DM: How did they come up with the lists, do you have any idea?
Meredith: It was from letters, from people who had been brownnosing the secretary-general. So then we called the people that we wanted them to choose and said, "Look, he's taking these letters people are sending him seriously! Send him a letter! Have someone from your office call him and tell him you would be a good program coordinator." So we went through the back door. And we had a Japanese guy helping us because he understood that the secretary-general didn't know what kind of person would make a good program coordinator.
In fact, the rationale for the Japanese decision was not as sinister as Meredith made it out to be. By the third year of the program, the number of program coordinators had to be increased to four (and in the fifth year, as the program continued to grow, to five), and more and more JET participants were asking how to apply for the position. Indeed, some had begun accusing CLAIR of unfair hiring practices because the method was entirely subjective. CLAIR officials thus felt pressure to switch to a more formal process.
Yet excluding the program coordinators from any direct voice in the selection was clearly a political move. Having had their fill of embarrassing confrontations with overly "aggressive" program coordinators, CLAIR officials reasoned that the problem would continue as long as they let those currently in the position pick their successors. By controlling the selection process and relying heavily on recommendations from local officials, they could guarantee that those chosen spoke better Japanese and were more in tune with Japanese bureaucratic norms. While this decision did not sit well with most of the program coordinators, it spoke volumes about the growing confidence of the Japanese. As one deputy secretary-general put it, "We began to feel that since this was a program run by the Japanese government, it made sense that we ought to be in charge of all personnel decisions."
Within this climate of mutual skepticism about motives and goals, program management often turned into a game of opposing strategies. For instance, in order to fend off their demands, CLAIR officials attempted to ascertain whether there was serious disagreement among program coordinators. Such conflict was then used as support for the official position-for example, on rescinding the age limit ("Britain and the United States disagree") or on censoring the advertisement placed by the gay support group ("many JET participants themselves are uncomfortable with homosexuality"). For their part, faced with what they believed to be an unresponsive bureaucracy, the program coordinators made great efforts to present a unified front. Sarah told me, "One of the things the program coordinators tried to do was stay united, like if three of us agreed and one didn't, then that person would have to bend because we're trying to get some kind of unity going. If we don't present a solid front, the secretary-general will play us off each other. [X] was really good at that."
Of course, presenting a unified front meant informal censoring of behaviors of other program coordinators that were deemed too "Japanese." Consider Sarah's recollection of what happened when the secretarygeneral proposed that JET participants pay for their own lunch at the Kobe renewers' conference. A controversy arose after Japanese officials realized their calculations for the budget were off and asked Don, the program coordinator in charge of the conference, for his opinion:
Don, whom we had a lot of trouble with, to be honest, decided to be Japanese and agreed to that plan without consulting us, and he also contacted AJET, and they had a fit. Like, it's a business meeting and you're telling them it's mandatory, and then you're telling them they have to buy their own lunch? Well, Don went ahead and approved it without all of us, and so Meredith and I called over the secretarygeneral and the section chief of implementation and in the middle of the office we had a good yelling match-well, we were yelling a lot at Don, too. They usually let me do the yelling because I've been there longer, and after a while, the Japanese will usually say, "Oh, we agree." But this time it came down to a lack of communication, and again it came down to cultural differences. The secretary-general couldn't see anything wrong with making them pay for their own lunches and being back in an hour. And we're saying, "It's not going to happen." That was a sore point, but ultimately, after he'd heard everyone's side, the secretary-general ended up paying for lunch, and they just shifted the budget around.
Worth noting here is not only how the charge of being "too Japanese" is leveled against a compatriot, but also how routinely the strategy of foreign pressure ("they usually let me do the yelling") is used to achieve their objectives-successfully, in this case.
While the comments and behavior of some of the program coordinators could easily be seen as exemplifying what Donna Haraway calls the cannibalistic logic that readily construes other cultural possibilities only in terms of resources for Western goals and actions, I believe such an interpretation falls short.14 First, there were strong and weak versions of this reformist approach, even among the program coordinators. Philip and Caroline, for instance, while sharing the underlying goal of change, differed dramatically in their willingness to use confrontational strategies to achieve their ends. Second, youth and idealism undoubtedly played a role in this stance. Their relative lack of job experience may have led program coordinators to blame "Japanese bureaucracy" for problems common to bureaucratic organizations more generally. Third, the program coordinators were a unique subset of the pool of JET participants. Members of the initial group were selected because they had become known in their local areas for championing reform while at the same time acknowledging the importance of Japanese approaches. They tended to be idealists, viewing the goal of the JET Program as transforming not only English education but also Japanese society more generally. In addition, as spokespersons for and representatives of the JET participants they were under some pressure to achieve results, and the gap between program rhetoric and reality was especially acute during the early years.
Finally, their disparaging stance toward Japanese bureaucracy can be seen as a kind of cultural performance: they take on the role of "foreigners trying to show Japanese how to do internationalization." With the best of intentions, and intensely desiring to help bring positive change to a culture in which they found many attractive features, they set themselves up for frustration. At times their exuberance overruled their common sense. It is also worth noting that a similar attitude toward Japanese culture can be observed among the "hired foreigners" (oyatoi gaikokujin) of the Meiji period and the educational consultants brought in during the Allied Occupa- tion.ss In many cases these individuals saw Japan as fertile ground for experimentation; as they tried out ideas whose implementation in the United States had been quite problematic, they developed sudden amnesia about those earlier difficulties.
The Japanese Response
The contrast between the generally negative evaluations of the program coordinators and the positive assessments of Japanese officials could not be starker. While Ministry of Education officials remained lukewarm about the program-after the rash of accidents and suicides, one official noted with a hint of smugness, "They must be really worried over at CLAIR right now. I do wonder about the future of the program"-the other two sponsoring ministries had no such doubts. At the midway point of the first year of the JET Program, a report by the Second Cultural Affairs Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated,
Though it may be a bit premature to evaluate the program since it is only six months old, judging from the voluminous reports, the impressions of participants, and the fact that only a small handful of people have gone home early (most for personal reasons), this ministry can say with certainty that the program is making a tremendous contribution to the promotion of our country's internationalization both in terms of bringing about historical reform in English language education and fostering international exchange and mutual understanding and goodwill."
The expansion of participating countries itself testified to the program's success in achieving the goals of this ministry. Home Affairs Ministry reports were very upbeat as well and ci
ted the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response of local governments throughout Japans' They also noted that the percentage of JET participants who returned home early had decreased from a high of 3.1 percent (26 out of 848) in 1987-88 to less than 2 percent by i99o-91. This percentage, which compares very favorably to the rates of premature departure in other youth exchange programs, has continued to fall (see table 4).ss
My first impulse was to dismiss these reports as just more examples of bureaucratic whitewashing. Yet when I posed this question in 1990 to a former secretary-general of CLAIR, he confirmed the positive evaluation: "Actually, we expected much more serious problems than we've had so far-AIDS, rape, illegitimate children. The JET Program is going much better than anyone thought it would." The roots of these favorable assessments lie in the very different model of internationalization that Japanese officials brought to the program. My first clue to that difference came when I bumped into the secretary-general of CLAIR at a reception in 1989. I asked him how things were going and, somewhat inebriated, he replied enthusiastically, "Experience is everything! Experience is everything!" His comment seemed straightforward enough, even simplistic; and yet the more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that he was voicing the philosophy of "learning by doing" (karade de oboeru) that has been shown to be a cornerstone of Japanese approaches to learning in a variety of con- texts.59
What I believe the secretary-general was saying was this: We can talk about internationalization all we want, but the best way to learn is to jump right in and rub shoulders with each other. To an anthropologist who is accustomed to lecturing on the virtues of cross-cultural orientation and the need to learn more about one another before working together, this advice seemed counterintuitive. Diversity is not an end in itself. Without nurturance and careful instruction, placing diverse peoples together may just as easily result in intolerance, misunderstanding, and the confirmation of preexisting stereotypes. It also ran contrary to the sensibilities of the program coordinators, who had long pressed CLAIR officials to provide Japanese officials involved in the program with a more substantive orientation on cultural differences.
SOURCE: Adapted from The JET Program(me): Five Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1992), 80.
But for the Japanese involved, internationalization never implied erasing national boundaries or coming to know others as "autonomous individuals." Instead, it was seen as a process of improving understanding between groups who, it was assumed, would always be fundamentally different. Most ministry officials saw the JET Program not as dramatically changing Japanese society but as providing the experience that they felt was a precondition for true learning to take place. On the one hand, foreign youth would increase their understanding of Japanese society. On the other hand, a whole cadre of Japanese officials, national level and local, would be trained in Western styles of negotiation and interaction. One CLAIR official noted, "We're getting our own internationalization just by being here in CLAIR and interacting with the program coordinators. You know, Japanese can't just 'do' kokusaika (internationalization). We have to 'touch it' first."
Given this framework, one could easily have predicted serious problems in the program's infancy, as expectations were adjusted on all sides. In spite of these problems in implementation, however, what impressed me most is that Japanese officials at CLAIR and at the sponsoring ministries did not give up. One by one, they took on virtually every difficulty raised by the JET participants and wrestled with it: sometimes holding their ground, sometimes capitulating entirely, but more often than not reaching some kind of compromise. Before examining in more detail the learning curve at the national level (see chapter 6), we need to journey downward through the administrative system to examine the diverse and contradictory ways in which the JET Program was translated into practice in local prefectures and cities, schools and classrooms.
National-level bureaucrats in Japan by and large subscribe to a theory of administrative guidance according to which they pressure prefectural officials, who pressure local school officials until the desired policy outcomes are achieved. But how are national-level directives and guidance received and interpreted at the prefectural level? What administrative niche does the JET Program occupy within local boards of education? The key figures in this process are the teachers' consultants, who constitute a relatively unstudied yet key educational conduit between the national and local levels. Who are these people, and what is the nature of the environment in which they work? What are their experiences with the assistant language teachers, and how do they evaluate these experiences? This chapter explores the intersection of internationalization and the bureaucratic model at the prefectural level, largely through the eyes of two prefectural administrators assigned to coordinate the JET Program from 1987 to 1990.'
Almost five months after my arrival in Japan, I first met Tanabe-san and Sato-sensei. My Japanese mentor at the local university had graciously agreed to provide an introduction to prefectural officials overseeing the JET Program, and our taxi glided up to the prefectural office at about ten minutes to the hour. Too early. Though a light rain was falling, we stood outside for a few moments so that we might enter the education wing at exactly 9:0o A.M. Satoshi Sakai, the division chief for school guidance (shidobucho), rose from his desk at the head of a cluttered but cozy office holding a dozen individuals. He quickly motioned to his assistant, Tanabesan, who led us to a private guest room. We exchanged business cards and pleasantries, and Sakai explained that Sato-sensei, the English teachers' consultant (ETC), would not be able to join us as he was visiting a school that morning.
The meeting itself took less than a half hour, and my mentor did virtually all the talking. After explaining my affiliation with the university, and my general aim of exploring the prefectural system for receiving JET participants, he asked me to present the resume and statement of purpose that I had carefully prepared in Japanese. This, and the fact that I spoke some Japanese, seemed to relieve both officials considerably.' I immediately liked Tanabe-san, sensing a genuineness and earnestness in his manner. When he asked me what specific help I would need, I replied that if I could visit some host schools for ALTs and observe a few seminars for JET participants, I would be most grateful. The meeting ended abruptly, and we were ushered gracefully to the door with assurances that Tanabe-san would be in touch. It was only later that I realized how crucial this introduction would be in allowing me to see behind the curtain that prefectural officials intentionally draw around most of their activities.'
Within a matter of days Tanabe-san called to let me know he had arranged visits to a half dozen schools and district boards of education in the prefecture and to ask if I could meet him and Sato-sensei for dinner. I was excited at the opportunity to finally meet an ETC, for this was the person who technically served as the ALTs' boss. Though there are prefectural school boards in Japan whose members are appointed by the governor, their influence is exercised through the administrative office of the boards of education (ky(5ikuiinkai). These boards of education are the center for recruiting and training an elite group of educational administrators known as teachers' consultants (shidoshuji). Coming directly from the ranks of teachers, they are vital liaisons between boards of education and the schools; teachers' consultants typically spend much of their time advising school-based personnel on prefectural and national policy regarding their subject area. Most become vice-principals or principals shortly after they return to schools. Thomas Rohlen succinctly describes this position:
Offices of education are staffed by people who come from the ranks of teachers. After serving in the administration, they return to positions in the schools. The responsibility to implement policy and almost all of the contact with schools is thus in the hands of teachers temporarily detailed to administrative jobs. All are seasoned teachers, but few are on the edge of retirement. They earn appointments by excellence as teachers and loyal service.... Respected, hardworking, and
aligned with the administrative goal of maintaining efficient schooling, these staffers are also politically savvy. They tend to be firm pragmatists who can navigate the tricky waters of education politics.`
Significantly, though the ETCs were English teachers before moving to the board of education, they were usually not chosen on the basis of their conversational English or international experience. If anything, they represented the more conservative English teachers, predisposed to toe the administrative line; and they sometimes found the prospect of sustained face-to-face interaction with foreigners terrifying.
That first evening, Sato-sensei matched Rohlen's description. As he came off the train, I noticed that unlike most school-based teachers, he was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and was punctilious in demeanor. Joined by Tanabe-san and Ueda-sensei, an English teacher at a nearby high school, Sato-sensei quickly took charge and directed us to a small drinking establishment. Once seated in a semiprivate tatami room, he immediately brought out a critical article on the JET Program that had just appeared in the international edition of Time magazine. With two eager listeners, hot snacks, and mugs of cold beer, both Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san quickly warmed to the task of sharing recollections of their first year coordinating the program.
Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Page 16