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Virginia Review of Asian Studies
BRINGING THE WORLD TO JAPAN: REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR WITH THE JET PROGRAM
Devon Burke
JET Program, Japan
The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program—which placed 4,334 participants from 36 different countries around the small nation in 2010 alone[1]—purports to be greatly improving the levels of foreign language education and grassroots internationalization throughout the whole of Japan. While the sheer numbers speak well of the Japanese government’s dedication to these admirable goals, the situation that lies beyond the bureaucratic veneer is far from perfect. The very system that created the JET Program is often its greatest adversary, derailing progress from within. Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) and Coordinators of International Relations (CIRs) alike can often feel hindered in contributing as fully as they might wish to, held back by the immovable hand of the Japanese bureaucratic system. Educational progress moves along sluggishly, and JET Program participants can feel like wasted resources at times.
However, despite these setbacks, the JET Program does not fail altogether in its aspirations. “Every situation is different.” This mantra,well known by JET Program participants ALT and CIR alike, is quoted ad nauseum during the seemingly perpetual string of orientations one must attend before and after taking up one’s post. It proves itselfperpetually true, and therein lies one of the JET Program’s greatest beauties—one which helps redeem some of the JET Program’s inherent structural failings. On the JET Program’s official website, it is clearly stated, “…[T]here is no standard JET experience. Each participant on the JET Programme can look forward to a unique role as a member of multiple communities.”[2] Ultimately, this is the aspect of the JET Program that allows for the most symbiotic gain for both Japan and JET Program participants. While the JET Program faces more than a few stumbling blocks in achieving its lofty goals, there are many things it is already doing well. Overall, the JET Program is an inspired idea that does not quite deliver all that it promises or all it is capable of.
In The Office
After fifteen months of working as an ALT at a small high school in rural Miyazaki prefecture, I feel no reservations in saying that I am as integrated into the office hierarchy as I can be. There are certain realities that one must face as both a foreigner and a temporary employee—both of which apply to all JET participants. Firstly, falling into these two categories, no matter how much one tries to adhere to Japanese manners and customs, one will never fully assimilate into the office hierarchy. Even if one stays multiple years, inevitably watching the annual faculty turnover that occurs every April in Japanese public schools and government offices, little ground is gained. Those new employees will only be beneath an ALT or CIR on the ladder until they have adapted. Once they have acclimated and found a few friends in the office, the JET participant slips back to the bottom.[3]
This sort of rootless existence can be very frustrating and can undermine even simple daily tasks. All requests go up the chain of command, as is only natural, yet anALT in particular is perpetually on the lowest link. Abiding by the ingrained sense of propriety of the Japanese, requests and plans are seldom rushed, leading to what can feel to many foreigners like excruciatingly long waits for simple requests, such as “Since I have no classes tomorrow, may I take a vacation day?”[4] It can be maddening, as can adapting to the far more passive-aggressive communication style of the Japanese, which is designed to avoid insult, but can lead to a great deal of confusion to those from countries with more direct communication styles. After more than a year, I have managed to decode most of the less overt communication tactics of the Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) with whom I work, but it has been a long road—and we still misunderstand each other’s more subtle nuances fairly frequently.
These may seem like small personal complaints, yet these seemingly mundane issues can hinder basic job functions, such as planning lessons or activities. It is not uncommon for a request to do a certain activity or game to be met with a few minutes of silence, a request for more time to discuss the idea with another JTE, and often eventual rejection of the plan in lieu of something more orthodox. Of course, everything changes depending on the JTE, the ALT, the school, and any number of other factors, and we find ourselves right back at our favorite motto: “Every situation is different.”
In The Classroom
With the JET Program solidly into its 24thyear,[5] one would expect that average Japanese students and English teachers have a firm grasp of elementary English. With a constant barrage of tests and opportunities to compete in various types of English language competitions, this seems a fairly realistic assumption. In Japanese high schools, English recitation, speech, and debate contests are annual affairs all occurring at the local, prefectural and national levels. However, the participants by and large study at academic schools or commercial schools. Many Japanese high school students are in technical or agricultural schools.Although the contests are open to every school, these students would find themselves very ill prepared to face their far more advanced opponents. When one considers the strict testing schedule that often interrupts and suspends classes in all high schools regardless of type, one realizes how little time students have to spend developing practical skills. Teachers are encouraged to teach to the exams, further hindering any real progress the students may make in real life application of their language competency.
In many elementary and middle schools, it is an unfortunate fact that many JTEs are not fluent, creating another level of complication between Japanese instructors and the foreign ALTs, who more often than not cannot speak fluent Japanese. In many classrooms, elementary and high school alike, ALTs are used as tape recorders for the students to mimic, often offering little in the way of real conversation practice. One positive aspect of being an ALT in a non-academic school is that this is less likely to be the case. Because there is so little emphasis on English education in these schools, and students there are unlikely to use English after graduation, ALTs are often given more freedom to plan lessons and stray from the often insubstantial textbook material.[6]
Not being forced to teach to a test’s standards can allow time for more useful conversation practice and games that pique the students’ interests. As an example, when my Second Year technical students were learning to follow maps and directions last year, we used a giant map with pictures of their favorite animated characters at different locations bearing amusing names.[7] The students were then asked to pretend to be jewel thieves on a heist, running from the police. Each team had to follow spoken directions to safe locations and eventually reach the airport before being caught. One of my least English-inclined groups—aclass of environmental engineering course students—enjoyedthis game immensely. After doing the activity two weeks in a row,[8]the students could follow my basic directions at a near-natural speed, far outperforming my commercial students’ listening abilities in that subject area.
As most ALTs upon questioning would admit, the classroom environment is far from ideal. The educational requirements JTEs and ALTs are forced to adhere to, plus the fairly rigorous and regular exam schedule in high schools, make having any true improvement of students’ English ability feel more like wishful thinking than any achievable task. While part of the trick is to helpthe students academically finding those activities and games that really motivate the students while honing their skills, it is important to remember that teaching is only half of an ALT’s job. Positive influence can be seen in areas other than excellence in English.
In a scholastic environment, the mere presence of a foreigner to aid in exposing the studentsand fellow teacherstohis or her native culture can be invaluable. Due to the very nature of our jobs and the screening process, most JET participants are fairly outgoing, making us a stark contrast to the classroom atmosphere most Japanese students are used to. Though they are often too shy to ask the questions they may have in an open forum, students are curious and will often pipe up with queries in one-on-one situations or outside of class. The downside for the ALT is feeling like a circus attraction or a novel toy at times,[9] but that is an inescapable fact of life when residing in such a homogeneous country.
So, while class time can feel unproductive at times, there are ways to overcome the day-to-day difficulties of the status quo. Additionally, it is important not to discredit the passive influence that an ALTs presence at a school—or a CIR’s presence in a municipal or prefectural office—can have on the general impressions Japanese around them have concerning foreigners. Whenever being a social contortionist gets tiring, it helps to remember that just being here has benefits for those people JET participants come into contact with everyday.[10] JET participants come from all over the globe, representing every continent short of Antarctica, and the wealth of intercultural knowledge available to the Japanese because of JET’s efforts is rich indeed.[11] In fact, cultural education and exposure are arguably some of the strongest and most important aspects of the JET program.
Every Situation is Different
Ultimately, writing reflections on a year with the JET Program is a thoroughly personal affair. While many JET participants experience the same workplace complaints, the fact is that, coming from so many countries, living in such diverse settings, and working in such varied environments, the old adage that we are all tired of hearing is true. No two JETs have the same experience. Ultimately, with the ups and downs, pros and cons, typhoons and earthquakes, the JET Program is exactly what one makes of it. Many JETs live for the weekends, completing the nine-to-five workday and calling it quits after that. Others work the same hours as their Japanese coworkers, sacrificing weekends for special events or school club practices. Who comes out better off in the end? It all depends on the participants goals entering the program.[12]
Whether your apartment is one room in the middle of a prefectural capital or you have a whole house to yourself in a village where the school has twelve students, there are things to be gained and things to give back. These vast discrepancies don’t change the fact that many of the JET Program’s recurring issues come from a major disconnect between the Japanese education system and the goals of the JET Program, and for CIRs, the problems come from the rigidity of the bureaucratic system—the JET Program’s greatest foe. Since neither situation is likely to change, there are two options for participants: complain or make the best of it.[13]
Japan’shigh school students most likely will not be fluent in English anytime in the foreseeable future, butALTs can still help their students understand more about the world beyond Japan’s borders. The mayor of a city might not let his CIR change the wording of a translation to make it more comprehensible, butthe spoken negotiations will still run more smoothly with a CIR present. JET participants will continue to keep their fingers crossed for eventual change. It may not come in the two or three years of any one ALT’s tenure, but the people we meet and interact with during our daily lives here will remember us.[14]In the meantime, JET and its participants do the best they can, and remind themselves of all the good that they are currently doing.
The JET Program may not have mastered communicative harmony between foreigners and Japanese in the office or foreign language education, but in all honesty, its greatest asset is the ability it has to promote grassroots internationalization. Although the participants may often be at arm’s length, stuck at the fringes of Japanese society, they are always visible. Our coworkers, students, and bosses see us in our daily lives, and they understand just a little more about the world outside ofJapan. That is what the JET Program does best, and because participants come from so many different cultures, the lessons we offer our communities also vary wildly. In the end, even more than CLAIR or the JET Program realizes, every situation truly is different—forthe participant and the beneficiary community—and it is that novelty of experience that gives the JET Program its strength.
JAPANESE INTELLECTUALS: ENCOUNTERS WITH AMERICAN CULTURE, 1954-55: A MEMOIR
Wilton S. Dillon
Smithsonian Institution
[Editors note: Dr. Dillon, who worked on General MacArthur’s SCAP staff in Occupied Japan between 1945-1948, wrote this memorandum for a presentation in August, 2005.]
Sixty years ago today, the war between Japan and the U.S. and allies ended. The United States is again at war. A new constitution is being drafted in Iraq. The Japanese experience with an Allied Occupation is under study for comparative purposes. The history of the role of non-profit organizations in the transition to peace and reconciliation remains an untold story. Let us start with these few personal anecdotes about my association with the Japan Society of New York, soon to celebrate its centennial.
How were Japanese intellectuals—students, professors and visiting pro-fessionals—coping with their exposure to American ways of life in the early post-war period? This aide-memoir fails to answer that question. Instead, I will provide the context for a staff study whose interview materials I have recently given to the Japan Society archives. They are the raw materials of an unpublished study for which I did research as staff anthropologist. The unorganized notes serve as a kind of time capsule of the epoch. They are loosely bundled together under the heading, Intellectual Cooperation with Japan.
In 1954, Douglas W. Overton, then executive director of the Society, proposed to John D. Rockefeller, III, president, that an inquiry should be made to address ways and means of dealing with the stress of what now has come to be known as “culture shock.” Implicit was how to improve the Society’s pioneering work in cultural diplomacy. Culture-contact is always a two-way process. Insights were needed concerning how Americans would benefit by access to distinctive values and worldviews of Japanese guests. Mr. Rockefeller was unusually sensitive to the host-guest relationship, as was Mrs. Blanchette Rockefeller who often lent her guest house in Manhattan as a setting for seminars and receptions for Japanese. (Both were interested in broad public education about Japan. They realized that GI’s returning to small-town and rural America carried with some familiarity with Japanese culture, remembering a few words of the Japanese language which their son, John D., IV, (Jay) was studying in Tokyo. He is now a U.S. Senator, long remembered by me for his Life story explaining motives of Japanese students who protested President Eisenhower’s visit to Japan. They were affirming the peace plank in the Japanese constitution).
I had met Overton in Japan when he served as a diplomat in the US consulate in Yokohama, and kept in touch with him after my return from three years as a civilian on the Civil Information and Education Section staff of SCAP. (My duties included serving as liaison with the Japanese press for the U.S. Education Mission to Japan, an advocate of exchange of persons programs). I had just completed a teaching assignment at Hobart and WilliamSmithColleges, Geneva, N.Y. when Overton asked me to make an open-ended inquiry. Nervous breakdowns and threatened suicide were incipient symptoms of extreme reactions to the challenge of some Japanese to deal with the seeming unstructured, less hierarchical aspects of American society. It was hard sometimes to pick up cues about social rank from a plumber who might dress like a banker. Stereotyping-cum-profiling was a predictable aspect of cross-cultural perceptions.
The Society headquarters in 1954 were in a luxurious two-room rented suite of the old Savoy-Plaza Hotel, later demolished to make way for the GeneralMotorsBuilding. (The space had once served as the pied-a-terre for a Hollwyood tycoon). There, I met with the fine staff who handled administrative matters for the Society, including the Japanese-speaking scholar, the late Eugene Langston. We decided that my inquiry should include a wide variety of regions and institutions. While American culture, with a mass market and mass communications, might seem homogeneous on the surface, important geographical and sub-cultural factors needed to be recognized. As a Southerner, I was aware that our region was more like traditional societies in Asia, Africa and Europe than like much of the United States. Kinship ties, social class, a sense of tragedy (for having lost a war and thus being occupied), love of story-telling and soul food cuisine were among the manifestations of a regional identity that would provide contrasts and comparisons with other parts of our republic. Moreover, I had a keen awareness of the importance of intellectuals as manipulators of myths and symbols in all societies. My two years in Paris, my three years in Tokyo, and six months in Manila sensitized me to the social fact that an intelligentsia is an important source of leadership. My fellow Americans historically have eschewed the word because it seems to conflict with our egalitarian ethos. Are not eggheads elitist snobs?