Japan’s Bold Approach to International Research

In “Japan’s New Approach to Collaborative International R&D” (Issues, Winter 2025), Hiroko Ueno describes a policy aiming at improving international research collaboration by the Japanese government, and we have high hopes for its success in the future.

There have been many systems of collaboration in which the government of each country supports researchers in their own country—such as traditional “matching funds,” in which both countries support their own research groups—but there has been no system in which a government of one country directly funds companies and researchers in another country. For example, in the Strategic International Collaborative Research Program (SICORP) supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), funds are provided to companies and researchers through the research funding agency of the other country, and the researchers can obtain intellectual property rights within the scope of the regulations of the other country. Research collaboration based on SICORP has been carried out between Japan and the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, among others, in the past.

If direct support from the Japanese government is newly established, it will be a groundbreaking system because it will make it easier for organizations that receive support to obtain intellectual property rights. It also means that Japan can carry out international collaborative research and development with foreign organizations even if the foreign government does not recognize the benefits of collaboration with Japan and has no intention of supporting R&D collaboration.

A problem is that even though it has been 10 years since the system Ueno describes was launched, there are still few concrete success stories. This may mean that institutions have little incentive to use the system. In particular, it depends on which foreign institutions Japanese institutions collaborate with to achieve mutual benefits. If the technology readiness level (TRL) of Japanese researchers and companies is low, there may not be much benefit. It may be beneficial for institutions with a medium TRL to collaborate with foreign companies with a high TRL. We would like to keep an eye on this in the future.

Naoto Kobayashi