Assessment and appraisal are still alien concepts in Japan, particularly in the world of academia, where respect for the professor is paramount. Thus, it is not surprising that resistance from university faculty members to the introduction of external research assessment is widespread (see page 378).

But the writing is on the wall. Japan's student population is plummeting, owing to a long-standing decline in the birth rate, and universities are having to compete to survive. An increasingly visible part of that competition is on the research front where ever more sophisticated bibliographic analysis by third parties will reveal the performance of university departments whether they like it or not. Furthermore, while the Japanese government continues to be comparatively generous in funding science in a time of economic recession, there are growing calls in government circles for science to be targeted towards socio-economic needs.

That is a dangerous trend and Japanese academics should not bury their heads in the sand and hope that it will go away. Rather, they should face the inevitable and take the initiative in establishing a nationwide system of research assessment that takes account of the need for academic freedom. There are plenty of models around to learn from and, close to home, Singapore and Hong Kong are in this respect much more advanced (see Nature 389, 113–117; 1997).

External reviews of university departments and institutes have been carried out on an ad hoc and sporadic basis since early 1993 when Akito Arima, current minister of education, sent shock waves through Tokyo University by bringing in a team of overseas researchers to assess its physics department. But such reviews are few and far between. They follow no consistent pattern. There is no system of benchmarking the assessments for comparison with other institutions, and the results are seldom made public. Furthermore, in only very rare cases have significant changes been made as a result of the reviews. Their prime motivation often seems to be to gain support for some new pet project, rather than being a genuine attempt to assess both the strengths and weaknesses of institutions.

The time is ripe for change. Arima, Japan's leading advocate of external review, has been appointed as head of both the education ministry, which oversees universities, and the Science and Technology Agency — both to be merged by 2001. Agency officials seem to have a greater awareness of the need for external assessment than their counterparts in the education ministry who, until now, have been only too willing to accept the sop of ‘self-evaluation’ proffered by powerful university professors and adopted by most universities in Japan as the norm.

In the long run, government officials will need to concentrate on value for money, and Japan will find its science increasingly evaluated in the international arena by complete strangers. This gaiatsu (‘external pressure’) will, along with the power of a handful of reformers in Japan, bring about the change that is inevitable. The academic community needs to work constructively with this change rather than seek to ignore it. This is essential if Japan is also to tackle the even more complex issue of giving much needed autonomy to universities to run their own affairs.