Advanced Japanese Students Explore Sustainable Development in Japan
The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are “an urgent call for action” adopted by all 193 member states in 2015, to promote global partnerships towards peace and prosperity for all and a sustainable future for our planet. However, the degree of enthusiasm for SDGs varies significantly among the member states. A decade after the ratification of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, no two developed nations stand in sharper contrast than the United States and Japan, with the former’s apparent indifference and the latter’s wholehearted embrace of the initiative.
To learn about how SDGs are promoted and pursued in Japan, where 90% of respondents in one survey indicated some level of familiarity with the concept, eight students in JPN 398: Advanced Japanese Seminar traveled to Japan in spring 2025 for course-embedded travel with the support of the Institute for Global Engagement. JPN 398 is a capstone seminar for the newly-established Japanese major, but it is open to all students who have achieved advanced proficiency in Japanese. Mariko Schimmel, Associate Professor of Japanese, designed the itinerary to take advantage of students’ proficiency and had them engage directly with local people from various walks of life, from elementary school students to college students studying SDGs to a top academic in the field of SDGs, from government officials to survivors of the triple disaster on March 11, 2011.
The two-week travel started in Tokyo, where students observed how SDGs are pursued in the capital city with particular focus on SDGs in education. The students visited JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency; the Japanese equivalent of USAID) and participated in an SDGs workshop designed for elementary to middle school students; visited Arakawa Recycling Center and Meguro Incineration Plant to learn how they promote proper waste disposal; and went to Shimoda Elementary School in Ota Ward, one of the SDGs Future Cities, to experience Japanese school lunch and learn about the collaboration between the elementary school and a major grocery chain.
The highlight of the first week was an overnight visit to Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus, where the students made presentations, in Japanese, on sustainability in the US and Iowa to Professor Norichika Kanie, the foremost expert on SDGs in Japan and one of the authors of the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report from the United Nations, as well as to the students in his seminar. Then the students experienced gasshuku (training camp) with the Japanese students, staying at a lodge as a group and brainstorming SDG-driven business ideas into the late night.
After observing how SDGs are integrated into various aspects of life in the capital city, the group visited the Northeastern region to learn about the impact of natural disasters on sustainable and equitable development in Japan. The visit to this area served as a stark reminder of the precariousness of prosperity the students observed in Tokyo. The triple disaster on March 11, 2011, not only upended people’s lives but also exposed Tokyo’s reliance on Fukushima’s rural community, which provided electricity with its nuclear power plants, considered clean energy in many parts of the world.
In Fukushima, the students encountered two contrasting approaches to rebuilding the devastated region. The students visited Namie, a small town which figures prominently in a Fukushima Innovation Coast Concept funded by the Japanese government. The students listened to lectures from national and local government officials and visited Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R), the world’s largest hydrogen production facility, and the future site of the Fukushima Institute for Research, Education, and Innovation (F-REI). Then the students visited the neighboring towns of Futaba and Okuma, to hear from a father who is still searching for his daughter’s remains in the “Difficult-to-Return Area,” where access is restricted to residents and their guests for a few hours a day. The tour of the restricted area provided the students with a local perspective skeptical of the push for new development in the deserted, disaster-prone area, capping the two-week trip, observing and contemplating on various approaches to SDGs in Japan.
After returning from Japan, the students conducted additional research inspired by the trip and wrote essays in Japanese. They also worked on individual final projects, including research papers, a digital art, podcasts, a diorama, and a video of the Okuma resident’s story with English and Japanese subtitles. Please contact schimmel@grinnell.edu for more information about the trip and student outcomes.