Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (28 page)

Finally, two other tendencies are worth noting. Urban high schools were
more likely to be chosen as base schools than were isolated high schools in
remote areas, largely as a result of the strong preference of most ALTs for
living in or near a large city. Tanabe-san commented, "If an ALT asks to be
placed in a rural area, it's automatic for us because there are so few who
want to go there." Vocational schools were also unlikely to serve as base
schools unless they had a special course of study with an international dimension; schools for students interested in fisheries or agriculture, for instance, tended to be underrepresented. Prefecture officials generally felt
that students in these schools would have little interest in an "academic"
subject such as English. Yet such schools also offered some striking success
stories: if discipline problems were not too serious, the ALT often had more
flexibility in teaching conversational English since university entrance
exam pressures were not so pervasive.

Given these various types of school-level constraints, Sato-sensei and
Tanabe-san were extraordinarily successful in placing ALTs in base
schools. Though some district boards of education in the prefecture still
allow schools control over requesting a foreign teacher, the rapid increase
in numbers of JET participants has meant that in most cases ALTs are
placed in schools where the large majority of Japanese teachers of English
are quite ambivalent about their presence. One ETC's comments captured the prevailing sentiment about the evolution of the school visitation system: "If we said,'Do you want to have (Okurimashoka) an ALT?'
very few schools would sign up. So we tell them, 'Here we come!' The
whole program is forced down (oshitsukete iru) from the top to a considerable degree." Still, both Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san had a very clear
notion of where polite but persistent prodding crossed over to become aggressive pushing. By the fourth year of the JET Program, Sato-sensei
noted: "After we get up to thirty-four, we're not going to be able to accommodate many more ALTs at the high school level. It would be pushing it too much. We'll have to expand at the junior high level if we want
to increase the numbers." In fact, this is precisely what has happened. In
the eight-year period (1991-99) following Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san's
tenure, their successors increased the number of prefectural ALTs only
slightly; the rest of the growth occurred as municipalities began to hire
ALTs independently of the prefectural office, usually placing them in
junior high schools.

Hierarchies of Foreigners: ETCs as Matchmakers

After the application forms of ALTs assigned to their prefecture are received from CLAIR, individual applicants must be matched with specific
schools or boards of education. Each year, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san
spent a marathon weekend session in the board of education, laying out all
the applications and attempting to make suitable pairings. When I asked
Sato-sensei what it was like to play matchmaker, he replied: "It's really difficult to tell from an application what a person will be like. We do our best
to match each person with an appropriate school but it rarely works out as
we planned. Three (out of twenty-seven) this year are doing well, but all
the rest have had trouble of one kind or another."

Although the two men did not tell me the precise criteria used to match
ALTs with particular schools, over the course of fieldwork period they
made a number of revealing informal comments:

We really made a mistake by putting Aki in the education center. We
thought that because he was Japanese American, he would be disappointed by the reaction of teachers and students if we sent him out to
schools on a regular basis. We thought he would do better in a setting
where he could organize seminars for teachers. But now that we know
how outgoing he is, we realize we should've sent him out.

Sending Jennifer and Rick to [the international high school] was
definitely our best move. Rick had a master's degree in English and
teaching experience before coming to Japan so we wanted to make sure
that he was in a challenging situation, and those are our best English
teachers out there. And Jennifer gets along fabulously with the students. She has them writing diaries and even spends her own time writing replies on the weekends.

Remember how we agonized over whether to send Patrick [age
thirty-five] to the rural area or not? He was quite a bit older than the other ALTs so we really worried about how he would adjust and how
the teachers would react to him. But it's worked out quite well.

I thought Ueda-sensei would want a British woman because he's the
serious type. But I think the English teachers will have a hard time at
first until they adjust to British English.

I found that skin color, sex, nationality, age, English accent, teaching experience, educational level, and major field of study were all taken into account at
various times in the placement process, and informal hierarchies clearly existed. ALTs with lighter skin color were more desirable than those with darker
skin color because their motivational effect on teachers and students was perceived to be higher; younger ALTs were more desirable than older ones because they were seen as more flexible and therefore less threatening to Japanese teachers; males were more desirable than females because they were
thought to be better able to withstand the hardships of life in another culture.

The hierarchy of foreigners was particularly rigid with respect to accent.
Participants who spoke American and Canadian English were seen as more
desirable than those who spoke other versions, as one Australian ALT
noted: "In my experience, foreigners in Japan are constantly assumed to be
American. At first meetings, there is a very good chance that one will be
asked, 'Are you American?' or'Where do you come from in America?' It
seems that the word 'Australia' simply does not register in the minds of
some Japanese. Many times I have been asked what language is spoken in
Australia. Many times too I have heard, 'Please say something in Aus-
tralian,"You speak English quite well,' or'You speak English with a British
accent."''' One Australian ALT in the prefecture even reported having been
told by Japanese teachers not to use his Australian accent while teaching,
and to use only American English." Perhaps most telling was that in this
prefecture only American ALTs were selected to tape-record listening exercises in English; Sato-sensei was responsible for clandestinely producing
these "practice exams" (mogi shiken) for prefectural high schools.

A final criterion used by Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san in the placement
process was personal appearance, judged by a photograph of the ALT. Photos required for visa purposes were widely used in the selection and placement process at the prefectural level. Sato-sensei noted, "It's hard to tell
good ALTs from the application so in this sense the picture is important."
Various messages were read from the photo. Obviously, the picture allowed ALTs to be placed into social categories-such as white (hakujin) or
black (kokujin), Japanese descent (nikkeijin), and so on-that were useful
in determining school placement. Also apparent was whether a female ALT fell into the category of bijin, or "beautiful girl," particularly one with
stereotypical blond hair and blue eyes. More generally, neatness in appearance could be judged from the photo. In one instance I observed Tanabe-san
apologize to teachers from a base school for the informal picture of the
ALT, who was shown in a T-shirt. "This is not an accurate reflection of what
this ALT is like," he said. Here prefectural pfficials were working on a welldocumented cultural assumption that outward appearance and comportment mirror one's inward state. Many ALTs, however, found this concern
with appearance offensive, preferring instead to subscribe to the theory
that looking like one's passport picture is the worst possible indicator of
one's fitness to travel-and says even less about one's character.

This preoccupation with the photo as an indicator of social type was not
limited to prefectural administrators. In the first year of the program, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs required photos of all applicants to the JET
Program; though no evidence of misuse of the photos ever surfaced, there
were protests, even from selection committee members, that this practice
raised the possibility of discrimination based on skin color or other physical features. As a result, photos are now required only of those applicants
who make it to the interview stage. At the opposite end of the process, I discovered that pictures of ALTs were often circulated throughout the
teacher's room and were even shown to students on occasion, providing
fodder for much speculation and good-natured teasing. Having grown up
in a society in which such use and exchange of photos is ubiquitous, most
Japanese administrators and teachers did not think twice about their actions.

ALTs were rarely privy to this backstage deployment of photographs,
but when it did come to their attention, they reacted warily. Their cautious
reaction seemed to rest on a discomfort at being turned into an object at
which Japanese looked, and on a corresponding suspicion that it was precisely their foreignness that simultaneously defined them as noteworthy
and kept them distant. The concerns of these ALTs mirrored Michel Foucault's analysis of the relation between photography and power; he argues
that the "normalizing gaze" of the photo is in fact a kind of surveillance
that establishes a visibility through which people are differentiated and
judged.'9

In sum, matching individual ALTs with schools was a far cry from
rocket science; it was conducted in a haphazard manner described by one
program coordinator as "akin to throwing bones on the ground to divine
the future." Though the matchmaking almost never turned out as Satosensei hoped it would, the method used clearly left open the possibility of favoritism. ETCs could reward certain teachers and schools with certain
kinds of ALTs. Sato-sensei commented to me on a colleague in a district
board of education, "Ehara-sensei has had some rough years with his ALTS,
so this year I really want to give him someone good." In rare cases it was
even possible for teachers to use their personal relationships with the principal or the ETC to influence placement decisions. Consider the story of
this head English teacher, age thirty-five, at an Osaka City junior high
school:

I decided I wanted to have an ALT for one semester, but when I asked
the other three English teachers at my school, they said, "Fine, but it's
none of our business. You have to handle everything." Before the ALT
came, though, the board of education asked our school to host a teamteaching demonstration class and seminar for the whole city. This
would take months of preparation, and it would be necessary for all
four of us to work with the ALT. The problem was I knew that Ishida-
sensei didn't want to work with ALTs any more. That's why we needed
to have Marian. She had taught here for a short while the year before
and she was so in tune with Japanese culture. You know, I have to respect the older teachers-Ishida-sensei is fifty-seven-and I knew the
only way the seminar could be successful is if we got Marian. So I
called the ETC and requested Marian, but he refused, saying that all
schools must have the same opportunity. Then I asked the viceprincipal to contact him, but he refused. So finally I went to the principal and explained the situation. The principal, who happens to be the
ETC's superior, called the board of education with the request. The very
next day I was called to the teacher's room and the ETC was waiting
there for me. He bowed his head and apologized to me in person for his
behavior. It was unbelievable. So we got Marian after all.

Tanabe-san also recounted several instances of principals stopping by his
desk on their way out of the board of education to request an ALT of a certain nationality (usually American) or sex. Such requests, he noted, were
especially difficult to ignore because the principals were senior to both him
and Sato-sensei; fortunately, they did not occur very often.

HEADACHES IN THE PREFECTURAL BOARD OF EDUCATION:
THE ALTS ARRIVE

When the preparations were finally complete, the time came to travel to
Tokyo to meet the new ALTs and escort them back to the prefecture. I accompanied Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san on this trip in 1989, and after we
arrived Sato-sensei confessed that while on his first trip to Tokyo in 1988 he was filled with eager anticipation, his heart was heavy this time.
Through the grapevine, he knew this was true for other ETCs as well. An
ETC in the neighboring prefecture, he said, had been shocked by the loud
and boisterous behavior of the ALTs she was escorting on the bullet train
back to her prefecture. "She said it was just like traveling with a group of
elementary school students; it gave her a terrible headache." Nevertheless,
I was struck by the amount of time Sato-sensei had spent trying to memorize faces and names beforehand. He was clearly intent on making a good
impression on the ALTs, and during the first few days of interaction, feelings of goodwill and mutual enthusiasm were high enough to offset any
potential misunderstandings.

After returning to the prefecture, all ALTs participated in a contractsigning ceremony. Following the ceremony, a daylong orientation was held
to give the ALTs a much more specific idea of the terms of their contract
and the state of team teaching in their prefecture. The last order of business
was the rendezvous between the ALTs and their host teacher or supervisor,
who escorted them to their apartment, assisted them in the process of moving in, and introduced them to neighbors and colleagues at school. In the
first few weeks, then, the ALTs were exposed to a whirlwind of information
and people; many of them described their first month in Japan as a blur.

The demands of extensive periods of English conversation at the Tokyo
orientation and in the prefecture took their toll on Sato-sensei and Tanabesan as well. Both sighed with relief when the ALTs were taken away by
school and district representatives. Their work for the remainder of the
year would be twofold: promoting team teaching and internationalization
in the prefecture and dealing with the myriad requests, demands, and ultimatums levied by the ALTs. The ETCs are often directly confronted by
ALTs or asked to defuse conflicts between ALTs and school personnel; as
the number of ALTs grows, the probability of problems skyrockets. These
conflicts between ALTs and the board of education can be generally divided
into two types: irritating disagreements that heighten mutual suspicion
but do not lead to a serious breach and confrontations that lead to a permanent rupture, resulting either in an emotional divorce or a physical separation. We will consider typical smaller conflicts first.