Japan Seeks Open Research Community

No country spends more time seeking its place in the world than Japan. And probably no country has a more difficult time finding it. The one thing about Japan, though, is that it lets the world in on its angst, as in its "White Paper on Science & Technology 1997," recently put in summary form in English on the World Wide Web. The full paper, which is about 300 pages, won't be available in English until early next year. Japan's worries grow by the year, especially about its young people who are showing less and less interest in science and less and less hope for the future. (A separate study, issued earlier this year by Japan's Central Council for Education, deplores the lack of "zest" in the lives of schoolchildren.) Japan also is worried that the scientific world could well pass it by unless it reforms its research system. It broods over the implications of ...