Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program

by David L. McConnell

  Cultural Exchange and the National Interest

  I do not mean to suggest that the idea of JET as a cultural exchange program is a bad one. Given Japan's often vexed relations with other governments in matters of global economic or political affairs, it is refreshing to know that many JET participants and their Japanese hosts forge meaningful personal relationships with each other. In addition, regardless of their take on Japan, JET alumni are able to put a realistic, human face on a society that is all too often stereotyped by foreign media.

  Clearly, the JET Program is an example of smart foreign policy, and key ministry officials believe that the program's main purpose is to serve national interests. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary celebration, Hisaeda Joji, director of the Second Cultural Affairs Division at Gaimusho, stated in no uncertain terms:

  From the viewpoint of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is significant as part of Japan's national security policy that these youths go back to their respective countries in the future and become sympathizers for Japan. In the case of the United States and France, for instance, they often get criticized by many countries for promoting their own independent international policies. All the same, they will carry through these policies, because these nations have sufficient national strength. ... In Japan's case, the nation is far from possessing such strength to carry out policies in defiance of world opinion. Therefore, highly deliberate, even artificial efforts are required to create sympathizers for Japan as part of national security policy. From this point of view, we consider the JET Programme is an extremely important and at the same time effective policy instrument .41

  It is precisely this mind-set, however, that program coordinators and JET participants fought, arguing on many occasions that kokusaika was not ni- honka: that is, "internationalization" was not the same as "Nipponifica- tion." It also underlies their frequent accusation that the "exchange" dimension of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program has been shortchanged in its implementation.

  Of course, Japan is not unique in using cultural programs to suit national purposes; the Peace Corps, the British Council, and other quasigovernmental international exchange organizations have often been accused of being tools of their respective governments. What is most interesting here is how clearly we can see that the justification for the program has shifted during its implementation. The public proclamations about opening up Japan and demonstrating that foreigners can be part of the group have gradually given way to a preoccupation with encouraging foreign guests to greater sympathy toward and understanding of Japan. The JET Program is not ultimately concerned with fostering some idealistic movement to create a global village or to blur absolute lines of national sovereignty; instead, it focuses on getting Japan better press and getting Japanese better understanding of outsiders, enabling them to avoid unanticipated counterreactions and thereby raise their own relative status in the world.

  Social commentators of all political stripes, both inside and outside Japan, delight in observing that Japan is on the verge of a momentous transformation, a series of changes "so far-reaching in their import that Japanese society as we know it' is being transformed irrevocably." But as Robert Smith has noted, the real question is not one of tradition versus change but of which version of change is acceptable.' The Japanese have been effective managers of economic change over the past few decades, but managing economic and technological change is not the same as managing diversity. Thomas Rohlen makes the sobering point that "Japan has never before in history succeeded in being an international leader in cultural, scientific or political terms."' Is Japan's handling of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program an indication of its readiness to assume a new, higher profile in international affairs? What does it tell us about the prospects for cultural and educational change in Japanese society?

  Through the lens of the JET Program, we see competing interpretations of "internationalization." In its links to foreign policy objectives at the national level, the program makes a certain kind of sense, but the relevance of foreigners to the daily priorities of local boards of education and schools is ambiguous at best. Indeed, in its practical implementation JET appears to be much more fragmented, loosely structured, and marked by competing goals and communication breakdowns than we might expect. The fit between national-level objectives and local realities becomes increasingly problematic as the program moves down through the various layers of the education system-as those administering the program take progressively greater liberties with official policy. The actions of local school personnel in some cases run directly counter to the public objectives of the program.

  For instance, while there is no doubt that the large numbers of assistant language teachers have created some impetus for change in the goals and methods of teaching English in Japan, the contradiction between the ideal of teaching conversational English and the reality of preparing for entrance exams remains acute. And the image of Japanese becoming more open to foreign cultures and accepting a more pluralistic view of their society must be tempered by our recognition that JET participants at all levels of the program receive preferential treatment and that the presence of an ALT in local schools sometimes leads Japanese teachers to maintain identity boundaries more intensely. If we judge the program by its success in achieving its formal goals-promoting conversational English and the acceptance of diversity-then the policy lever being applied to its implementation seems inadequate.

  Clearly, the events and analysis presented above refute any notion of a monolithic Japanese response to outsiders, such as has been popularized in nihonjinron accounts of Japanese culture and society. There is no single notion of internationalization in Japan, nor is there any single body that could implement such a policy. The story is rather one of competing ideologies and interests, miscommunication, and the reinterpretation of program objectives at each administrative level. In short, we find an extraordinarily complex picture of internal conflict and variation. Spanning three Japanese ministries, eighteen countries, dozens of consulates, forty-seven prefectures, thirteen designated cities, hundreds of municipalities, and thousands of schools and local government offices, the JET Program hangs together-but only in the most ungainly manner.

  But its hanging together is at least as significant as its unwieldiness, for the diversity in Japanese approaches to the JET Program is held within a single process, a shared framework of meaning. There has been very little public controversy within Japan over the program itself, and the government has achieved an extraordinary degree of compliance with its policies and procedures. Requests from prefectures and municipalities for ALTS have remained high, and through its bureaucratic arm, the Japanese government has placed more than 20,000 foreigners in schools all over the country. In the thirteen years since the program began, ALTs have visited and team-taught on at least one occasion in virtually every one of Japan's 16,ooo-plus public secondary schools.

  In this top-down attempt to orchestrate societal change, the government's success had less to do with its coercive power than with the degree of receptivity and shared consent that already existed among educators at the lowest levels of the system. Far from being a command system, the entire process seems to have worked through a combination of firm persuasion at the top and a general willingness on the part of prefectures, municipalities, and schools to accept the authority of the next level up even while pursuing their own interests. Nor was there public outcry from JTLs, who were asked to team-teach with threatening foreigners without ever having been consulted about the program. Their receptivity seems remarkable, particularly given the current wisdom in the United States that top-down interventions rarely get through the classroom door. Although JTLs are often taken to task for digging in their heels and resisting communicationoriented approaches, over the long term these local teachers have shown a surprising willingness to act as learners. They have mobilized knowledge and striven for perfection and mastery, while not relinquishing autonomy; the result is that those placed in
the difficult position of managing face-toface contact with the JET participants have learned quickly, if not always smoothly.

  In spite of great private ambivalence and even dissatisfaction with the program, Japanese at all levels continue to salute the flag of internationalization, and some put forth great effort to make it work. We find actors in all parts of the system mouthing the same words used by government officials to justify the program in the first place: "This is something Japan must do to survive in the new international world order" (kokusai shakai no naka ni ikiru tame ni). Yet what Japan does in giving "internationalization" cultural form and meaning begins with deeper assumptions about selfhood and social relations. For a millennium, foreign elements have been incorporated into the Japanese value system and subsequently transformed in ways that astonish their originators. Likening the outcome of Japanese importation of Chinese culture to the process by which soybean cake emerges after brine (Chinese civilization) is added to clear soup (Japanese culture), Hidetoshi Kato has observed that there is very little "authentic" about Japanese culture; indeed, he locates the essence of the Japanese way of life in the ability to transform outside influences.' Numerous scholars have shown that fundamental abstractions like capitalism or democracy, on the one hand, or mundane institutions like baseball, Disneyland, or even department stores, on the other, undergo a sea change after being adopted by Japanese-they are infused with indigenous meanings that arise from a more sociocentric conception of the self.

  While the concept of the JET Program has worldwide scope, its implementation remains very "Japanese" in a number of ways, with mixed results. First, the attention given to form, detail, and careful planning leads to a degree of regulation that frequently clashes with the expectations of the foreign youth that internationalization will be spontaneous, informal, and more free-flowing. The program is standardized and ritualized in everything from how CLAIR has targeted every local government entity in Japan to how team-taught classes and international festivals are conducted. There is a danger that one "correct" way of doing internationalization will be assigned and scripted from the top.

  Second, as I have argued, internationalization takes on a very different meaning in a relation-based social order than in those that are more rulebased. That Japanese privilege situational ethics and go to great lengths to maintain harmony in face-to-face interaction contrasts with the tendency of most JET participants to confront and debate differences and to regulate behavior according to general principles. The centrality of social relations in the Japanese worldview is manifest in a number of ways, including approaches to program evaluation. These evaluations, which are numerous at every level,4 exhibit an interesting pattern. They rely above all on tabulating the percentage of renewers, the percentage of ALTs who quit early, and the number of phone calls to CLAIR to measure the effectiveness of the program. Virtually every evaluation takes the form of a questionnaire designed to discover whether all parties-the JET participants and their Japanese hosts (administrators, teachers, and students)-are satisfied with the program. The core question is "Are you happy?" Conspicuously absent from most of these surveys is any attempt to objectively measure the effects of the program.

  Finally, internationalization is primarily perceived by Japanese as accommodation to external demands, in particular to demands from Western countries. Kazukimi Ebuchi offers the provocative insight that "to internationalize" is defined in most English dictionaries as a transitive verb-that is, it involves action on others-whereas most Japanese dictionaries categorize kokusaika as a passive verb, indicating the process of becoming accepted by the rest of the world (sekai ni tsuy(5 suru yo ni naru koto).5 Even though teachers and administrators with whom I talked almost invariably defined internationalization as becoming more forthright, assertively defending one's arguments, and generally holding one's own with foreigners in a discussion, the unthinking response in interactions with foreigners is appeasement. As Walter Edwards has remarked, great difficulties remain in overcoming "the long-standing anxiety over Japan's position vis-a-vis the West."6 In this respect, it is telling that the many changes in JET Program policies over the past thirteen years have almost always come in response to demands made by the program coordinators and JET participants. The parallels between this process and what Margaret Gibson has called "accommodation without assimilation" on the part of some immigrant groups in the United States is striking.7

  In one respect, the JET Program has brought extraordinary change. One can now go into virtually any public high school in Japan and witness team-taught English classes that depart radically from traditional teaching practice. Sometimes, it seems as if the atmosphere of the ubiquitous private English conversation schools has pervaded public secondary school English classes. Yet in reality this change is, for the most part, limited to specific contexts and shielded from the rest of the system, suggesting that it is a sign of an adaptive and pragmatic response and not a fundamental alteration of the culture. That the implementation of JET reveals internationalization to be defined by most Japanese as linking up with the rest of the world (rather than as Japanese themselves changing and integrating foreigners into their own society) should remind us that the limits of pluralism in Japan do remain fairly narrow; keeping foreigners at a polite distance rather than socializing them to become part of daily routines is a process at which a majority of Japanese still excel. By defining internationalization as situational accommodation to Western demands, the JET Program provides a means by which Japan can "do" Western-style internationalization (however defined) while at the same time protecting local meanings and institutions. What the Japanese have done is to meet the guests at the door with a great display of hospitality. Assured that they are only short-term guests, the hosts then focus not on whether the foreigners are integrated into Japanese society but on whether they are treated hospitably and enjoy their stay.

  In effect, the implementation of this plan relies on two different frameworks. Strikingly, virtually everyone continues to go along with the tatemae (official) version of the program while at the same time devising various ways to subvert it whenever local priorities and institutions are at stake. The Japanese appear to be much more willing to live with the resulting contradictions than are the JET participants, whose unhappiness with the situation creates difficulties that require a considerable amount of time to manage. Indeed, the larger significance of the JET Program may lie in how it enacts the interplay between forces for continuity and for change in Japanese society. The theme of reluctant adaptation is an old one in Japan, and the parallels between "internationalization" in the Heisei era and "democratization" and "modernization" in earlier eras are certainly more than coincidental. In spite of the profound technological and economic changes that have characterized the past century, Japanese have responded similarly to the pressure applied by the foreign consultants brought over during the Meiji period, the Allied Occupation forces and their educational consultants in the late 194os, and the JET Program participants today.

  In Japan, the reinforcing of ethnic identity in response to external contact seems almost automatic, and I believe that the Japanese to some extent display what Edward Spicer refers to as a "persistent identity system."8 Spicer suggests that some cultural systems, such as those of the Jews, Basques, Navaho, and Amish, have demonstrated their ability to survive over time in different cultural environments. They are characterized by what he calls "oppositional process": that is, they have continued to resist, throughout their history, attempts to incorporate or assimilate the groups into a larger whole. Though Spicer's model seems to be designed to explain the persistence of certain ethnic groups within a larger nation-state, here the same process seems to apply to a nation's relations to the larger world system.

  At first glance, the notion of a persistent identity system seems hopelessly rooted in a static, timeless concept of culture. But Spicer argues that since these systems develop as a response to attempts at incorporation by outside forces, flexibility
and effectiveness in coping with change are key characteristics.' What this suggests is that "Japaneseness" may change over time and with increasing external contact.10 New exogenous linkages may, in direct cultural compensation, generate new standards of identity. More specifically, attempts at "mass internationalization" such as the JET Program suggest that the criteria for demonstrating Japaneseness in the latter part of the twentieth century may increasingly include the ability to interact with foreigners and the capacity to specify and defend Japanese culture in ways that avoid a blanket indictment from foreigners, particularly Westerners. In turn, such programs foster these abilities: the JET Program is helping Japanese learn how to talk about diversity in ways that are more acceptable in international venues. In conjunction with other policies and forces that increase external linkages, the program is likely to foster the development of a new generation of young people in Japan who do not have a hang-up about Westerners, who can hold their own in debates, and who are not afraid to say "No!"

  It is significant that Japanese ministry officials, administrators, and teachers almost unanimously feel that the JET Program has ushered in tremendous change. One Ministry of Education official, for instance, pointed out that English teachers' coordinators are finally getting over the "gaijin complex": "I think all the prefectures and schools are getting stricter with ALTs. The honeymoon period is over. When ALTs first came they bent over backward and almost treated them like gods. They couldn't change their commonsense response and just treat them normally. But now they realize that outsiders are not strange and we're learning to say clearly what is good and bad. They've learned not to panic when ALTS make unreasonable demands." An ETC concurred: "Ten years ago we couldn't have dreamed about having this kind of talk about ALTs." In spite of the complaints of some JET participants that one-shot visits to either a school or a classroom are meaningless, JTLs and students really do believe that seeing and interacting with one foreigner can make a difference. That virtually every public secondary school student in Japan has a chance to see, hear, and talk to a foreigner is an accomplishment not to be underestimated; and it is worth remembering that it never could have been achieved without the massive resources that only the central government can mobilize.