certainly do not have a compelling answer for what makes people “Japanese enough.” However, I can at least claim that the current eligibility requirements have failed well-qualified individuals who I think are no less Japanese than I am. If this does not exemplify structural “social bad,” I don’t know what would.

4. Maintain long-term accountability

Though I critiqued the Foundation’s analogy between the Yanai scholars and long-term investment, I do agree that any attempt for meaningful social change always takes years or even decades to become fruitful. Nevertheless, that does not mean the Foundation can never be held accountable. While the administrators emphasized that the Foundation is expecting scholars’ accomplishments in the next 10 to 20 years, due to their lack of substantive initiatives to keep track of scholars who have graduated, the Foundation has no way of knowing their long-term performance. Of course, I do not believe that the administrators should, or can, surveil all Yanai scholars throughout their lives. However, I personally think that the Yanai community has some degree of moral responsibility to hold itself accountable to evaluate whether this scholarship program has proven itself as the best use of Mr. Yanai’s massive donation, which exceeds 9 million dollars every year (the Yanai Foundation n.d.). If we are to treat the Yanai scholarship as a long-term investment, then we will need to develop effective strategies to record and assess how our portfolio performs in the long run.

Suggestion to the Yanai Scholars

5. Actively stay involved in the Yanai community

Last but not least, by far the most common request from my interviewees was increased community engagement. Despite their strong desire to interact with other scholars, they complained that the lack of information about individual profiles makes it awkward to initiate any conversation. Several scholars blamed the Foundation’s intense privacy concerns as a major obstacle to creating a directory that scholars can opt into. Nonetheless, there are many other ways to befriend other scholars, such as participating in bi-weekly check-ins, volunteering for information sessions and first-year orientations, and individually meeting up with scholars when traveling near their schools. Just by interviewing 24 scholars for this research, I have become closer to them and benefited from their wisdom.

As my interviewees said, contributing to the Yanai community is arguably the most accessible form of “social good.” Needless to say, my research alone can never capture all possible ways in which our community could improve — that is precisely why I have added this appendix to ask for your help. For instance, we can organize our own social events, reading groups, or career workshops independent of the administration. Perhaps, we could start our own summer orientation programs celebrating diverse outcomes of our “social good.” While acknowledging that everyone has different priorities, especially during a busy academic year, I boldly ask: if we cannot (or don’t even try to) enhance this tiny, homogenous, privileged community, how on earth could we contribute to the larger society? We, as college students or recent graduates, may not be able to make a significant difference in society anytime soon, but the Yanai community is still one of the most talented and influential groups of individuals I know. So, I am hopeful that together, we can make this community “socially better.”

Next >> 9. Bibliography