The origins of the Nissan Institute
As recorded elsewhere, the post-war development of Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford is inextricably linked with St Antony’s College (see Goodman and Stockwin, ‘Oxford University’ in Cortazzi and Kornicki eds, Japanese Studies in Britain: A Survey and History, Renaissance Books, 2016: 148-65).
The key figures in its development, first Geoffrey Bownas (1923-2011) and Richard (Dick) Storry (1913-1981), then Brian Powell and James McMullen, were all Fellows of the College.
The complex story of the establishment of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at St Antony’s is well covered by Christine Nicholls in her magisterial The History of St Antony’s College, 1950-2000, Macmillan Press, 2000: 88-95. The Institute’s first home was at 1 Church Walk (now the Latin American Centre). Arthur Stockwin, a political scientist, Ann Waswo, a modern historian, and Jenny Corbett, an economist, were appointed as its first fellows.
A grant from the Tokyo Club also allowed for a garage in the garden of 1 Church Walk to be converted into an office. The first occupant of this space was Roger Goodman, the current Warden, who had been appointed to a Junior Research Fellowship at the Institute. His first few weeks in the office were spent answering phone calls for car parts since the number had been unhelpfully registered in the phone book as ‘Nissan garage’.
Roger Goodman in doctoral gown outside ‘Nissan garage’ (1987)
As its economy expanded, interest in Japan grew rapidly during the 1980s, especially at graduate level, and the building at 1 Church Walk was soon bursting at the seams. In June 1990 (timed in part to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first gift) the Nissan Motor Company made a second generous donation of £3.2 million to build a new institute, this time on the main campus of St Antony’s alongside the Winchester Road wall. The first ceremonial turf for the new building was turned by Prince Naruhit (the Crown Prince who had been a graduate student in Oxford) in 1991 and the building was completed in 1993.
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His Imperial Highness, Prince Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, breaking the ground for the new Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies building, 18 September 1991, in the presence, from, left to right, Professor Arthur Stockwin, Lord (Roy) Jenkins, Chancellor of the University, Mr Ishihara Takashi (President of Nissan) and Professor Theodore Zeldin (Sub-Warden of St Antony’s College).
Developments at the Nissan Institute since 2000
The activities of the Nissan Institute expanded considerably during the 1990s. By the end of the decade:
- There were up to 30 doctoral students working on Japan-related dissertations at any one time
- Master’s and undergraduate programmes across anthropology, economics, politics, and history increasingly offered Japanese studies options
- The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series (which had published its first book under the Croom Helm imprint in 1986) had grown into the world’s largest publication series on contemporary Japan, reaching its 100th volume in 2016
- The Institute was hosting five or six Japan-specialist academic visitors on sabbatical from universities outside Oxford every year
- The Bodleian Japanese Library had built one of the finest collections of materials on Japan in Europe
- The Institute weekly seminar had become a fixture not only on the Oxford, but indeed the national, scene and had been addressed by many of the best known scholars of Japan from across the world
From the early 2000s there were major changes in the personnel associated with the Nissan Institute. Many of those who had dominated the scene for the past quarter-century retired: Phillip Harries, James McMullen, Brian Powell, the late Marcus Rebick, Arthur Stockwin, the late Ann Waswo. Jenny Corbett moved to a position at the Australian National University. They were over time replaced by new colleagues: Jenny Guest, Linda Flores, Bjarke Frellesvig, Sho Konishi, Ian Neary (who himself retired in 2019 and was replaced by Kristi Govella) and Hugh Whittaker. New posts were created in the Sociology of Japan thanks to financial help from the GB Sasakawa Foundation and were filled by Ekaterina Hertog and Takehiko Kariya (who moved from a professorship at the University of Tokyo).
Complementing an already existing MSt course in Japanese studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, the Nissan Institute (now formally part of a new School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies) launched a new programme in 2007/8 in Modern Japanese Studies. At its core was an intensive language programme, a compulsory course in research methods, and options in Japanese politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, literature, and the history of art. The course was limited to 15 students a year and could be taken either as a one-year MSc or a two-year MPhil. Around 20% of each cohort went on to do doctoral work on Japan and over one hundred doctoral students have completed their studies on Japan since 2000. You can see a list of these students here – if you can add to it, get in touch! Many of them have gone on to positions at top universities around the world, such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale in the US; Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan; and Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.
By the mid-2010s, the total number of faculty listed as teaching about Japan and doing research on Japan in the Oxford University Japanese Studies Newsletter exceeded thirty (including emeriti). Most significantly, the distinction between pre-modern (centred on the Oriental Institute in Pusey Lane) and modern Japanese Studies (based at the Nissan Institute) had become increasingly blurred or even disappeared. Most academics who worked on Japan in the two institutes had their research jointly submitted to the same Area Studies REF panel. Academics in both institutes taught on the undergraduate BA course in Japanese. Perhaps most symbolically, from 2017 the separate MSt in Japanese Studies offered by the Oriental Institute (which has focussed on pre-modern, philological and literary research training) and the MSc in Japanese Studies offered by the Nissan Institute (which has focussed on contemporary Japanese studies training) were amalgamated into a single programme. In 2018 the Japanese studies colleagues who had been based in the Oriental Institute moved their offices to the Nissan Institute.
Over the past 25 years, the permanent academic staff at the Nissan Institute have been joined by a vibrant community of colleagues. These include our Japanese language lectors (especially Junko Hagiwara, Hiroe Kaji, and Kaori Nishizawa) who have supported cohorts of MSc students alongside their teaching on undergraduate programmes. We’ve also welcomed many postdoctoral students, as well as part-time and short-term lecturers, who have often been the source of some of the most exciting events to life during this period. The Institute has benefitted greatly from working with the Okinaga and Tanaka postdoctoral positions established at Wadham and Pembroke colleges respectively, held by Jonathan Service, Natalia Doan, Alice Baldock, and Chinami Oka. Other postdocs and departmental lecturers have including Mateja Kovacic, Shilla Lee, Marius Palz, Juliana Buriticá Alzate, Olga Khomenko and Pan Tomé Valencia.
Every year the Institute has hosted up to six visiting academics, mainly (though not always) from Japan, including many of the most distinguished names in Japanese studies.
Throughout the whole period under review, the Institute Administrator has been Jane Baker who stepped down in July 2025 after 27 years in post. Indeed, she was only the second administrator in the whole history of the Institute, which has provided much of the institutional stability and memory which academic institutions need. Izumi Tytler, the head Librarian of the Bodleian Japanese Library (which is housed at the Nissan Institute) stepped down in 2017 after an even longer tenure of 37 years to be succeeded by Alessandro Bianchi and in 2024 Anna Sharko.
The story of relations with the Nissan Motor Company since 2000
During the second half of the 1990s the fortunes of Nissan nosedived, and by the beginning of 1999 it was in financial meltdown. In May 1999 Renault purchased a 36.8% stake in Nissan and Carlos Ghosn joined Nissan, becoming its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in June 2001. When he joined the company, Nissan had a consolidated debt of more than $20 billion and only three of its 46 models sold in Japan were generating a profit. Reversing the company’s sinking fortunes was considered nearly impossible.
Ghosn’s ‘Nissan Revival Plan’ called for cutting 21,000 Nissan jobs (14% of its total workforce), mostly in Japan; shutting five Japanese plants; reducing the number of suppliers and shareholdings; and auctioning off prized assets such as Nissan’s aerospace unit. In addition to cutting jobs, plants, and suppliers, Ghosn spearheaded major and dramatic structural and corporate-culture changes at Nissan. He defied Japanese business etiquette in various ways, including by eliminating seniority-based and age-based promotion, by changing lifetime employment from a guarantee to a desired goal for when the company achieved high performance, and by dismantling Nissan’s famous keiretsu system of an interwoven web of parts suppliers with cross-holdings in Nissan. He also changed Nissan’s official company language from Japanese to English. Against all expectations, twelve months into his three-year turnaround plan, Nissan had returned to profitability, and within three years it was one of the industry’s most profitable auto makers, with operating margins consistently above 9% – more than twice the industry average.
Books which cover this extraordinary period of the history of the Nissan Motor Company include David Magee’s Turn Around and Ghosn’s own book Shift.
During this extraordinary period all those who worked at Nissan in Tokyo who knew about the Nissan Institute in Oxford disappeared almost overnight and the Institute lost all contact (or means of making contact) for about five years. It was not until 2004 that we managed to find someone at the Renault HQ in Fontainebleau who was able to put us back in touch with Nissan in Japan. Roger Goodman, who had recently succeeded Arthur Stockwin to the Nissan Professorship, went to Japan to meet with the new team to try and explain who we were. For some reason, Carlos Ghosn became excited at the discovery of our existence; he said it was ‘like having a new toy to play with’ and he would like to come and visit us.
Carlos Ghosn’s visit in 2006 was an extraordinary event. Officially, he came to the UK to celebrate the three-millionth car for export produced at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, but the date coincided exactly with the start of the celebration of the Institute’s 25th anniversary, and the Institute (tongue-in-cheek) publicly apologised to colleagues in Sunderland if they had had to speed up their production of cars in order to fit in with its historical reality.
Due to the famous ‘Nissan Turnaround’, Ghosn was at the height of this popularity and fame, not just in Japan (where he had his own superhero comic book series in Japan, titled The True Story of Carlos Ghosn), but also globally. He flew into the RAF base at Brize Norton as Kidlington Airport was too small and was met by a cavalcade of Nissan cars and most of Nissan and Renault’s top European management who had themselves flown in for the event. During a speech to a packed lecture theatre on the future of the car industry, he announced a third benefaction to the Institute of £1.5 million which completed the endowment of all the existing posts in perpetuity.
Carlos Ghosn never made another trip to the Nissan Institute. The Institute did, however, play a (small) part in the extraordinary story of his arrest, confinement and eventual escape (famously in a music box) from Japan to Lebanon in 2018/19, a story which has been told in detail in a 2022 Netflix documentary Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn and a 2023 Apple TV documentary Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn.
The most authoritative (and accurate) version of the Institute’s role in these events can be found in Nick Kostov and Sean McLain’s book Boundless: The Rise, Fall and Escape of Carlos Ghosn, Harper, New York, 2022 where it explains how one of the key movers and whistle blowers in the prosecution of Ghosn (Hari Nada) arranged for Ghosn’s successor as CEO Hiroto Saikawa (Ghosn having become President) to give a talk at the Institute in October 2018 as a way of getting Saikawa out of Japanto brief him without interruptions on Ghosn’s planned arrest. What the book does not cover is that the Institute had been ‘negotiating’ with Nada, who was Nissan’s Chief Legal Counsellor, for the previous two years for Nissan to endow a new Carlos Ghosn Professorship in East Asian International Relations (as a leaving gift for the man himself), nor that Saikawa concentrated in his speech on how Ghosn was a model for future Japanese industrial leaders. Saikawa, in his own recently published account (in Japanese) on the events, describes his evening at the Institute and St Antony’s as ‘the last happy evening of his career’ since it was only when he got back to London after his talk and High Table at St Antony’s that he was briefed on what was about to unfurl, events which in turn enveloped him and forced his own resignation in 2020.
Largely due to the development of car manufacturing in China but also the failure to invest in the electric car sector, the financial situation at Nissan has been on a downhill trajectory since the departure of Ghosn and Saikawa, and Saikawa’s successor, Makoto Uchida, sadly had to cancel his planned visit to the Institute in January 2025 when his attempt to forge a merger with Honda collapsed and he was forced to step down to take responsibility. We are hoping that his successor, Ivan Espinosa, will be able to visit us soon as the Nissan Motor Company has been a dream benefactor: it has supported the Institute in multiple ways, and it has never requested anything in return.
Author: Professor Roger Goodman
July 2025
St Antony’s College 75th Anniversary
