Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (54 page)

We cannot ignore the possibility that America is indeed an overarching
structure that organizes the most powerful events in the United States,
be they political or educational. To ignore the possibility is to condemn
oneself to blindness and a particularly insidious form of righteous false
consciousness that insists on the need for certain kinds of awareness
(e.g., awareness of cultural differences) without giving itself the means
of framing this awareness.... The melting pot has worked. There is an
American culture. It is necessary to learn the means of recognizing its
presence, particularly in those settings where it hides itself. And then,
when necessary, one must examine one's own productions so as to escape its overwhelming power.'

It is precisely in mirroring this set of unexamined assumptions about selfhood, ethnicity, and change, which Michael Olneck terms multiculturalism's "symbolic order," that the Japanese case can be instructive.

To make such a claim is not to say that everyone sees multiculturalism
the same way. Conservative positions that view all but the most benign
forms of multiculturalism as undermining national unity and leading to social and political fragmentation clearly differ from radical critiques that
charge multicultural education with failing to confront established cultural
categories or power relations. But just as the variation in Japanese responses
to "internationalization" can be located within an overarching symbolic
system, so too do American discourse and practice vis-a-vis diversity rest on
a set of fundamental assumptions about self and social relations.

The reactions of American JET participants to Japanese culture and education suggest that believers in individualism have great difficulty accepting the legitimacy of cultural differences; thus, multicultural movements
may not be as tolerant of group identities as they claim to be. There is often
a considerable discrepancy between their professed respect for cultural differences and their actual behavior. Most strikingly, they generally expect
and demand that Japanese approaches to language teaching and internationalization conform to their own. In various ways, most of them construe
Japanese culture and education as a "problem" and as in need, at some
level, of "development." Wherever Japanese practice diverges from the
American ideal, it is seen to fall short of being progressive or international.
Though there are some apologists for Japanese culture among the JET participants, they are clearly a minority.

In addition, the American JETs treat ethnicity as a personal religion:
that is, each person is cast as defining him- or herself by using available ethnic labels. One can be zo percent Cherokee, or 20 percent Chinese-or,
as the media never tire of reminding us in Tiger Woods's case, several different things all at once-but in every case the focus is an individual's
ownership of ethnicity. Although it appears that a person belongs to one or
more ethnic groups, for the most part these are groups on paper, or groups
in name only. They are a far stretch from the Japanese groups in action,
which demand constant loyalty and in return provide a sense of belonging.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the United States is an atomized society playing games with ethnic labels.' To be sure, the labels have meaning for the individuals concerned; but they rarely are accompanied by a
whole set of obligations and expectations for behavior of the kind attached
to ethnic affiliation in Japan.

The voluntary and associational character of contemporary group life in
the United States thus carries important implications for the kind of pluralism being nurtured. Affiliating within ethnic groups now is not primarily a matter of ascribed, inclusive identity. Instead, as Michael Olneck
argues, "Multiculturalists render ethnicity consistent with the core American norms of individual choice and individual expression ... by representing ethnic identity as an option or voluntary choice.... By affirming and
centering the autonomous individual whose cultural identity is a matter of
relatively unrestrained choice, multicultural education locates ethnicity
well within the established symbolic order through which Americans perceive and interpret society."3 This helps explain why American JET participants so strongly resent being singled out as gaijin: to confer and deny
ethnic identity on the basis of blood is anathema in the American ideology,
which tends to define "Americanness" as a matter of having the right attitudes. Our own version of multiculturalism thus reflects a radical individualism that fails to take seriously the identities and claims of groups as
groups.

That American JET participants insist on the necessity of increasing cultural awareness among Japanese teachers and students also suggests that
multicultural discourse tends to frame the educational task largely in
terms of affecting the individual. James Banks, for instance, stresses the
importance of moving from a "contributions" stage, in which the distinct
achievements of minority individuals are recognized by the larger society,
to a level of social action/empowerment,4 taking for granted the idea that
change must occur at the level of individual attitudes. As one critic has
pointed out, because of that assumption such stage theories run "the risk
of masking political and socioeconomic conditions that contribute to real
inequality in contemporary plural societies."5

The challenges facing Japan and the United States in coping with diversity are in many ways opposites. Yet for those working within each country, the superiority of their own system's logic is taken for granted. In
Japan the challenge is to internationalize in a way that requires citizens to
open up their language and culture to foreigners, perhaps even teaching
them the subtle complexities of what it takes to be a loyal group member.
In a more robust version of kokusaika, JET participants should learn to
adapt to Japan; but foreigners often are the first to recognize this, because
the Japanese are so concerned with the outer form and with hospitality.
One CLAIR official put it this way: "The hardest part is to get rid of the
way of thinking that says, 'Now it's time to do internationalization' (ka-
maete, kokusaika no jikan)." In the United States the challenge is to internationalize in a way that recognizes that other nations' approaches have
value and avoids reducing cultural differences to matters of individual
choice and attitude. JET participants need to take seriously the task of
learning Japanese culture and language and integrating themselves into
social routines. Too often they simply criticize Japan rather than admit that
they must accept some of the consequences of the Japanese model of social
relations.

The history of the JET Program ultimately offers insights into what is
fundamental to ethnicity and what is not, and it suggests that concepts
such as "internationalization" and "multiculturalism" are rarely employed
critically. The idea that simply speaking English, having a foreign pen pal
or a sister city, or inviting a foreigner to a local school constitutes internationalization is very widespread in Japan. And a similarly reductionist
mind-set can be found in the United States, where the presence of one individual with an ethnic name or a darker skin color is seen as proof of diversity. At one level, the JET Program seems little different from the food,
folkways, and holidays approach to multicultural education in American
schools or from the reliance on multicultural studies programs and expanded college reading lists to add "ethnic content."

But the seeds of cross-cultural learning must be planted somewhere,
and perhaps taking up the cause of internationalization is a necessary first
step. Moreover, we cannot assume that intercultural education programs
only reflect prior cultural values, as if their meaning could be read from a
preordained script. People are not only slaves of ritual, symbols, and culture but molders of them as well.' The coming together of diverse peoples,
despite their mutual reluctance to change, may lead to the creation of
something new; we can learn from others without sharing their commitment to a way of life. Clifford Geertz reminds us: "We must learn to grasp what we cannot embrace. The difficulty in this is enormous, as it has always been. Comprehending that which is, in some manner of form, alien to
us and likely to remain so, without either smoothing it over with vacant
murmurs of common humanity, disarming it with each-to-his-own indifference, or dismissing it as charming, lovely even, but inconsequent, is a
skill we have arduously to learn, and having learnt it, always very imperfectly, to work continuously to keep alive."' In the final analysis, the
beauty of the JET Program and other programs like it is that they open up
a public space for dialogue that is grounded in real-life encounters with diversity. The conversations that evolve are shaped by unseen historical, cultural, and political forces, but they retain a creative dynamism of their
own. The best of these conversations remind us of the possibility of achieving intercultural understandings that lie somewhere between facile affirmations of human universals and righteous claims of absolute difference.

PREFACE

1. Advertising brochure, The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program(me)
(Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1991), n.p.

CHAPTER 1. JAPAN'S IMAGE PROBLEM:
CULTURE, HISTORY, AND GLOBAL INTEGRATION

i. Advertising brochure, The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program(me)
(Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1991), n.p.

2. With the addition of France and Germany as participating countries in
-1989, the more inclusive acronym ALT, or assistant language teacher, was
coined to refer to the first category of participants, and the acronyms AFT (assistant French teacher) and AGT (assistant German teacher) also came into use.
In practice, however, the acronym AET was long used to refer all participants,
much to the chagrin of ALTs who did not teach English.

3. Of these 848 participants, 592, or fully 70 percent of the total, were from
the United States; 15o were chosen from Britain, 83 from Australia, and 23
from New Zealand. The following year Canada and Ireland were added to the
list of participating countries, and France and Germany joined in 1989.

4. Teresa Watanabe, "Importing English: Teacher Exchange Offers Tough
Lesson," San Jose Mercury News, 15 August 1988; "Apathy Rampant in JET
Program," Japan Times, 11 October 1988; "Teacher Torture," Tokyo Journal,
March 1989; Karen Hill Anton, "Japan Pulls in Welcome Mat with Racial Insensitivity," Japan Times, 13 April 1989.

5. The JET Program(me): Five Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local
Authorities for International Relations, 1992), 8o, 166.

6. Anniversary events included a two-day symposium on 7-8 October
1996 on the role of the JET Program in promoting internationalization, the
announcement of "Meritorious Service Awards" by each of the sponsoring ministries, and publication of a tenth anniversary booklet chronicling and assessing the JET Program's first decade.

7. Nose Kuniyuki, interview with author, Tokyo, 4 June -1993.

8. See, for example, Frank Gibney, "Time to Lay Ieyasu's Ghost to Rest,"
Japan Times Weekly International Edition, io-i6 June 1996, p. 9.

9. Ronald Dore, "The Internationalisation of Japan," Pacific Affairs 52
(1979): 6oi.

to. See Haruhiro Fukui, "State in Policymaking: A Review of the Literature," in Policymaking in Contemporary Japan, ed. T.-J. Pempel (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1977), 22-59.

11. John O. Haley, "Governance by Negotiation: A Reappraisal of Bureaucratic Power in Japan," Journal of Japanese Studies 13 (1987): 343-57; Steven
R. Reed, Japanese Prefectures and Policymaking (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1985); Leonard J. Schoppa, Education Reform in Japan: A
Case of Immobilist Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991).

12. Thomas P. Rohlen, "Conflict in Institutional Environments: Politics in
Education," in Conflict in Japan, ed. Ellis Kraus, Thomas P. Rohlen, and Patricia G. Steinhoff (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1983),136-73.

13. During the past two decades, research on policy implementation has increasingly recognized the importance of taking into account the perspectives of
those who are actually charged with implementing policy innovations. Systems
management and bureaucratic process models have fallen into disfavor as more
attention is focused on the issue of whether or not the goals and resources of policymakers fit the needs and perspectives of those actually affected by top-down
policies. In this vein, Lee Sproull offers a framework that focuses not on the properties of programs but rather on the processes by which organizational attention
is captured, external stimuli are interpreted, response repertoires are invoked, and
behavioral directives are communicated; see "Response to Regulation: An Organizational Process Framework," Administration and Society 124 (1981): 447-70.
Karl Weick, pointing out the lack of structure and determinacy and the dispersion
of resources and responsibilities, argues that commonality of purpose in educational organizations cannot be assumed; "Educational Organizations as Loosely
Coupled Systems," Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1976): 1-19.