Chatting with Machiko Kanetake

Welcome to the latest interview of the Völkerrechtsblog’s symposium ‘The Person behind the Academic’! With us we have Prof. Machiko Kanetake, and through the following questions, we will try to get a glimpse of her interests, sources of inspiration and habits.  

Welcome Prof. Kanetake and thank you very much for accepting our invitation!

May I first ask, what it was that brought you to academia and what made you stay?

Thanks a lot Sissy, for organising this symposium. I am also curious to hear your stories as part of the symposium! In terms of this question, I do not think that there was a single major event or a logical path that led me to academia. Looking back, I grew up in the Gifu prefecture in Japan, which is not a big city, as the third child in a family that runs a sake brewery. Sake is a Japanese alcoholic beverage, in case you have not heard of it. As the brewery is a traditional family business, if I were a son or the only heir, I am sure that the implicit social expectations of that time would have shaped my desire and I would be working for the sake brewery. The fact that such implicit expectations were given to my older brother must have left my future destinations relatively open.

Until I went to university, I was ‘one of those idealists’ who wanted to work for the United Nations to contribute to the ‘international community’ and ‘international peace’. My utopian idea about international organisations (and pretty much everything else in the world) was quickly modified when I started studying international politics. Yet I still joined a study group for students who wanted to be governmental diplomats or work for international organisations. On a weekly basis, we studied together economics, constitutional law, and international law. Among these subjects, I came to be fascinated about international law. At the university, I also had a great teacher of public international law, who expected really a lot from his Bachelor students in terms of doing their own research and taught me a great deal of the historical contexts of international law, including its colonial baggage. Without this great circle of friends and teachers that I happened to have had, I doubt if I continued studying international law with much enthusiasm.

At any rate, I do not think that I have followed any straight-forward path to academia. I also worked for a private company in Tokyo for a few years before doing an LLM programme and a PhD degree. A variety of experiences and people you meet can enrich your perspectives and skills, and I think that it is perfectly fine to have different pathways towards academia.

If you were not an academic, what would you be?

It is really hard to imagine what an alternative path would have been. I would like to think that there were many other options, but maybe I am just being optimistic. Perhaps I would have applied to international organisations, rekindling my childhood spirit. Or I might have gone back to a consultancy firm that I have worked for. Or maybe I would be helping the family business and would be busy selling the alcoholic beverages. Regardless of the alternative job I might have had, I hope that I would have discovered the joy of teaching at some point. One of the unexpected discoveries in academia was how much joy I get from teaching and getting to know students’ talents and potential.

Which are three texts that you would wish all academics working on international law would read?

I do not think that I have such suggestions for everyone. So many writings and authors have inspired me in different phases. Yet this is often tied up with my personal learning processes and depends on what I already knew or was familiar with previously. Personally, I found that a series of writings on feminist approaches to international law was essential in broadening my perspectives about international law and its scholarship.

Again, looking back, due to linguistic accessibility, my entry points into the field were predominantly texts written in Japanese. I closely read and have learnt a lot from the textbooks and writings of Soji Yamamoto (general textbook and the law of the sea), Ryoichi Taoka (laws of war and the use of force), Shigejiro Tabata (textbook, equality of states, status of individuals), Hisakazu Fujita (textbook and IHL), Yoshiro Matsui (social science approaches), Toshiki Mogami (international institutional law), just to name a few. These are all male authors, by the way, a fact which I did not even question when I started studying international law. Gender inequality in Japan is simply unbelievable, and academia is no exception. I hope that the situation is slowly changing though.

After doing my law degree and working in a private sector, I had an opportunity to do my LLM programme in the UK. I was so grateful for the fact that I was able to spend an entire day to read. Perhaps because I was so happy to go back to studying. The courses and related materials I had during my LLM year had such a lasting impact on the way I grasp international law and the structure of authority. If I had to pick a few writings from this learning process, Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (2002) has left a strong impact on the way I see war crimes tribunals and international criminal law. Antony Anghie’s celebrated article on ‘Finding the Peripheries’ (Harvard International Law Journal 1999) was no doubt a paradigm shift. The same goes true for Hilary Charlesworth’s impactful article, ‘A Discipline of Crisis’ (Modern Law Review 2002). The fact that these widely read texts still had a significant impact on my own learning curb could probably mean that I was shifting from one epistemic community to another.

Would you say that your upbringing has had an impact on your research interests?

I doubt if my research interests are rooted in my upbringing, although you never know.

What is your favourite place to read and write? What is always near you when you read and write?

Wherever a good cup of coffee is available.

What is an energy and inspiration booster, at times when you have none?

I used to love going for a walk to organise my thoughts and get some inspiration. The almost daily walks in Hampstead Heath in London were such a luxury I had when I was briefly a master student there. In Kyoto, we had weekly seminars on international law, which were not only the best sources of mutual learning, but also nice venues to chat and go out for dinner and drinks. These days, my energy booster may be getting some rest and sleep.

Which of your publications is your favourite one? And which of them is your least favourite?

I do not have any favourites. Yet some publications are somewhat close to my heart, simply because the claims I made were also linked to personal development and experiences. In that sense, a short editorial I wrote about ‘Blind Spots in International Law’ is connected to my own general interest in social psychology. Social psychology significantly helped me make sense of differential treatment that many people encounter, even in a society that appears to be liberal. There is a book called Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (2013), written by Mahzarin R Banaji and Anthony G Greenwald, which discusses the findings of experimental psychology and is written for general non-expert audiences like myself.

If you could, which advice would you give to yourself at the early stages of your career?

There are so many tips I would like to give. If I were to pick just one regarding the final phase of one’s PhD trajectory, I would simply say: Please do not forget to take care of yourself. The last several months of PhD can be challenging, not only academically but also mentally and physically. Everyone may know this, but when you are actually trying to finish your PhD thesis, it is difficult to objectively assess whether you are doing alright. This should also be a piece of advice for supervisors, who need to be aware of these challenges and maintain good communication with PhD colleagues.

If you could, which unspoken rule of academia would you instantly erase?

Again, there are quite a few, but if I were to pick one of them, I would highlight the degree of importance given to research grants and efforts to secure them in one’s career (and ultimately for university finances). In many jurisdictions, the researchers of international law spend a great deal of time in writing proposals for grant competitions. This costs energy, time, and psychological resources. Also, such competitions are not suitable for sustaining the development of the field as a whole, as they are not meant to distribute funding across different sub-fields of international law or across different methodological approaches.

Have you experienced or witnessed discrimination in academic circles? How have you reacted to these instances?

There are many structural layers of exclusion surrounding and within universities. To begin with, in order to complete education to a PhD, you need to have access to funding. Diversity is a very slow process for academia. On top of this, there are the patterns of exclusion, discrimination, and harassment within different academic circles, which can be direct or more subtle. On many occasions, I did not raise my voice, I must admit. On other occasions, I tried to address them by discussing the situations with colleagues I can trust. On one of the occasions, I filed a complaint.

Apart from the clear cases of discrimination, some patterns of behaviour, which are now recognised as normatively problematic, are rather implicit or part of path dependency. Everyone has explicit and implicit biases. During a hiring process, it is thus important to ensure that selection committee members have diverse backgrounds. Also, in training I received, one practical suggestion I found useful was to do an individual assessment, not only before the interviews of the candidates, but also immediately after each one. After each interview, each of the selection committee members writes down individual assessment first. Discussions that follow should start from asking views from a relatively junior member of the selection committee or those who are more external to a relevant academic circle.

Within the European Society of International Law, I have been given an opportunity to be one of the members of the newly established Diversity Advisory Body. We conducted a survey among the Society’s members and got well over 150 responses. We provided a detailed report to the Board with short-term and long-term recommendations.

Would you like to share with us a ‘sacrifice’ that you have made for your work? Do you regret it?

I guess there are always pros and cons of an academic life, but ‘sacrifice’ sounds very different. I do not feel that I have made sacrifices. There are of course challenges, but I really love doing research and teaching.

At any rate, without the support from my family members, both those in Japan and those I now have in the Netherlands, it would not have been possible to start thinking about being in academia. I should ask this question to my family members.

Ideally, whom would you want to find waiting for a meeting with you outside your office next Monday?

One or some of former master students of public international law. I have a lot of great memories from the years during which I was coordinating a master’s programme.

What are you working on currently? What may we anticipate in the near future?

Currently, I am working on the so-called ‘dual-use’ export controls and arms exports, and on how legal frameworks are intertwined with human rights law and IHL. I am busy writing research proposals, perhaps contrary to what I have mentioned earlier. I am also continuing my work on domestic courts’ engagement with UN treaty bodies. I have many topics I would like to write about, and my challenge has been securing sufficient time for this.

This may be a familiar challenge for many university researchers and teachers. If you happen to be reading this interview without being in academia (yet), I would like to say that academic life could be very different from what you may imagine. University researchers/teachers have a variety of tasks, in an overly competitive environment, not only to do research and teach, but also to seek funding, organise a range of events, respond to specific student circumstances, take part in internal or external committees, and do a variety of administrative tasks, while, at the same time, taking care of themselves and/or family members. This is also what Elies van Sliedregt pointed out in one of the great episodes of Asymmetrical Haircuts, always brilliantly composed by Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg.

Thank you very much, Prof. Kanetake, for participating in our symposium and for having taken the time to respond to our questions!