Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (44 page)

The roots of the impulse to extend "guest treatment" (kajo sabisu) to
light-skinned Westerners run very deep. Consciousness of the military and
economic might of Western countries from the Meiji period on has certainly played a part in fostering these attitudes, but the late Hiroshi Wa-
gatsuma, in an essay on the social perception of skin color in Japan, also
notes a long-standing inferiority complex toward white skin that has led
the Japanese to a certain ambivalence in their interactions with whites.29
There are accounts of the Dutch being paraded in front of the emperor (ijin
gyoretsu) in the early years of contact with the West; and even in Japanese
folk religion, Westerners were viewed as gods.3o

Not surprisingly, then, Japanese teachers and administrators were invariably puzzled at the ALTs' distress at what they considered to be wellmeaning gestures. One JTL told me, "JET participants complain about compliments and gestures of gratitude that we would never think twice about."
Indeed, the Japanese intended the compliments about the ALTs' use of
chopsticks or their language proficiency more as encouragement than as
praise. They had to find something to compliment, since it was only good
etiquette to extend preferential treatment to "the honorable visitors."
Being polite and hospitable illustrated the high esteem in which Japanese
held Westerners. Instead of interpreting these expressions as tiresome and
insincere praise, the ALTs ought to have seen them as signals to redouble their efforts to master Japanese language and customs, for the praise usually decreased when the achievements became genuine.

As for lack of privacy, this was simply a price paid by all visitors from
outside the community, foreigners or not. When the urbane Japanese hero
of Natsume Soseki's Botchan is posted to a rural middle school and experiences the shock of being the newcomer, he too finds his every move observed and remarked on by his students. Finally, he despairs: "How annoying it is to have to live in a small town and be an object of criticism! It
seemed as if all the students were spies watching every move and act I
made. Dejection came upon me. Let the boys do and say as they will, I am
not a man who will give up on account of their interference the plan he has
set his heart on. But my heart began to fail me when I thought why I had
come down to such a small miserable town where the tip of your nose finds
limitation whenever you move about."31 The treatment that JET participants blamed primarily on a reaction to their skin color is perhaps better
understood as a magnification of long-held attitudes toward outsiders in
general. The foreigners in the neighboring village have simply been replaced by the foreigners from abroad.

Those who cast these actions in conspiratorial terms, as ALTs often did,
thus ignore the extent to which the distinction between "inside" (uchi) and
"outside" (so to) underlies all social interaction in Japan. To be "good" by
Japanese standards is to be loyal to the group, and such loyalty may require
that outsiders (both Japanese and foreign) be excluded. Defending organizational boundaries is a form of virtuous, not sinister, behavior. When accused of discrimination by the ALTs, Japanese teachers and administrators
have countered that insofar as it exists it is "accidental," since the intent is
benign.

Well-intended or not, such praise and attention indisputably act as a
distancing mechanism. The flip side of preferential treatment is that the
ALTs are rarely integrated more than superficially into social routines and
groupings at their schools. With only a few exceptions, no one in the
schools I visited expected that ALTs would truly become part of the social
fabric. Most of the ALTs with whom I talked reported that they were denied certain kinds of information, informed after the fact or not at all about
meetings that concerned them, not consulted about decisions affecting
their jobs, and excluded from the group in ways both symbolic (e.g., greetings not extended) and physical (e.g., desk placement). In one school the
vice-principal referred to their ALT as uchi no gaijin (literally, "our outsider"), a fascinating juxtaposition of terms that demonstrates the liminal
status of the ALT in the eyes of Japanese school personnel.

To be sure, the degree to which an individual JET participant is included
in school routines varies significantly, depending both on the makeup of
the particular school and on the ALT's personality and linguistic and cultural skills. In some cases, ALTs are used quite effectively and participate in
a wide range of school activities, and they may have enormous influence
over the content of their team-taught classes. But they too will eventually
find themselves confronting the limits of integration. Their designation as
a well-paid, short-term assistant sent by the board of education defines the
parameters within which integration and exclusion play out. For example,
ALTs by and large are not permitted to make decisions affecting the overall English course at their schools. One JTL noted that Japanese teachers always see the ALTs as connected to the board of education: "ALTS ask not to
be treated like guests but because they come from the board of education
we naturally treat them like guests [raising both hands and bowing]. The
ALTs don't understand that, because they are only here for a year. We can't
help but treat them like that, especially the first time they come."

There are also practical reasons for keeping the foreigners at a distance.
So finely attuned are Japanese sensitivities to interpersonal relations that
the ALTs almost inevitably appear to be bumblers. It is simply a lot more
work to include them because they don't catch many of the subtle messages that are so vital to the smooth workings of small groups in Japan.
One JTL explained, "Our first ALT was a British fellow and everyone hated
him. He never greeted the students and they could tell that he wasn't sincere even though he didn't speak any Japanese. Now our ALT is great and
gives us lots of ideas for team teaching. But we never consider him a real
part of the group, because if we invite him out drinking with us the atmosphere changes." When an ALT has limited Japanese skills, the flow of conversation must be constantly interrupted. Although these interruptions
are often motivated by a sincere desire to put the ALT at ease and explain
what is being said, they also serve to reinforce differentiation. In many
ways, this is a core problem of all cross-cultural interaction-the very act
of attempting to learn how to integrate someone can underscore his or her
status as outsider. In some cases, the arrival of an ALT seemed to actually
heighten the sense of "Japaneseness" among teachers and the anxiety
about maintaining boundaries. There seemed to be an assumption that
learning about a second culture would lead to a corresponding loss of
Japaneseness.32

Of crucial importance in determining the extent to which an ALT becomes part of school culture is his or her own disposition. Integration into
any group is, after all, a mutual process. In Japan, being a good member of the group entails a willingness to engage in reciprocal courtesies. When the
Japanese had tried to integrate the ALTs, I often found that the ALTs were
unwilling to make the kinds of personal sacrifices (such as staying late at
school) necessary for maintaining proper human relations. One JTL, for
instance, recounted that when he had asked for $150 for the end-of-theyear party, the ALT had refused to pay because it was too much moneybut then later complained that he was not made to feel welcome in the
school. When I asked the JTL how teachers felt when ALTs turned down
such invitations, he replied: "If they accept you as one of their members,
it's impossible to turn it down, but if you are a guest like most ALTs, it's
OK!" Nondrinking ALTs also had real difficulties with after-hours socializing if it revolved around alcohol consumption, particularly when the bill
came (was it fair to pay an equal share when one had had only a couple of
glasses of juice?).

Those ALTs who refused to meet Japanese expectations of proper behavior sometimes felt that they were responding realistically to the temporary nature of their position. "If I stay at school till midnight every day
I will not become head teacher," observed one ALT. In addition, many of
the ALTs were clearly reluctant to give up their special status and take their
place at the bottom of the totem pole, as a Japanese newcomer would.

Contrasting Formulations of Ethnicity

On a follow-up trip to Japan in 1996, I had the opportunity to visit Kyoto's
Ryoanji Temple. As luck would have it, as I approached the famous rock
garden I encountered a group of at least a hundred high school students on
a school trip. Just as I was beginning to contemplate how this development
would transform the serenity of the place, a teacher in charge of the group
suddenly stopped all bystanders in our tracks by screaming at one of the
male students, "What do you think you're doing? Can't you read?" I realized that in trying to get a better picture, a hapless boy had accidentally
stepped on the pebbles in the garden. He had had the doubly bad luck of
being right next to a sign that read "Please do not walk on the rocks" and
of being spotted by one of the accompanying teachers. Raising his voice
even further, this teacher repeatedly challenged the boy, "What will all
these foreigners think? Aren't you Japanese? (Nihonjin yarn?) Well, aren't
you?" until finally, head bowed in embarrassment, the boy nodded in
agreement.

While this incident had nothing to do with the JET Program per se it reminded me not only that public education can be harnessed to reinforce national identity but also that the very presence of diversity can paradoxically heighten consciousness of that identity. Indeed, most responses to the
ALTs were grounded in the sense of separateness and the very different
formulations of ethnicity held by Japanese at all levels. The Japanese tendency to assume that linguistic and cultural competence, much less identity, was a priori beyond the grasp of foreigners lay in sharp contrast to the
tendency of the JET participants (particularly strong among the exuberant
Americans) to assume that Japanese not only could, but darn well should,
learn English and become cosmopolitan. The implications of what seems to
the Japanese to be commonsense behavior are summed up nicely by
Harumi Befu:

Once dissatisfaction is fixed in the foreigner's mind because of his permanent exclusion from the category into which he wishes to be included, the label of gaijin will necessarily sound pejorative when thrust
on him against his will. Here is a classic case of mutual misunderstanding: a foreigner's wishful thinking is that internationalization obliterates the line between him and the Japanese, whereas for the Japanese
internationalization compels them to draw a sharper line than ever before between themselves and outsiders.33

Most JET participants saw internationalization in terms less of building
bridges between people than of breaking down the walls between them.
The Japanese teachers and administrators, however, saw internationalization as the development of techniques to improve understanding and communication between cultures and groups that they assumed would always
be fundamentally different.

We have seen that there is surprising variation in the receptivity of local
schools to the JET Program. Clearly, some schools and teachers take the
goals of improving foreign language education and broadening attitudes
very seriously, and they put JET participants to very good use. Yet there
was a considerable gap between the expectations of national-level policymakers and the capacity of those at the local level to handle a top-down resource. The organizational and cultural priorities of Japanese schools often
led local teachers to engage in behaviors that were perfectly commonsensical to them but ran directly counter to the program's stated aims of improving conversational English and integrating foreigners into Japanese
society. Thus it was often unclear how-and if-the ALTs fit into the dayto-day priorities and social routines that characterize Japanese schools.
This naturally resulted in considerable frustration and disillusionment for the ALTs, who developed various strategies both to protest and to milk the
system.

The JET Program therefore has produced a kind of conflict that is unusual in the public education system in Japan. Most academic accounts of
its postwar history assume that the higher the administrative level, the
greater the degree of overt conflict; they find that conflict is sharpest at the
national level, where the sides are clearly drawn and most institutional-
ized.34 At the small group level in local schools, by contrast, there is much
greater pressure to work together, and ideological considerations are seen
to take second seat to the more practical concerns of cooperating to run the
school. Here, however, the level of agreement is highest at the symbolic
level: virtually everyone agrees on the importance of kokusaika. It is only
when an attempt is made to give a concrete shape and form to that vague
concept that conflict emerges, usually at the very lowest levels of the system. Masao Miyoshi describes a similar process at work in U.S.-Japan trade
negotiations: conflict arises not because interaction is resisted but because
no agreement can be reached on its ground rules.35 The JET participants are
problematic precisely because many (though not all) assert universal ethical principles that contradict and can damage the norms of group process.

Given that ALTs and JLTs often hold divergent views of the goals of the
educational process itself, it is surprising that battles do not erupt more frequently. That overt conflict is minimal is a testimony to the extraordinary
capacity of Japanese teachers and school-level administrators, relying on
situational adaptation, to absorb the potential shock of the ALTs' arrival.
One might expect that the introduction of an outsider into the tight-knit
culture of the school would result in serious disruption, radically altering
the chemistry of the community; but instead all the other elements, from
the principal down to students, reconfigure themselves to minimize the effects of the outside agent. The high level of sympathy among Japanese
teachers for the general slogan of "internationalization" and the cultural
tendency to treat foreigners as guests have been crucial in partially neutralizing the disruptive potential of the educational imports.