Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program

by David L. McConnell

  Lisa and Clara perceived the same events quite differently: they saw a criminal offense and a gross violation of Lisa's basic human rights and they expected the Japanese to respond accordingly. Though Tsurukawa's initial reaction had seemed sympathetic, the general tone shifted the next morning. The head English teacher at Lisa's base school called to express dismay that she wouldn't be coming to school to participate in the humorous skit they had practiced the day before for English class; later, he chided her for not acting as a Japanese woman would have. When Sato-sensei arrived at her apartment, he consulted the contract and after some deliberation decided that the only way Lisa could be excused from school without being docked in pay was if she filed a police report, which she did. Lisa then asked if she could move to a second-floor apartment, but Sato-sensei said that the prefecture was bound by their agreement with the landlord. If she moved, she would have to make all the new arrangements herself, including payment of key money (roughly $3,000). When she asked if the prefecture would pay for her return trip should she decide to go home, Sato-sensei read her the section in her contract about the penalties she would incur for leaving early.

  The stalemate continued for a day, and Lisa was still undecided about what action to take when her parents arrived. Sato and Tsurukawa expressed their deep regret for the incident and their intention to put it behind them. They stressed the changes that Lisa could make in her behavior-wearing more conservative clothes when she jogged, changing routes, and locking the apartment door afterward. But Lisa's parents were quite adamant that the prefecture take some action to ensure that such an intrusion would not happen again. When Sato-sensei resisted, they demanded that CLAIR officials be contacted; under pressure from CLAIR, he finally agreed to search for a second-floor apartment. By this time, however, Lisa and her parents had become thoroughly disillusioned by the apparent reluctance of the prefecture to deal effectively with the problem, and they decided to return home together.

  In the end, the incident left all parties with a bitter taste in their mouth. Most of the other prefectural ALTs who learned of the incident from Clara saw the prefectural response as confirming their preconceptions about bureaucratic insensitivity. Chad recalled, "I heard Sato-sensei called the attack incident an 'accident.' That phrasing was more than a little humorous to all of us. The women involved were very upset because it was clearly an assault, and the term 'accident' removes responsibility. By cautioning them on how to dress, they felt like they were being told not to act out of line, and that Lisa had somehow caused the problem." John suggested that blame lay mainly with national and prefectural officials who had failed to provide enough information at orientation. Lisa apparently was never told that her jogging wear might be interpreted as suggestive, nor was she cautioned about locking her door.

  Nevertheless, the few ALTs who knew Lisa personally felt that she and her parents had overreacted. Pat, a Japanese American ALT in a neighboring school, commented that Lisa had not been particularly happy in her school placement because the head English teacher, Ikuno-sensei, was an overbearing man who treated her more like a pet than a human being. All the other teachers were afraid to talk to her because Ikuno-sensei was sure to show up to embarrass them. To make matters worse, her high school was one of the top academic schools in the prefecture; its disciplinary policy was extremely strict and entrance exam preparation ruled the day. Pat concluded, "So, I don't know, she may have used the incident as a chance to get out of a difficult situation. I don't think she had many friends among the rest of us ALTs either. She struck me as very naive and immature; it was almost like she fit the 'valley girl' stereotype perfectly." Even Clara, who was quite critical of the way that prefectural administrators handled the incident, found some fault with the behavior of Lisa and her parents.

  But Lisa's inadequate sensitivity to customs in Japan hardly excuses the "blame-the-victim" mind-set of the male board of education officials. Though Tsurukawa was never officially reprimanded for offering to reimburse Lisa's parents for airfare, he was informally censored within the prefectural office for overstepping the bounds of his authority. For their part, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san were completely nonplussed by the reaction of Lisa and her parents and by their demands for plane fare. "I can't believe a doctor would be that worried about money," Tanabe-san recalled with bafflement. Sato-sensei added, "We can't imagine a Japanese woman reacting the way Lisa did. And you know," he continued, "Lisa never even apologized to us for leaving the door unlocked or for causing such an inconvenience to her school and the board of education."

  A broader moral to be drawn from Lisa's story is that while the experience of some form of discrimination and harassment at the hands of males may be universal for women, there are culturally specific repertoires of responses. In spite of the considerable gains made in the legal and economic position of women in Japanese society after World War II, attitudinal and behavioral changes have lagged far behind statutory reforms.23 The brave talk about a new generation of Japanese women is occurring against the reality that economic and political power is still largely in the hands of men; thus, female resistance to harassment in the workplace still largely takes the form of subtle manipulations (not serving tea in a timely manner, etc.) rather than outright confrontation or lawsuits, though the latter approach is becoming more frequent. It is not uncommon to see Japanese women who have been the object of offensive talk or groping at a party find nonconfrontational means of coping, perhaps even sending the drunken offender off in a taxi with a flurry of bows.

  Lisa's was not the first case of the ill-treatment of women to come to CLAIR's attention. AJET had formed a Women's Support Network during the very first year of the program to assist female JET participants in making the transition to a society with a higher degree of gender inequality than their own. Unlike Lisa's case, most of the complaints addressed inappropriate conduct on the part of ETCs or JTLs themselves, such as that described in this anonymous letter to the JET Journal:

  As a woman I do not feel safe at enkais [parties] because people casually joke about sawari [groping] and there are men at my office who are well known for sawari. I have never been physically molested but nonetheless, I feel threatened by the possibility that I may be subject to abuse.

  Initially, I trusted my supervisor as we had briefly discussed sexual harassment and he reassured me that he had read the CLAIR handbook and was aware of the problem.... However, at my Kangeikai [welcome party] my supervisor got drunk and he verbally sexually harassed a woman I work with. At one point he turned his attention to me. He looked at me lecherously and began to tell me I was attractive, but I quickly shrugged him off. He then continued to bother the other woman as he tried to make her dance with him, but she escaped by making an excuse to go home.

  As a result of that incident I no longer trust my supervisor and even find it hard to respect him. I finally discussed this incident with him last week. I tried to be tactful by explaining that sexual harassment is not just physical but verbal as well. He assumed I was referring to someone else. ... I finally had to tell him it was he that offended me. He listened to me politely but it was clear that he did not understand my point when he responded that sexual harassment is a matter of cultural interpretation.21

  The most prominent public case of sexual harassment occurred in 1993, when a village assembly in Nagano-ken voted to remove a deputy mayor from his post ostensibly for pawing an ALT at a village party.25 But the ALT involved argued that the action taken by the village assembly was disproportionate to the seriousness of the event, leading to speculation that "sexual harassment" may have been used as an excuse for an internal political move; I was unable to determine the validity of this account.

  Japanese officials at the national level were quick to line up for the fight against sexual harassment. At the annual information meetings held for prefectural administrators, CLAIR and Ministry of Education officials regularly allowed the program coordinators to give short lectures on "the meaning of sexual h
arassment," though Tanabe-san, who attended one of these meetings, recalled that most of what program coordinators warned against was considered normal behavior for men in Japan. In -1989 CLAIR directed all prefectures to ensure that single women not be housed in firstfloor apartments, regardless of their preferences. And CLAIR officials even agreed to conduct a survey of JET participants about sexual harassment; these questions were eventually included in the annual living conditions survey. At first glance, the results were striking; nearly 40 percent of respondents in 1989 indicated that they had been harassed verbally (19 per cent), physically (5 percent), or both (15 percent).26 It is difficult to assess the significance of these replies, however, since "sexual harassment" was not defined in the questionnaire.

  To my mind, what is most revealing here is the extent to which Japanese policymakers conceptualized sexual harassment as a "foreign problem." By Tanabe-san's own admission, it was the fear that the situation might turn into an "international incident" that ultimately determined how the prefecture treated Lisa. At the national level, too, CLAIR officials wholeheartedly supported the program coordinators' lectures to prefectural administrators on sexual harassment even though no comparable training was conducted regarding the harassment of Japanese women and even though the program coordinators' well-intentioned efforts to raise awareness at times crossed the line into "the West knows best" sermons.

  The Pension Confrontation

  Only a few months separated Lisa's departure and what Sato-sensei described as another of his most disagreeable memories (iyana omoide): a heated confrontation with an Australian ALT over the requirement that JET participants pay into a pension fund from which they would receive no benefits (see chapter 3). The actual clash took place in May 1988, in a district board of education to which two ALTs had been posted-Toby, a thirty-two-year-old former schoolmaster from Australia, and Trisha, a twenty-two-year-old American woman. Both felt strongly about the injustice of the pension policy and decided to fight it. Toby laid out their case: "Our argument was that we would accept it if there was some potential benefit to us, but without that, it seemed unjust to say the least. So we each wrote a letter to Sato-sensei explaining our position, and he actually came out to [our district board of education] to explain the policy. He basically said that every group which employed twenty or more people was required by law to do this." This explanation did not appease Toby and Trisha, however, and they firmly told Sato-sensei that they were not satisfied with his response. They also informed him that they were planning to write to the local newspaper about the matter and to consult with other ALTs in the prefecture to decide on a course of action.

  Sato-sensei was quite upset by these threats, particularly because his relationship with Toby was already stormy. He had contacted Toby several times prior to his departure from Australia to ask him to bring textbooks and encyclopedias that could be used to design reading comprehension tests in the prefecture. After being invited by Sato-sensei to meet him for dinner one night to receive the books, Toby had returned to his board of education and listed the trip and dinner as a business expense. This led his ETC there to call Sato-sensei, who angered Toby by labeling the trip and dinner a personal expense. Having gone to some trouble to find and transport the books, Toby expected to be reimbursed. In addition, Toby was close in age to Sato-sensei and was not at all inclined to play what he called the "subordination game."

  After consulting with the board of education section chief, Sato-sensei decided on a course of action. He traveled to Toby's office on Saturday morning, called him in from his house, and proceeded to read him the article in the JET contract on political activity. In doing so, he was warning Toby that if he wrote a letter to the newspaper or contacted other ALTs about this, a fine would be deducted from his salary and he would be barred from renewing his stay for an additional year. But Sato-sensei was totally unprepared for Toby's reaction. In the middle of the office, Toby suddenly raised his voice and began yelling that threats would not work and that he couldn't be responsible for the actions of other ALTs. Flustered and visibly embarrassed, Sato-sensei tried to recover his poise and hold his ground, but as Toby later described it, "he began twitching all over-he's really a very nervous person." That night Toby rounded up seven other ALTs for an emergency meeting at a local pub that catered to foreigners, and numerous letters were written to CLAIR. Beyond that, however, Toby backed off his threat to write to the newspaper and Sato-sensei took no further action. At our next meeting over coffee, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san engaged in a lively appraisal of the run-in and discussed how they would handle similar incidents in the future. Sato-sensei warned, "We can't forget that that kind of person is among us. I suspected right from the start that he had other reasons for coming here, like making money. Why else would he quit his job as a principal? In his case, there's no effort put into team teaching and nothing changes. His district office has had a terrible time, so I really want to put some good people there this year." Tanabe-san half-jokingly came up with a plan for future action: he would sacrifice himself on the front lines should a similar problem arise. "Since I don't understand English very well," he pointed out, "it won't bother me so much if the ALT gets upset."

  That Sato-sensei would find this kind of face-to-face conflict extremely unpleasant is hardly surprising, but I was completely taken aback by a subsequent development. Because of his age, nationality, and, ironically, his involvement in protesting against the pension payments, Toby re ceived a phone call the next month from a British program coordinator at CLAIR asking him to come to Tokyo for an interview for that position. Because he had already been handpicked for the job (CLAIR needed an Australian program coordinator at the time), the interview was perfunctory, and CLAIR recommended that he be hired on condition that his current supervisors agreed on his suitability for the position. And when the documents asking for Sato-sensei's comments arrived, he declined to fight Toby's nomination. "I just wrote that I had no reservations," he recalled. "It's not worth creating a fuss over it." Though he had been given the opportunity to sabotage Toby's nomination, Sato-sensei chose the path of least resistance. In this case, his potential exercise of power was deflected by an even more powerful cultural preoccupation with avoiding direct confrontation."

  School Switching

  One of the more common headaches for Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san was caused by the desire of renewing ALTs to switch schools. But in 1989 they instituted a policy that an ALT must spend two years at a school before the board of education would entertain any such request. "We're just not going to listen to their ultimatums any more," Sato-sensei told me. "From now on, if they want to renew, they have to stay where they are for two years."

  It was only a matter of months before the new policy was tested. Chad was a twenty-three-year-old American; though based at Kitano High School, he also made irregular visits to six other high schools, including several dominated by union teachers. Chad thoroughly enjoyed his newfound celebrity status at his base school; although he was not particularly attuned to Japanese culture, his outgoing personality made hirn well-liked by students and teachers. At the midpoint of his stay, he had indicated to Sato-sensei that he planned to renew for the following year. Only a few weeks later, at a team-teaching workshop, Sato-sensei had told him that he would remain at Kitano as his base school and that he would visit only Sano and Yamaguni; a new ALT would take over the other three schools. Chad was excited about the idea of making fewer visits while still being able to keep Yamaguni, which had by far the most active group of JTLs and students.

  But sometime thereafter, Sato-sensei decided to reshuffle the visit schools for the new ALT to include Yamaguni, precisely because the teachers there were such an enthusiastic group. It was exchanged with a strong union school that had expressed little interest in team teaching, where Sato-sensei felt it was dangerous to send a new ALT. Unfortunately, Satosensei forgot to directly notify Chad, who felt betrayed when he received word from a JTL at Yamaguni that Sato-sensei ha
d changed his mind. The prospect of staying for an additional year seemed much less appealing to Chad if he would be traveling to schools that were lukewarm about team teaching and the ESS club. He immediately called Sato-sensei, who apologized for the misunderstanding but stood firm, saying that the decision had already been made.

  After some thought, Chad decided to press his cause. He met with several of his favorite teachers at Yamaguni and explained how much he liked the school and that he wanted to stay on the following year. Chad then developed a three-pronged argument: first, it was unconscionable that he was not consulted before his visit school was rearranged; second, it was unfair to put the new ALT into a teaching situation that would demand so much work; and third, the teachers at Yamaguni did not want him to leave. All of this Chad put into writing in a lengthy letter that closed with a veiled threat: he was not happy with the way his situation for the following year was shaping up, and he hoped to be able to come back to Japan and start afresh with a good attitude after his short trip home during summer vacation. Chad then took the extraordinary step of calling Yoshiro Tagai, the section chief and Sato-sensei's boss, at io:oo P.M. on a Sunday night to explain his difficulty. Tagai, a former principal at one of Chad's visit schools, listened carefully to Chad's explanation and promised to see what he could do, though he stressed that the matter was Sato-sensei's responsibility.

  The following day Chad hand-delivered his letter to the board of education. Though he had planned to just drop off the letter and leave, he happened to encounter Sato-sensei, who, without reading the letter, began to reiterate that his decision was determined by structural arrangements. At this point Tagai intervened and called Sato-sensei and Chad over to his desk, where he explained to Chad that in a sense, his argument was valid, but the decision had actually been made by a superior. Chad replied that he should have been consulted before a decision was made, and he was asking the board of education to reconsider its decision in light of the arguments in his letter.