Sir

The Japanese government is wrestling with reform of its university system to enhance international competitiveness (see Nature 412, 364; 2001 and Nature 419, 875–876; 2002), including trying hard to promote the activities of young researchers by providing better financial support. For example, in fiscal year 2002, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) boosted the value of special grants to researchers under the age of 37 by 50%, and 8,500 young researchers, primarily university staff, each received $US10,000 on average. Nevertheless, the real issue is whether such grants are effectively distributed to the intended targets. In fact, a substantial amount of this investment is being diverted to other recipients.

In fiscal year 2002, the JSPS provided a research grant of $8,000 to each of its 4,800 fellowship recipients, including 2,100 PhD students. The grant is supposed to be distributed directly to individuals to facilitate creativity. Nevertheless, most individual grants are absorbed into supervisors' budgets. Consequently, most young researchers cannot use their own funds as they choose.

It is difficult to find documentation of this practice. Although the JSPS applies strict rules for budget expenditure, and recipients must submit detailed accounting reports to the society, their supervisors tell them how to fill in the reports. This is what has happened to me and to almost all JSPS fellowship recipients with whom I have been in contact.

The core of the problem lies in the daikozasei or grand-laboratory system, a hierarchical pyramid in which a professor commands all members, including associate and assistant professors, postdocs and students. The system is found in some European countries (including Germany, from which Japan inherited it), but its feudalistic aspect has been reinforced in Japan. Experimental facilities usually belong to a grand lab rather than to a department, unlike the situation in the United States, where associate and assistant professors control their own labs and perform their own research, relying on departmental core facilities for the use of expensive instruments.

Under the grand-lab system, even young assistant and associate professors suffer from diversion of funds. I have heard from several recipients of JSPS grants that their funds were absorbed into their professors' budgets via abuse of financial reports. During a government meeting on the reform of competitive research funding held in April 2002, the then minister for science and technology policy, Koji Omi, pointed out that grand-lab professors often systematically acquire grants intended for associate and assistant professors, and that such customs interfere with the independence of young researchers.

Because young researchers in Japan are funded by the larger budget of the grand lab, they can never complain about an offending professor. This is a setback routinely experienced by most young researchers in Japan. The restrictive academic structure of the grand-lab system wastes a substantial amount of investment in young scientists. The government's plan for promoting young researchers will not work effectively until a solution is found to the structural problems deeply rooted in Japanese academic research, where the individual is buried in the system.