Transnational identity: The struggles of being and becoming a Japanese female professor in a neo-kokusaikaphase of Japan

Abstract

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics approached (though now tentatively postponed to 2021), Japan stepped up on its nationwide kokusaika (“internationalization”) campaign to prepare for the big moment. This frenzied internationalization movement is not a new trend for Japan, particularly in the education sector where since the 1980s, the government has advanced a number of megaprojects in the name of kokusaika. Having completed my PhD in the United States on the internationalization of Japanese higher education, and having returned to Japan to begin working as a faculty member at a national university, I look into the development of my transnational identity through incidents, moments, and practices against the rhetoric and realities of kokusaika. This article argues that my analysis of the kokusaika phenomenon has shifted along with the changing tenor of my transnational experience from being a PhD student in the United States to becoming a Japanese female professor back in Japan. My transnational experience, as demonstrated in the article, helps put my own theorization of kokusaika in perspective, while also posing questions regarding “shifting transnationality” in knowledge production.

Disciplining transnationality? The impact of study abroad educational experiences on Turkish returnee scholars’ lives, careers and identity

“…It also supports evidence from previous observations that overseas education culminates in changes in returnees’ personality, perceptions, competences, world views and identity formation (e.g. Aslan and Jacobs, 2014; Aydın, 2012; Endes, 2015; Galijasevic and Hadzibegovic, 2012; Guo and Lei, 2019; Nonaka, 2020; Phan and Mohamad, 2020, this Special Issue; Trilokekar and Rasmi, 2011).…”

“…Likewise, in the case of Chinese returnees, they were considered ‘less experienced, early career academics in their local academic communities in China’ (Guo and Lei, 2019: 7) and these communities emerged to be ‘more characteristics of a hierarchical, top-down, parenting-style relationship between them and their superiors’ (8). Nonaka (2020) has brought a similar point to the fore in this Special Issue in relation to the Japanese context, remarking that ‘[e]ven those with the same qualifications and status, seniority (age) plays a vital role, inducing a large impact on the hierarchical relationships among group members’ (page no).…”

“…This makes sense considering that ‘when individuals are separated from locality/localities, be it/they imagined or out here’, it is rather difficult to make sense of their identity and knowledge mobilization (Phan, 2011: 106). The understanding of transnational identity as being and becoming is very well manifested in Nonaka’s (see this Special Issue, Nonaka 2020) narratives about her shift from being a PhD scholar in an English-speaking country to becoming a Japanese female professor in Japan. Moreover, it is possible to speak of a development of double consciousness among overseas students, which materializes as ‘the condition of having two modes of perceptions’ (Williams, 2013: 76).…”

Emotion labor and affect in transnational encounters: Insights from Western-trained TESOL professionals in Saudi Arabia

“…His painful adaption to the teaching situation in his Saudi university is another display of emotion(al) labor. It corresponds to the insider–outsider, local–global, Global North–Global South emotion(al) discourses which are felt, consumed, resented, encountered, and put up with by many transnationally trained scholars/academics/teachers discussed in this Special Issue (see Karakas, 2020; Nonaka, 2020; Phan and Mohamad, 2020; Phung, 2020; Windle, 2020).…”

The making and transforming of a transnational in dialog: Confronting dichotomous thinking in knowledge production, identity formation, and pedagogy

“…What we would like to argue further here is that these emotions and experiences as expressed by transnational returnees result from the very dichotomous representation and projection of the global/transnational versus the local/home that they themselves also entertain and circulate in their own identification, research, pedagogy, and teaching (also cf. Alshaikhi and Phan, 2020; Kelley, 2020; Nonaka, 2020; and Windle, 2020 (all this Special Issue)).…”