Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program

by David L. McConnell

  THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE ALUMNI RIPPLE EFFECT

  Though its effects on English education have been gradual and mixed, the JET Program has achieved phenomenal success as a cultural exchange program. Many of the JET participants, even those who are preoccupied with changing the Japanese system, come to feel close to Japan. In a 1992 CLAIR survey on the living conditions of JET participants, for example, nearly 50 percent of the 2,172 respondents indicated that they would absolutely recommend JET to a friend, while another 45 percent said they probably would. In addition, the renewal rate among JET participants, after hovering slightly above 40 percent for the first few years of the program, has now soared well above 50 percent (see table 7). As noted in chapter 4, fewer than i percent now leave Japan before their contracts expire. And in spite of their sharply differing styles of social relations and education, many JET participants and their Japanese hosts do hit it off and form enduring friend- ships.38

  If we focus on the alumni ripple effect, the JET Program appears to have succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its originators.39 Although it was conceived narrowly as a bargaining chip in U.S.-Japan bilateral trade negotiations, JET has grown to include numerous countries. Hundreds of its alumni have returned home to study Japan-related topics in graduate school, with a level of preparation that is, in the words of one longtime Japan expert, "something we could only have dreamed of ten years ago."" Other JET alumni have stayed in Japan, working in various capacities, or have found Japan-related work in their own country; there have even been dozens of cross-cultural marriages.

  SOURCE: Adapted from The JET Programme: Ten Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1997), 356.

  CLAIR and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have approached alumni relations with great enthusiasm, thereby indicating their high priority among Japanese policymakers. As early as 1988 CLAIR was toying with the idea of holding a "non-renewers' conference" in order to ensure that nonrenewing JET participants would leave Japan with a good taste in their mouths. One program coordinator recalls,

  We came up with this idea of having a meeting, like a closing to the whole year. Well, the Japanese were really enthused about it. They wanted the crown prince to come and the secretary-general had actually visited the Imperial Palace to try to arrange it. That didn't work out, and then they wanted the prime minister. They were HOT on the idea! We had the money to cover the program, and then we started running into problems of agenda and cost to the prefectures. The prefectures would have to pay for sending them to the conference and they started to balk, saying we're not going to pay for a JET to come up there just for a party or for one night or whatever.

  The idea was effectively dropped for a number of years, but it resurfaced in 1995, largely through the efforts of program coordinators. In 1996 the first annual Non-Renewers' Conference was held.

  The idea of forming a JET Alumni Association met with a more immediate positive reception; indeed, its formation arguably provides the best example from the program's history of how JET participants and their Japanese hosts can work together on new projects that are beneficial both to the program and to society as a whole. Much of the groundwork for JETAA was done by an AJET representative, Scott Olinger, who became a program coordinator at CLAIR. The first significant gesture toward alumni concerns was an AJET publication titled The Non-Renewer's Handbook, which gave advice on jobs, graduate schools, and other matters pertaining to life after JET. When Olinger arrived at CLAIR, he convinced officials there that a more formal organization was needed to assist JET participants in making the transition back home and in providing information and contacts regarding what to do next. By January 1999, more than 9,000 former JET participants were members of forty-two regional JETAA chapters located in eleven participating countries, and each year representatives from regional chapters gather for a JETAA International Conference. The only snag concerned funding for the JETAA regional groups. Particularly in cities where the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs both had offices, there was competition for sponsorship of JETAA chapters. And the JET alumni themselves were suspicious of both, fearing that if they accepted ministry funding for outreach activities they then would be forced to accept ministry policies. In the end each chapter set itself up as a nonprofit organization, and this arrangement has worked quite well.

  While the activities of each JETAA chapter vary considerably, they usually include assisting in recruiting and interviewing, participating in Japanrelated community outreach activities, holding social gatherings in conjunction with the consulate, and assisting JET alumni in their job searches. Scott Olinger told me that at the outset he hoped "these groups would become active in promoting a better, realistic understanding of Japan in their communities." CLAIR very generously funded and supported the creation of a quarterly newsletter, JET Streams, for JET alumni, as well as an annual alumni directory. An annual essay contest was begun in 1993, and enterprising alumni have ensured that the JET Program is well-represented in cyberspace. In fact, when Olinger did a cursory search in 1998 he found 182 references to the JET Program on the World Wide Web. Prefectures have also jumped at the opportunity to establish their own alumni groupings within the framework of JETAA. Hyogo-ken was thrilled when a JET alumnus from the prefecture was appointed vice-consul for his country's consulate in the Kansai region of Japan, of which Hyogo is a part.

  The establishment of JETAA has significantly affected the recruitment of new participants as well. In general, all aspects of the process that occur before the applicants arrive in Japan-advertisement, selection, and predeparture orientation-are vastly superior to what they were in the early years of the program, in part due to the assistance of JET alumni. They are active in promotional activities and predeparture orientations, and most selection committees utilize the services of one or two.

  Despite its shaky start, the JET Program seems to have generated a tremendous amount of goodwill among college faculty in Japan-related fields in the participating countries. At those times when job prospects for graduating seniors in many of the participating countries are not promising, JET offers students an attractive option-both for those interested in pursuing Japan-related careers and for those interested in a cross-cultural learning experience before entering graduate school or tackling the job market at home. Two graduate institutions in the United States have even instituted scholarships specifically for JET alumni: the Monterey Institute of International Studies offers a JET Alumni Scholarship for its TESOL (teaching of English to speakers of other languages) program, and the Japan-American Institute of Management Science at the University of Hawaii offers scholarships for its Japan-focused management programs. Indeed, the benefits of the program on the individual level, in cultivating international goodwill and establishing cross-cultural ties, may far exceed those on the national scale, gained in pursuit of the ambitious goals of reforming Japanese society and education.

  The Japanese enthusiasm for the JET Alumni Association makes perfect sense, for in Japan enduring ties of group membership have an important cultural function. Japanese regularly meet for school reunions, even of their elementary school graduating class. Japan's Fulbright alumni network is renowned for its level of activity and its dedication to fund-raising, going so far as to sponsor additional Fulbright scholars abroad. Members act, in large part, from a genuine concern for reciprocity and a desire to return something to those who made their experience possible. But culture can also be mobilized for political ends, and we can also see a strong component of national self-interest in the promotion of JETAA. Ideally, each chapter provides a solid constituency of pro-Japan youth in each of the participating countries.

  A wide range of program policies support this goal. For example, most of the overseas advertisements for the JET Program stress that it promotes "international exchange" and provides the opportunity to learn about Japan; teaching in the schools is mentioned almost as an afterthought. The three-year limit
on participation, the age limit of thirty-five, and the tendency of the Japanese side to appease the foreign participants and to judge program success in terms of their "level of happiness" also make the most sense if viewed in light of this goal of enhancing foreign understanding of Japan. When the possibility of eliminating the age limit and extending the period of stay from three to four years was brought up at one symposium at the tenth anniversary celebration, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative responded: "From the standpoint of having these people as assets to Japan's foreign relations, extending the length of service from three to four years means more or less slowing down increase in the number of such people through decrease in the number of invitees. Also, with regard to the age limit of thirty-five, it is possible that it was considered better to invite younger people than older ones from the viewpoint of building up diplomatic assets for the future."41 CLAIR and ministry officials have even begun to complain that the renewer rate is too high, as veterans are taking up spaces that could be filled by new applicants. This is striking admission of their focus on the foreign relations goals of the JET Program, even to the detriment of educational ends.

  Japanese Language Policy

  The evolution of Japanese language policy nicely illustrates the cultural drift in program implementation. One of the striking silences in JET Program policy during its fledgling years was the sparse encouragement for learning the Japanese language. As one ALT pointed out in an evaluation meeting at CLAIR in 199o, "Nothing in the JET Program suggests that anyone in Mombusho views Japanese language acquisition as an important thing." Although CLAIR sent audiotapes on beginning Japanese to all participants before they came to Japan, there was no follow-up. Indeed, all three ministries have resisted the idea of including workshops on the Japanese language at the Tokyo orientation or at other conferences. Wada Minoru explained to me the Ministry of Education's position: since the official job of the ALTs is to teach their native language, Japanese language study should be undertaken privately by each participant.42

  Many ALTs, however, saw the study of Japanese language and culture as one of the primary goals of their stay in the country. Few are certified teachers or have experience teaching English as a second language. Given that Japanese officials repeatedly exhort them to respect Japanese culture and schools, they have argued that, at the very least, there should be official encouragement to study Japanese as a means to accomplish this. Frustrated by the perceived lack of support from the Ministry of Education for one of their main aims, JET participants requested a special AJETsponsored session on learning Japanese at the 1989 Tokyo Orientation. Nearly two hundred people attended, even though it was held at 7:0o A.M.

  After years of protests, CLAIR finally began to move on the issue; in 1990 it produced a text and tape called Japanese for CIRs, which was an extremely useful introduction to conversational Japanese needed in the workplace. But the majority of JET participants still had no formal support. It wasn't until 1992, five years into the program, that CLAIR and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to plan a series of three Japanese language learning opportunities that would be open to ALTS during their stay in Japan. But the outcome was not at all what JET participants had expected. Instead of producing courses that would assist JET participants in conversational Japanese, all three initiatives were ultimately tied to producing qualified teachers of Japanese abroad.

  The first course, CLAIR's Correspondence Course in Japanese, was an attempt to provide language learning opportunities for JET participants without removing them from their job sites. Once the proposal was funded by the Japan Lottery Association, the secretary-general at CLAIR asked Bonjinsha, a reputable publisher of Japanese language materials, to publish and administer the course. A professor of linguistics at Osaka University was chosen to oversee its design, and several other experts in Japanese linguistics contracted to write chapters for the course. After much of this legwork had been done, Peter Evans, a program coordinator, was brought on board to assist in the final editorial work. His main complaint when he began working at CLAIR had been the JET participants' lack of interest in learning Japanese (over 6o percent report that they study Japanese less than three hours a week or not at all), which he saw as a cultural failing on their part.

  When the draft of the course finally arrived at CLAIR, though, it was a far cry from what the program coordinators had sought. Evans recalled, "Basically, it was a graduate level course in linguistic analysis of Japanese. It was all wa and ga and the use of particles. There was no Japanese script at all." In addition, the material was poorly edited, as Bonjinsha had published little in English prior to this project. But CLAIR's agreement was that the program coordinators would review the draft only for spelling errors.

  To make matters worse, CLAIR had miscalculated how strenuously prefectures would resist paying for language study by JET participants. Cost for the course had been set at 6o,ooo yen (approximately $500) per person, to be split between the individual and the host institution, but over 8o percent of host institutions initially refused to fund their share. With deadlines looming, CLAIR officials were forced to resort to strong-arm tactics. Evans remembered:

  There was a lot of arm-twisting. We had a chart of which prefectures were giving us trouble and bucho [the division chief] would get on the phone and engage in the most overt type of persuasion I witnessed during my time at CLAIR. It completely changed my view of what CLAIR can and can't do. They can force prefectures if they want to, and they were very creative with their offers for how prefectures could pay. CLAIR offered to wait for payment until next year's budget kicked in or to reduce monthly allocation tax payment by the 30,000 yen cost of the course. A few holdouts were offered the possibility of paying but then having their lump sum increased a bit.

  By the end of the phone campaign, every prefecture had verbally committed to the project.

  But that commitment hardly guaranteed success. For JET participants, the first year of the correspondence course was a disaster. It offered nothing at all of practical value, such as how to order from a menu or answer phone calls in the office. In addition, the homework had little relevance to the text, and JET participants were never told how it was graded. After the first marking period, 85 percent of participants had received As and 15 percent Bs-a direct result of the overseer advising Bonjinsha to be lenient so that students would not become discouraged. Evans told me, "It was the worst grading situation you could imagine. They were giving letter grades to each question, but students would get final grades that didn't reflect grades on individual questions." And they were not shy about making their opinions known: "In September alone I had too phone calls of complaints on this issue. People were angry and were saying things like, 'I'm gonna tell everybody I know not to do this.' We did a survey during that first year and found that just under 4 percent were satisfied, 5 percent had no opinion, and the other 91 percent were dissatisfied. There were 3 months when I did too hours of overtime. The whole process just shows how inefficient CLAIR was. I always hold this case up as the worst example of politico-bureaucratic decision making." Not surprisingly, applications for the second year of the course dropped precipitously.

  In response to these problems, CLAIR held an evaluation meeting at which, in the words of one participant, "the whole course was ripped apart." The authors were all qualified specialists in their field, but CLAIR and Bonjinsha officials clearly had misinterpreted what JET participants wanted. The secretary-general at the time was generally supportive of these critiques, and he agreed to allow CLAIR to produce the text at their own office. Evans reflected,

  That gave us control over production schedule and some on content, though mostly it was window dressing. I became the prime mover of the project and completely bypassed the chain of command so that I could work directly with the secretary-general. He was sympathetic but only in the language of "there are improvements that can be made." I even learned phrases like "labial dental" and "fricative" in Japanese. I tried to wed
pragmatic and linguistic approaches, and we asked authors to rewrite their sections. It improved somewhat but it never became the functional introduction to Japanese we had hoped for.

  That the approach taken diverged so sharply from what most JET participants had expected suggests that more than the need to prepare for "exam hell" influences Japanese methods of language instruction. Although the correspondence course had a very different purpose, the usual Japanese emphasis on learning through focusing on form and repetition of discrete grammatical items found its way into the curriculum. The project thus replicated the major problems plaguing the teaching of foreign languages in Japanese schools, and to JET participants it seemed to demonstrate that CLAIR was simply paying lip service to communicationoriented language teaching.

  But the course's design also reflected CLAIR officials' perception of its ultimate utility, which was in training those who enrolled to teach the Japanese language abroad. This idea, in keeping with JET's purpose as a foreign relations strategy, had initially been raised by officials within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the JET participants appeared to be a readymade pool of potential language teachers, easily tapped. In addition to the correspondence course the ministry thus initiated the second course, a two-month program of Japanese language study in Tokyo for selected JET participants who desired to teach Japanese on their return home. Attendees received scholarships that covered the entire cost of the program, but they were required first to have completed not only CLAIR's correspondence course but also the third course: a short-term intensive program in Japanese language at the Ministry of Home Affair's state-of-the-art intercultural training facility on the shores of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture.

  Without question JET participants are offered more options for learning Japanese today than they were during the program's start-up period, and Japanese officials can honestly claim to have responded to the complaints about inadequate language training and support. Yet while fulfilling the letter of the JET participants' demands, they ensured that the solution better suited Japanese conceptions of internationalization. Ironically, by targeting these language courses at the minority of JET participants who might want to teach Japanese after returning home, CLAIR and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials have ignored the ALTs' much larger need: the skills to aid their integration into Japanese schools and local communities. Only in 1999 did serious work begin on a proposal to offer a correspondence course that truly stresses conversational Japanese.