Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (13 page)

Indeed, the numbers indicate a strong American bias. During the first
year of the program, 70 percent of the foreign participants hailed from the
United States; even after two more participating countries were added in
1988, the figure was just over 6o percent. This overrepresentation is due
not only to the larger pool of potential applicants in the United States but
also to the close relationship that Japan has developed with the United
States in the postwar era. One Ministry of Home Affairs official told me
bluntly: "The first thing you should know about the background of the JET
Program is that Japan likes the United States." The origins of the program in U.S.-Japan trade friction also provided some impetus to recruit heavily
in the United States. Finally, since prefectures were allowed to put in a request for certain nationalities, both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the
Ministry of Education expected that local governments would primarily
request Americans in the first year of the program. They did not wish to
disappoint local officials.

The initial list of participating countries also reveals that in Japan internationalization is primarily perceived as linking with Western countries.
No native English speakers from India or Singapore, for instance, were invited. This attitude stems at least in part from the striking differences in
Japan's historical relationship with Western and with Asian countries. Asia
has been colonized by Japan for much of the last 150 years and until recently has been regarded largely with contempt; but the technological, military, and economic superiority of Europe and the United States during
most of the twentieth century has led Japanese to view Westerners with a
mixture of fear and awe.31 To achieve greater international status, the Japanese feel they must concentrate on their relations with Western countries.

SALARY AND WORKING CONDITIONS

Another noteworthy structural feature of the JET Program was the generous package of benefits offered to the foreign participants. Their salaries
were set at 3,600,000 yen per year. This came to about $25,700 in 1987, but with the stronger yen it has averaged about $31,ooo. Not only is this package more generous than most college graduates in the humanities could
hope to earn in an entry-level position in their own countries, it is also
slightly higher than most beginning Japanese teachers make.

source: Adapted from The JET Program(me): Five Years and Beyond
(Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1992), 24.

Why such a high salary? According to ministry officials whom I interviewed, members of the original planning committee were extremely
nervous about their ability to attract enough qualified applicants. This uncertainty as to whether JET would crash or fly was captured by the qualifier printed at the bottom of advertisements for the JET Program in 1987:
"This program will be reviewed on an annual basis." Given the concern
over the image of Japan that had given rise to the program in the first place,
the prospect of failure held added terror. They were therefore inclined to
bend over backward to provide the teachers with a good impression of
Japan. The planning committee consulted the pay schedule for foreigners
teaching at public universities in Japan before arriving at the figure chosen.

The workweek for the JET participants was set at five days in accordance
with common practice in Western countries, even though Japanese schools
at the time operated for a half day on Saturday as well (the Ministry of Education has since endorsed a plan for all Saturdays to be holidays, though
its implementation is gradual). The six-day workweek had been the focus
of many complaints from the foreign participants in the MEF and BET programs, and officials worried that such a large number of foreigners new to
Japanese customs would be unable to physically tolerate the demands of
the longer workweek.3z

With these policies in place, the only other initial task was to secure
visas for the JET participants. Consultations with the Justice Ministry enabled both ALTs and CIRs to be accorded special visas under the discretion
of the justice minister. This simplified, faster process would also alleviate
the need for official sponsorship from the prefectural governments. According to one member of the planning committee, "In the beginning there
was no problem with the Justice Ministry. We simply explained that the
JET participants are not delinquents (furyo), and they agreed to admit
them because they are positive participants who are going to contribute to
local internationalization and progress."i3 Under the agreement, JET participants were given a ninety-day grace period to return to their respective
countries after they had completed the JET Program.

RECRUITMENT OF JET PARTICIPANTS ABROAD

Once the basic administrative structures of the program as well as its key
framework policies were in place, the Japanese turned to the problem of at tracting a large pool of high-quality applicants. This was the purview of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in the United States it fell to the Embassy
of Japan in Washington, D.C., to coordinate the selection process among its
fifteen consulates.

The ministry did not hire any additional Japanese staff at its consulates
abroad to handle the considerable demands of JET Program recruitment.
As a result, some lower-level attaches, though personally quite sympathetic to the program, felt tremendously burdened. From advertising the
program to reviewing applications, forming a selection committee, conducting surveys of participants, and planning a predeparture orientation,
the administrative time required was considerable. Moreover, the cycle had
to be repeated annually for an ever-increasing number of applicants.

Nor did the ministry hire any former MEF participants or other individuals knowledgeable about Japanese education to assist administratively.
In fact, in keeping with the critical role of the personal introduction in personnel decisions in Japan, the embassy in Washington took just the opposite approach.34 Carrie, a Wittenberg graduate, recalls the day she was hired
to serve as administrative coordinator of the JET Program in the embassy's
Press and Information Section:

I sent off a resume on a Wednesday. They called me Friday and said,
"Can you come interview on Monday?" So I drove down there and it
was the most bizarre interview of my life because I sat on a couch
across from three Japanese diplomats, and only the guy in the middle
talked. And he explained the entire job to me, everything it would entail, and then he said, "So do you want it?" I said "Yes, and here's why,"
and I started giving him all the reasons I could think of for why I
should get the job. But he stopped me and said, "No, I mean when can
you start?" You know, I thought they were playing a joke on me because I had absolutely no knowledge of Japanese culture or language. It
turned out a friend of mine was working there and had pulled my resume from the stack and said, "Oh, I know her. She's a good person."
So that's how I got it. The decision wasn't based on my qualifications to
manage an intercultural exchange program, it wasn't based on my Japanese skills. It was the power of introduction. It was hysterical.

The ten months between the official announcement of the program and
the arrival of the first wave of JET participants was a time of extreme administrative confusion. For one thing, ministerial negotiations over the
precise number of new JET participants dragged on and on. The Ministry
of Education was intent on keeping it as low as possible; for its part, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs waved the flag of internationalization and
replied that a hefty increase was necessary. A compromise was finally reached-715; but the infighting delayed the advertising brochures, which
in turn delayed the application process. As a result, only three weeks separated the announcement and the deadline. Late January had been set as the
cutoff for submissions, but applications arrived at the consulates abroad
only in late December. Carrie remembers sending 75-pound boxes of applications to Hawaii and Guam by Federal Express. Responses to an evaluation form sent to all applicants who had been accepted into the program
but had declined to participate underscored this chaos: "most would-be
JETS' reasons for not entering the Program stemmed from a lack of confidence in the Program and delays in the recruitment process."35

Once applications were received, however, the selection process itself
was based almost entirely on local input. To handle the initial screening,
the Japanese embassy in Washington chose the prestigious Meridian International Center. A Washington-based nonprofit organization that administers the International Visitor Program of the U.S. Information Agency, this
agency is famous for its training of international diplomats. A Japanese official in the Boston consulate explained to me that the Meridian Institute
was chosen primarily on the basis of its high status: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was determined that such an important program should have
nothing but the best. Curiously, though, for many years there were no
Japan specialists on the Meridian committee that reviewed the initial ap-
plications.36

The composition of the interview committees at each consulate was also
determined by local input. Committees consist of three or four "local persons" from academia or Japan outreach programs, such as the Japan Society. The invitation to be an interviewer-which includes a stipend of $400
per day-is hard to turn down. Only one Japanese representative sits on
each committee. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs retains the right to
overturn the recommendation of the selection committee in making the
final decision, this authority is rarely exercised.

The JET Formula: Social Fit and Social Type

The specific criteria used by the Meridian Institute to screen the initial applications are confidential, but a numerical score is assigned to each application based on academic performance, letters of reference, and the personal essay. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence that Japanese language
ability and the prestige of the applicant's college are factors considered. I
discovered quite by accident that too much fluency in Japanese could actually work against one's chances of being accepted. At the time, I was on the selection committee for a separate program, the Ohio-Saitama English
Teaching (OSET) Program, to which an Oberlin graduate had applied. This
young man had a very strong academic record, a cogent personal statement, and outstanding recommendations. What set him apart from the
pack, however, was his extraordinary language skill. He was a unanimous
top choice of the OSET selection committee. But when he submitted the
very same application to the JET Program, he was rejected in the initial
screening by the Meridian International Center. Apparently, ALT applicants with outstanding Japanese ability are seen as working against two
major purposes of the program: the teaching of English and the introduction of Japanese language and culture to a new generation of foreign
youth.

The prestige of one's alma mater clearly figures into the equation, as
graduates of high-status universities are particularly desirable. In Britain,
graduates from Oxford and Cambridge were especially sought after. In the
American case, Carrie recalls,

Gaimusho really wanted the Harvards and Yales. It's never in writing,
but you know that. There's a lot of tension between D.C. and Boston,
with our office putting pressure on them. Gaimusho would sometimes
get directly involved. I remember the second or third year the JET applications from Harvard were misplaced in a file drawer by the Harvard
liaison and by the time she discovered them and sent them in to us, the
deadline was way past. There was a huge fight between the educational
attache here in D.C. and Gaimusho in Tokyo because we had already
been through the interviews. We felt it just wouldn't be fair to let them
in, but Gaimusho said, "We must have these people." In the end, they
didn't get in. It was just too late. But it was not a happy scene.

Approximately two-thirds of American applicants make it through the
initial screening and move on to the interview stage.37 In 1992 1 had the opportunity to serve on the interview committee at the Boston consulate and
thus experienced the selection process firsthand. After coffee and introductions, we were divided into three teams of four members and given a brief
refresher course on scoring procedures and criteria. A list of sample questions was handed out, as was a summary of past cases in which the interview committee had clearly erred by endorsing an applicant who later encountered serious difficulties in Japan. Over the course of three days, each
interview team conducted approximately twenty interviews, each lasting
twenty minutes. At the end of the day we pooled our scoresheets and divided interviewees into three categories: definitely recommended, recommended with reservations, and not recommended.

If an applicant makes it to the interview stage, personal qualities become
the dominant criteria for selection. The packet of information we were
given instructed us as follows: "To be considered for recommendation, applicants must meet certain basic conditions. They must be outgoing, wellmannered and have a sunny disposition. A nervous temperament is not desirable." The evaluation form was then divided into six categories for a full
score of 120 points as follows: