Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (7 page)

In the mid-i98os, numerous policy prescriptions were proposed and
implemented, but some argued that these national-level fixes would not
seriously address the underlying problem. If arm's-lengths strategies of
global integration were no longer tenable, then "mass internationalization" was crucial to continued economic progress. Though more and more
people were traveling and living abroad, these individuals still constituted
only a small part of the population. Japan's leaders began to see the examoriented educational system as a major barrier to internationalization. In March 198o the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) issued a report blaming the system for failing to produce the creative and internationalist workers necessary to meet the coming economic challenges.
Business organizations have also been loud in their criticism of Japan's
one-track school system and its failure to open itself up to diversity. Japanese education, long viewed as an asset in fueling Japan's domestic transformation, has recently come to be seen as a potential hindrance in meeting the challenges of the new world order.

American views of Japanese education have undergone a similar change.
For a long time Americans were largely indifferent to Japanese education,
but in the early to mid-i 98os interest surged as Japan's economic success
was linked to its highly educated and disciplined workforce. Several scholars published influential books arguing that broad public support for education, the social organization of schooling, and culturally specific approaches to child rearing and discipline were the foundation of Japan's
educational successes.40 Popular media sung the praises of Japan's schools
as models of academic achievement and warned of the follies of ignoring
the educational accomplishments of our major economic competitors. Influential American educators such as Diane Ravitch signed on for whirlwind tours of Japan's schools, returning home to exhort their colleagues to
consider the merits of the Japanese approach. While liberals applauded the
egalitarian streak in Japanese schooling, pointing out that Japan did a much
better job than the United States in raising a large proportion of its population to high levels of achievement and making them part of the social
order, conservatives praised the streamlined core curriculum and noted the
many ways in which "family values" undergirded the system. The overall
sentiment was that American educators, parents, and the general public
had much to learn from the Japanese.

But dissenting voices emerged: another set of popular and academic accounts purported to reveal "the dark side of Japanese education," to quote
the subtitle of Ken Schoolland's 199o book, Shogun's Ghost. Rather than
portraying Japanese education as possessing a desirable difference, these
reports decried its uniformity, inflexibility, and closed nature. The images
offered were poignant if predictable: narrow-minded administrators
caught in the deadly grip of the "diploma disease," Ministry of Education
officials who ruthlessly censored textbooks, discrimination against Korean
and burakumin minorities, "returnee children" who were bullied by their
teachers and peers, adolescents driven to suicide or "school refusal syndrome" by exam pressures, the relentless kyoiku mama (education mothers) who pushed their children to do well on the entrance exams, and the limited options for learning-disabled children. A -1995 New York Times article went so far as to claim that Japanese schools are "assembly lines that
press students into the same shape," likening their atmosphere to that of a
military academy.41

While some of these critiques were clearly based on myths and not reality, others could not be dismissed so lightly. As a whole, they suggested
that whereas American educators begin by assuming that all children are
different, Japanese teachers and administrators begin from the opposite position; and the notion that all children are basically the same creates enormous pressure to conform to a cultural center. In this view, Japanese education is a closed system that allows little room for deviance and few
second chances. In several areas, Japanese education has deservedly been
taken to task; many criticisms relate to its insularity.

Nationalistic Textbooks

State control over textbooks in Japan can be traced back to the late 18oos;
as one historian explains, "the government promulgated the Imperial Rescript on Education ... to bring to the education system the same system
of thought control that had been instituted in the army."42 Textbook revisions to promote new government policies were frequent up to and during
World War II. Although Occupation reforms after the war gave schools
discretion in choosing textbooks, the Ministry of Education moved in the
195os and 196os to expand its power over their authorization. Today, two
advisory bodies in the Ministry of Education-the Council on Textbook
Authorization and Research and the Curriculum Council-exert firm control over textbook content.

Social studies and history textbooks have proved most controversial. A
1982 media report claiming that the Ministry of Education had requested
that Japan's military activities in Asia in the 193os be described as an "advance" rather than an "invasion" drew harsh international criticism; even
though the report was later found to be inaccurate, the whitewashing of
textbooks is still widely seen as symptomatic of a deeper reluctance to acknowledge the Nanking Massacre and other war atrocities. But textbooks
are more generally purged of materials that may be critical of the government's position and are thus characterized by a bland neutrality on hotly
contested social and political issues. Teruhisa Horio points to one case in
which the Ministry of Education failed to approve a well-respected work of
literature because it did not use the official onomatopoeic word for a river's
sound: "We can only conclude from this that the Ministry's inspectors feared that the children might get the idea that it was all right to play with
the national language in ways which would encourage them to think of it
as something belonging to them rather than as something whose use is
controlled by the State for them."43 More recently lenaga Saburo, a professor emeritus at the now-defunct Tokyo University of Education (currently Tsukuba University), won a 1997 ruling in favor of his claim that
the government abused its discretionary powers when it ordered him to remove from his textbook a reference to live human experiments conducted
by the Imperial Japanese Army's Unit 731 in northern China during World
War II.'

Treatment of "Returnee Children"

The overseas migration of Japanese subsidiaries in search of cheaper labor
and profitable markets has given rise to another vexed educational issue:
children returning to Japan after extended stays in other countries. These
children, known as kikokushijo (returnee children), are often pressured by
teachers and peers to give up the cognitive and behavioral styles they had
learned abroad. While such treatment is by no means universal-in certain
schools these children are seen as a cultural asset-kikokushijo are likely
to feel they must keep a very low profile, and many have serious problems
readjusting. During the 197os and 198os most scholarly and popular accounts portrayed these children as victims of the closed nature of the
school system and the tenacity with which cultural boundaries are maintained in Japan.45 The titles and subtitles of books on the returnee children
(e.g., "Life in Between" and "Can They Go Home Again?") suggested that
returnees occupied a liminal category; and familiar expressions such as
gaikoku hagashi (peeling away the foreignness) were seized on as manifestations in the schools of Japan's ideology of blood.

Roger Goodman's revisionist analysis seems to have marked a turning
point of sorts in the dominant views of these children.46 Goodman argues
that it is misleading to compare the returnee children with Koreans or burakumin, because they are actually the vanguard of a new social elite. As
the children of power brokers in Japanese society, the returnees-unlike
other minorities in Japan-can expect as adults to find significant employment opportunities. Goodman's analysis was followed by a number of articles pointing out the special provisions for returnee children who compete for university slots and discussing the resentment such "privileged
treatment" creates among other students. Yet a closer reading of Good man's study reveals that even he recognizes the considerable ambivalence
many Japanese feel toward these children. Moreover, his analysis is based
primarily on data from one special school for returnees; those returning to
schools without support systems in place continue to face strong pressure
to give up the patterns of speech and behavior that they learned abroad.

The "Education Gap"

Another area that has received increased attention of late is the imbalance
in educational exchange. In 1997, for every American going to Japan,
twenty Japanese were studying in the United States.47 While a lack of interest and language ability on the part of American students may be partly
to blame, Japan has long been criticized for the low numbers of foreign students that its universities accept. Drawing parallels with Japan's trade surplus, critics argue that this gap is symptomatic of the self-centered and narrowly instrumental approach taken by Japanese schools toward the issue of
global integration. The United States has opened up its educational institutions to Japanese students, so the argument goes, and thus expects reciprocal treatment.

The system of support in Japan for foreign students, the large majority
of whom come from Asia, is poorly developed. For example, high prices and
landlords who refuse to rent to foreigners can make good housing hard to
find. One longtime observer claims that the role of foreign students in Japanese universities resembles that of imported laborers .4' For their part, Japanese faculty and graduate students privately complain about the burden
of caring for foreign students who aren't sensitive to the norms of reciprocity and tend to follow codes of local behavior only when doing so is in
their best interest.

Sensitive to criticism in this area, the Ministry of Education embarked on
a series of steps to import diversity and create more parity in educational exchange. In 1983, shortly before the advent of the JET Program, the ministry
drew on the example of France and began a "ioo,ooo Foreign Students
Plan," hoping to meet that goal by the turn of the century. Through the
early 199os the program reached its annual target every year, but since 1994
the pace of growth has slowed considerably and the target now appears impossible to reach. Searching for a solution to the slowdown in growth and to
the Asian background of the overwhelming majority of foreign students,
the Ministry of Education in 1996 created a new category of scholarships,
which in effect pay American and European students to study in Japan.

Foreign Language Education

Perhaps no other aspect of Japan's education system has been so sharply
criticized for its insularity as the teaching of foreign languages. Although
oral English had been held in high esteem during the early Meiji period, by
the early twentieth century Japanese interest in learning foreign languages-particularly spoken English-had declined. The rise in nationalism led many foreign teachers to be replaced by native-born Japanese who
were not always very proficient in spoken English. During the same time,
the Japanese system of higher education took on an increasingly pyramidal structure, funneling the most capable students into a few elite schools;
the keen competition that resulted only magnified the importance of the
entrance exams. This, in turn, affected the way English was taught at the
precollegiate level, and soon English became a means of sorting students
rather than a basis of communication. 49

Worsening relations with the West and the popularity of continental
European fiction also contributed to a revulsion against spoken English and
a perception that English was a language for businessmen. This too encouraged a return to the "translation method"-that is, an almost sole reliance on written texts-by which Chinese had been appropriated nearly a
thousand years earlier. Inazo Nitobe conveys the prevailing sentiment:

For the Japanese ... the advantages of studying foreign languages are
of a higher and more intangible nature than are the so-called "practical" benefits. In some ways the most valuable advantage lies in its "unpractical" aspect, namely, in its hidden and unutilitarian effect on the
mind.... The age of Chinese classics is gone and with them the severe
disciplinarian. His place is taken now by the English grammar, which
with manifold rules and exceptions to rules, with its mysterious orthography and esoteric idioms, exacts of the neophyte the most strenuous use of his reason and memory, together ... with unbounded admiration for the people who have mastered its intricacies.50

Thus two schools of thought developed on teaching the English language,
one emphasizing cultural enrichment through reading of literature and the
other stressing communication for international business. Nitobe comments, "Japanese teachers make no secret of their utter incompetence in
oral intercourse; it is not expected of them. In fact, there is a deplorable
propensity to boast of colloquial ignorance."51 For most of the twentieth
century the translation and literature school has been dominant, but there
has always been a small but vocal minority of teachers calling for an emphasis on the practical dimensions of English communication.

Today, in sharp contrast to the highly politicized debates over bilingual
and multicultural education in the United States, there is virtually no opposition in Japan to the idea of teaching English. All junior high students
study a foreign language for three years, and most continue it for three
more years in high school. Private English juku, or after-school classes
catering to students who want to learn to speak, are a multimillion-dollar
business in Japan. Yet language teaching in the Japanese public school system has continued to be harshly criticized on several grounds. Some object
to the domination of one language: foreign languages are technically electives in Japan, but English has become almost mandatory. And because the
approach emphasizes rote and grammar-much as Latin was long taught
in American schools-students gain little sense of a living language. The
six years invested in the study of English thus yield meager returns. It is
not uncommon for students' conversational abilities to decline from the
eighth grade on. The American linguist Roy Andrew Miller minces no
words: "What are potentially the most valuable years for foreign-language
learning are totally wasted in the course of hour after dreary hour in the
English classroom with Japanese teachers, most of whom drone away in
Japanese explaining the grammar and pronunciation of a language that
they themselves have rarely even heard and certainly cannot speak."'z
Masayoshi Harasawa concurs: "Of all the countries in the world where English has been taught on a nationwide scale, Japan seems to me about the
least successful.... On balance, our English teaching has become a disastrous failure.""