On May 2, demonstrators opposed to amending Japan\u2019s \u201cpeace\u201d Constitution gathered outside the prime minister\u2019s official residence in Tokyo. Most were opposed to any revision of the Constitution\u2019s pacifist clause, Article 9, which, of course, was well within their rights of free speech and assembly.<\/p>\n
But they also carried placards listing the names of professors, including prominent international relations scholars at major Japanese universities, whom they condemned as compromised. Their sin? Serving on government advisory committees. The placards read \u2014 and the protestors chanted \u2014 the slogan: Goyo gakusha, haji o shire! (Court scholar, shame on you!)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a direct translation. But the true meaning of Goyo gakusha is closer to government lapdog or lackey. The label has a long and useful history in Japan. It is a way of declaring an entire body of research illegitimate without engaging with any of it. The scholars named are not obscure figures who have escaped scrutiny. Their work appears in peer-reviewed journals, in books from major university presses and in international forums. What was being denounced was not the quality of their scholarship but their advisory roles \u2014 the rooms they had agreed to sit in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On May 2, demonstrators opposed to amending Japan\u2019s \u201cpeace\u201d Constitution gathered outside the prime minister\u2019s official residence in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24155,1017,2894,24154,8,24156],"class_list":["post-31277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-academia","tag-article-9","tag-constitution","tag-free-speech","tag-japan","tag-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}