Entrepreneurship education in Japanese universities - how do we train for risk taking in a culture of risk adverseness?

In this paper, we focus on entrepreneurship education at universities in Japan. In this country, entrepreneurship in terms of willingness to take the risk of setting up a business is at the lowest level in international comparison surveys such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. This tendency to have a lack of entrepreneurship among Japanese people is based on the traditional cultural climate which is not necessarily favourable for entrepreneurs. The era of economic expansion needs another period of vitality after overcoming the crisis and stagnation since the beginning of the 1990s after the collapse of a so-called bubble economy. Under these circumstances, the necessary entrepreneurship education has been enhanced and developed at Japanese universities. Firstly, we overview the background behind the lack of entrepreneurship in Japan and explain how the necessity of entrepreneurship education is treated. Secondly, we analyse the development of entrepreneurship education at universities in Japan and sum up the supporting policies and also the general state of entrepreneurship courses. Thirdly, we present the status-quo of some universities advanced in entrepreneurship education. Lastly, we describe entrepreneurship education in the NBS (Graduate School of Business) course at Nihon University, one of the leading universities in Japan in this domain.