Grad student sues Nara Women’s University for not awarding her PhD despite passing thesis defense- “According to the university, there are no regulations regarding the disclosure of reasons for non-awarding”.

People often view the oral defense as the final stage of a doctoral program but it can vary a lot depending on the university. Some will pass it ‘in principle’ but require minor or extensive revisions to fix things seen to be weak or flawed. Japan’s university’s can be even more finnicky, some require post-viva approval by a doctoral committee, and others will require both that and approval by a vote of the faculty. It seems like this is the way Nara Women’s works (passed the defense and PhD committee but failed at faculty approval).

One possible reason is that she had her doctoral work published in an international journal, if this led to people pointing out flaws in her data or methodology it might have made the uni look bad and this could be their response. At the same time, her supervisor and her doctoral committee passed her work so, unless eh was being in some way unethical, it seems like a weaselly move to refuse to award the degree rather than request alterations. I’ll be curious as to whether any more details emerge.