Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (21 page)

This response is rooted in cultural definitions of morality-more specifically, in the ways in which Japanese are socialized to see subjugating individual desires in the service of one's social relationships as virtuous behavior. Indeed, the Japanese tend to view the very nature of the self as bound
up in relations with others.42 The implications of this view of personhood
for counseling are profound. Rather than helping people change their circumstances, counseling in Japan more often involves helping them improve their capacity for gaman, for putting up with the situation and making the best of it. Takie Sugiyama Lebra calls one form of therapy in Japan,
naikan (literally, "inner observation"), "conformance through reformation." Through a process of intense, guided self-reflection, "resentment
and self-pity are expected to be replaced by the realization of one's egocentric social insensitivity, an insurmountable sense of debt and gratitude to
others, and a deep empathetic guilt toward those who have suffered because of one's heartless, ungrateful conduct."43 Instead of discovering one's
burning desires and passions, and formulating a plan to achieve them, its
goal is to better appreciate one's interconnectedness with and dependency
on others.

Given this cultural logic, it is easy to see why Japanese officials would be
skeptical of Western-style counseling that might only fuel JET participants'
demands for change. Privately, CLAIR and Ministry of Education officials
were quite unsympathetic to those participants who exhibited an irresistible
urge to reconcile the ideal and the real and a tendency to view Japanese culture as in need of "development." Japanese bureaucracies generally define
virtuous behavior as conformity to the demands of social roles. In addition,
a premium is placed on knowing one's "proper station," to use Ruth Benedict's term-and according to the rules of hierarchy in Japanese organizations, the JET participants ought to take their places as willing learners at the
bottom of the totem pole. Wada Minoru was characteristically blunt on this
point: "When Japanese go to another country," he asserted, "we try to adjust
to the expectations there, but ALTs don't do that. They're always criticizing
Japan and acting according to their own commonsense rules." He continued:

ALTs are much too sensitive (binkan sugiru) and they interpret things
we do innocently or out of kindness in a negative light. Their responses
are countereducational (hikyoikuteki). Many ALTs complain that Japan
is a closed society but I don't think ALTs are very open-minded either. I
think they are too demanding. I can understand that to a point, because
they don't understand Japanese culture, but if they react too strongly,
then Japanese react negatively. One local administrator told me her
prefecture is thinking of stopping the yearly increase in ALTs because
if the numbers get too high, the demands are too great.

Wada's use of the term hikyoikuteki (countereducational) is especially revealing, as it points to competing visions of the educational enterprise. By
exercising their critical judgment and attempting to stamp out inequities,
JET participants were enacting in various ways an individualism that demands action. But the forcefulness with which some JET participants asserted "unfairness" during the early years of the program, together with
their tendency to leapfrog the normal chain of command (atamagoshi) by
taking their complaints directly to the top, was viewed with suspicion in a
culture that values avoiding conflict in interpersonal relations and refraining
from action that might embarrass one's immediate superior. One CLAIR official, the section chief of counseling, surprised me with his answer to a question about what he had learned about foreigners in his two years with the
JET Program. After discoursing at length about the self-expression of JET
participants as opposed to the modesty of Japanese, he suddenly added, "And
one other thing is that ALTs tell lies without having a second thought (uso
wa heiki de iu). Japanese don't tell lies like that. Whenever a call comes into
the counseling section of CLAIR from an ALT, the first thing you should
know is that we never believe his story outright. We always contact his superior to find out the real circumstances." In light of Lebra's claim that one
of the highest moral values in Japan is "trustworthiness" (shiny(5), this is a
very serious charge indeed, though it must be qualified. First, his view was
undoubtedly skewed by his position: he dealt primarily with the problems of
a minority of ALTs. Second, program coordinators were also unlikely to accept at face value the facts as presented by a JET participant seeking counseling. Such cases inevitably took CLAIR staff into that nebulous arena between fact and fiction, and the most effective counselors were those who
adopted a Rashomon-like technique of employing multiple perspectives to
approach the "truth." Finally, the section chief's comparison may strike
Westerners as particularly odd because in Japanese society it is common to
perpetuate half-truths both to maintain the tatemae, or official, version of
events and to preserve harmony and save face. But perhaps he was referring
not to lying per se but to a deeper virtue-reliability or dependability; his
criticism seems to have been directed at ALTs who would distort reality to
enhance their own position rather than that of their superior.

Complicating the privately held view that JET participants were overly
judgmental, however, was what Japanese officials referred to quite selfcritically and self-consciously as their "gaijin complex"-the strong cultural tendency to view Westerners with a mixture of awe and fear, and to
give in to foreign pressure. Added to this was the tremendous constraint
felt by national-level officials to make internationalization work, which to some extent meant ensuring that JET participants were happy and gained
a favorable impression of Japan. The result was a constant mental struggle
over where to draw the line on counseling cases and how to say "no" as
delicately as possible. Consider, for instance, the predicament of one Ministry of Education official: "One time a British woman of German descent
called me directly from her educational office and demanded to know why
the women had to serve tea to men. I listened politely, but then she asked
me to tell them to stop. So I told her I would call her superiors, and I called
them all right, but rather than asking them to stop, I simply told them that
she had called me. I don't think ALTs have the right to make such barbaric
demands (yaban no koi wo iu kenri wa nai to omoimasu)."

By contrast, the program coordinators tended to see the Japanese attempt to construe the suicides as entirely personal acts as representing an
enormous "empathy gulf." Meredith was outspoken in this assessment:
"They [CLAIR officials] put almost everything into to the category of 'personal issues.' They'll do anything to avoid responsibility." Other concerned
outsiders tended to agree. William Horsley, a BBC correspondent and the
token foreign member of the Advisory Council for the JET Program, criticized the impersonal approach to program implementation: "As a member
of the advisory panel to CLAIR I have been rather taken aback at the coldness and solemnity of the deliberations. The JET scheme should be a voyage
of discovery, not some kind of laboratory experiment. Reading through the
official papers about the scheme, including detailed figures on the academic
backgrounds of the participants, and their various problems in settling
down to Japan, I look in vain for the 'human touch,' or the sense of adventure."' Even Caroline Yang, executive director of the Fulbright Commission during the early years of the program, expressed her puzzlement over
the lack of a viable support network and crisis management system, speculating that "the suicides might not have occurred if they hadn't been in
Japan."45 Philip recalled his own frustration in negotiating the issue:

I had a very heated discussion at one point with one of the upper administrators in CLAIR about their concern for the participants' health,
particularly mental health. It came, I think, after the third suicide, because it so happened that that person had been in touch with CLAIR for
some type of counseling some months prior to the suicide. Of course,
when I say "counseling" it's not the type of psychological counseling
that's expected in the U.S., but that person had contacted the program
coordinators with some problems. But they were not the kind of problems that had any real relevance to what finally happened. In fact, it
had nothing to do with the program.

But the first and second suicides, they were people who had never
been in touch with CLAIR whatsoever. So my impression is that it was
much easier for CLAIR to sort of say that we were absolutely not involved with it. But it was after the third person died that CLAIR actually arranged some sort of professional counselor and provided some
counseling training to the program coordinators. So my thought was
that the motivation to finally do something was that CLAIR couldn't
say their hands were absolutely clean.... That was an incident I felt
sort of exemplified that CLAIR was a bureaucracy that was very adept
in planning things and preparing papers but not at all experienced in
taking care of peoples' lives.

And that became a recurring topic, you know. They're taking a risk
coming here and joining this program, and I think you have to consider
more seriously that what you're inviting them to do is affecting their
lives; it's not only providing a service for Japan. And that's a very difficult, probably impossible, thing for most bureaucrats to understand.

One final point of contention between the program coordinators and the
Japanese staff at CLAIR pertained to privacy. Typically, a call would be received from a JET participant involving a private matter: sexual harassment, emotional instability, a threatened suicide, or a medical problem of a
personal nature. After hearing the report from the program coordinator,
the Japanese staff member would instinctively reach for the phone to call
the host institution. Since such problems usually meant missed work, the
Japanese staff felt that local officials ought to be fully appraised of the situation. Yet if the JET participant had wanted officials at the host institution
to know about the problem, he or she would have told them first. As a result, before the call would go out, a debate would ensue about whom to call,
what details could and could not be told, and what solution to insist on. The
program coordinators were usually uncomfortable with the amount of private information that was leaked to local officials, and feelings of mistrust
on both sides increased.

QUALITY CONTROL: ELIMINATING THE BAD APPLES

While CLAIR officials were moving cautiously toward providing in-house
professional counseling, they were moving aggressively to address what
they felt to be a more fundamental problem: poor screening at the selection
stage. CLAIR officials perceived a conflict between quality and quantity:
how could they achieve a high-profile program, which depended on raising
the numbers quickly, and yet still get quality people? One CLAIR official
reflected, "When we started the JET Program we hoped only good ALTs and CIRs would come. Now we realize there are good and bad foreigners."
Much of the energy of Japanese officials during the first few years of the
program was invested in various approaches to screen out the bad apples.
For instance, applicants were required to provide graduation certificates as
well as transcripts of all college courses. They were asked if they had ever
been convicted of any crime other than a minor traffic offense; if so, they
were asked to sign a form authorizing the release to the embassy of Japan
of any documents or records pertaining to the offense. Finally, applicants
were required to fill out a self-assessment medical form that asked about
personal history of hospitalization, psychological or psychiatric treatment,
prescription medication, and dietary restrictions.

In the wake of the first suicide and increased pressure from local governments to send "healthy" JET participants, another idea discussed was
the psychological testing of all JET participants. Philip recalled:

After there had been a suicide, they were trying to think of a way to incorporate some sort of psychological testing into the interviews. At
which point the program coordinators said, "Who's going to administer
these test questions?" I mean, right now you have the consulate people
doing the selection, and most of them don't know anything about
teaching English in Japan. Now you're going to have them pretend to
be physicians? Besides, there's the practical problem of asking people
who have no psychological background or training to evaluate people's
psychological stability. We said, "That's not fair." Because you have
people who may have all kinds of problems in their home country, but
once they get away from the society that made them uncomfortable,
they'll have no problem whatsoever. And the exact opposite is also very
possible. It's ridiculous. But there was this feeling that because of this
incident, something had to be done to reassure prefectures.

Though the idea of psychological testing was rejected, CLAIR officials
decided to increase their efforts to get the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
improve the selection process and lower the percentage of those selected.
They began by inviting representatives of selection committees from the
United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia on a two-week study
tour of Japanese schools to familiarize them with the actual working conditions of ALTs and CIRs. They also asked the ministry to circulate among
selection committee members a list of problem cases that had developed. In
addition, directly as a result of the serious incidents that occurred in 1989
and 199o, a cautionary statement appeared in 1991 at the top of the rating
sheet given to members of the screening committees at Japanese consulates
abroad: "If the applicant appears to be overly sensitive/emotionally fragile, not sociable, cheerful or polite, or does not appear to like children, DO NOT
RECOMMEND their acceptance to the program." CLAIR officials traveled
overseas in pairs (one yakuin and one program coordinator) to talk with
consulate officials and to give presentations on the JET Program at colleges
and universities abroad.