Publications for materials education and research in Japan

The most important point of materials education in Japan (or anywhere) is to attract excellent students to the materials field. This problem has been most important for the first grade national universities and for the lower grade private universities. The managers of a university often do not care much whether the students are good or poor, provided that they can obtain the same amount tuition fees. The year of 2005 was not bad for materials departments in Japan. Many materials companies, especially iron and steel companies, exported steels to China, and they made profits. This served to attract candidates for entrance examination to choose the materials departments. Young students are quite short sighted. For example, at the University of Tokyo, in September, 2005, the Department of Materials Engineering received freshmen students to the full capacity, although for more than ten years that department had not been filled to capacity. It was quite surprising to see that physics and chemistry departments have vacancies this year (2006) at the University of Tokyo. This was never happened before. More Japanese now realize that we need to teach more in elementary schools. Difficulties in publishing materials textbooks in Japan are discussed. Textbooks and reference books for materials published in Japan are also discussed.