An organization representing Japanese scholars and scientists has made clear its rejection of participation in military research, but has failed to deliberate a related and significant issue: the U.S. military's widespread provision of funds to Japanese researchers.
The Science Council of Japan (SCJ) has been reviewing its position on military research since last year, after the Japanese Ministry of Defense began a fund program for dual civilian-military research. But the latest revelations that Japanese researchers are accepting funding from the U.S. military have fallen through the cracks of that debate.
Japanese researchers who were found to have accepted funds from the U.S. military all told the Mainichi Shimbun that their research was for peaceful purposes, and that they did not find the fact that their funding came from the U.S. military problematic.
So what kind of research has been funded by the U.S. military? A professor from the School of Engineering at Osaka University, who received approximately 45 million yen from the U.S. Navy, is researching the applications of computer simulations to prevent ships from capsizing. The capsizing of civilian tankers or military ships could lead to loss of life and marine contamination.
"The fruits of my research are useful for civilians, and the U.S. military can use them for their own needs," the professor says.
The area of expertise of a professor at the Graduate School of Informatics at Kyoto University who accepted around 10 million yen from the U.S. Air Force is data mining -- or the collection and analysis of massive amounts of information from conversation and other sounds -- and machine learning. Such research is vital for improving artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Read the full story at The Mainichi