Andrew Pollack, "The Creative Force Behind Japanese Computer University" The New York Times, Technology, June 26, Sunday 1994

TOSIYASU L. KUNII, one of Japan's most prolific and outspoken computer scientists, says there is a reason that Japanese companies do not design successful computer operating systems or original microprocessors. Japan's education system, he says, churns out uncreative graduates. Others have made similar observations, but Professor Kunii is doing something about it. He quit his job at the prestigious Tokyo University to start his own computer college.

The University of Aizu, which opened its doors in April 1993, has only about 500 students and two main departments hardware and software. It is in the middle of nowhere, three hours by train from Tokyo. But it could serve as a model for the reform of higher education in Japan.

While most Japanese universities have predominantly Japanese faculties, Aizu has professors from 14 foreign countries who account for about 60 percent of the teaching staff. This includes 16 Russians, so many that Fujitsu Ltd. declined to give the university access to one of its supercomputers because it feared violating restrictions on providing technology to what was once the Soviet Union.

Classes are taught mainly in English to prepare students to work in an international language. And students are encouraged to do individual research as freshmen, not wait until they are juniors or seniors.

It may be Japan's most electronically equipped school, with about 700 engineering workstations, enough to provide one to each student. Most of the computers are American, mainly from Sun Microsystems. None of this would seem radical in the United States. But in Japan, "it's completely different from anything that's ever been done," said David K Kahaner, who watches technology in Japan for Washington.

But change has not been easy. While there is some camaraderie and a pioneering spirit, there is also unhappiness. Some Japanese faculty members are upset with Professor Kunii, who is president of the university, for departing from tradition. Some Western professors complain that the administration has not departed enough.

Professor Kunii, a chemist by training, drifted into computers and became one of Japan's foremost experts on data bases and graphics. At Tokyo University, he helped start the information science department. Ideas flow from the 56 year old professor all directions, so it is hard to keep him focused. Unlike many Japanese, Professor Kunii is not modest or indirect. "The job of Japanese universities is to import knowledge, translate and disseminate it," Professor Kunii said. "Professors don't need to discover anything. It's a very easy life." But with Japan now roughly on a par with the United States and Europe, there is a growing recognition that Japan must do more pioneering research.

The formation of the University of Aizu comes as Japan is trying to improve higher education. Until now, the system had been charged with producing an educated work force. While an American university will try to attract the best faculty members from around the world, the staff of a typical Japanese college is almost exclusively Japanese. There are only 279 foreigners out of 40,000 fulltime professors, associate professors and lecturers at nearly 100 universities supported by the Government.

The problem for computer education, Professor Kunii said, is that in Japan computer science is not recognized as a discipline. As a result he said, Japan produces only 30 Ph.D.'s a year in pure computer science.

The University of Aizu began as a project of the prefecture, Japan's equivalent of a state, to spur economic development. Professor Kunii was recruited to serve on the planning committee for the university and later drafted to be its president. One reason so many foreign professors came here was that it was difficult to recruit Japanese academics for an unproven university. In a land of lifetime employment, many Japanese professors did not like Professor Kunii's notion that all faculty members would undergo a review for tenure after three years.

Among the foreign professors there is "enough dissatisfaction to be perceptible," said Harvey Abramson, a professor of software who previously taught at the University of British Columbia in Canada. In a Western university, he added, the faculty has a large say in how things are run. But at Aizu, the power rests with the bureaucrats from the Fukushima Prefecture Government.

Professor Abramson said that Professor Kunii, despite his wish to be a reformer, "seems hamstrung by the way things have been done here."

The Aizu faculty is doing some innovative research. Most of the Russian teachers, for instance, are leaders in the development of self timed computers, in which the components are not synchronized by a centralized clock. This new design could allow for faster operation and lower power consumption.

But many challenges must still be overcome if Aizu is to have an impact on computer science training in Japan. So far has only freshmen and sophomores. Without graduate students, it is hard for professors to do research. There are plans for a graduate school, but not for several years.

And while the prefectural government is providing research financing for three years, thereafter the professors will have to fend for themselves. Its big draw seems to be its computers. Hachiro Meguro, a freshman, said he chose Aizu because he heard that each student would have access to a workstation 24 hours a day.

He and the others students of whom 90 percent are male often work on computers until early in the morning or on weekends, just as computer neads do in the United States. That could be the best sign yet that more creative Japanese programmers are on the way.