Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (59 page)

25. Robert Juppe recalled the incident in more detail:

What happened was in April CLAIR said he couldn't give the talk, so the AJET chair
called me and said, "What should we do?" And I said, "Well, why don't you invite
him anyway but change the venue?' And they said, "Yes, that's just what we'll dowe didn't think of that." But I guess someone in CLAIR was one step ahead and
caught wind of it and they said, "If he's anywhere in the city, we'll cut all your
funds." So AJET came back to me and I said, "Well, why don't you do it anyway.
AJET has been brought too deep into the fold now. It's almost a branch of CLAIR.
Why don't you go back to your independent roots?" I really thought this would be a
good chance to provide people with an alternative viewpoint. Well, it wound up that
they got another speaker, who did all right, but it was an innocuous topic that didn't
cause any friction. Robert Juppe, Jr., interview with author, Tokyo, 27 May 1995.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme General Information Handbook (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1996), 4.

29. Cartoon by Roger Dahl, Japan Times Weekly International Edition,
7-13 April 1997, P. 20.

30. Speech given at the Kansai Mid-Year Block Conference in Osaka, December 1989.

31. Bob Juppe was told that because foreigners were prohibited by law from
working in a national government office, he was officially hired by Tsukuba
University, and he taught at their "attached" high school two days a week.
Both his boss at the Ministry of Education and his supervisor at Tsukuba informed him in no uncertain terms that his main responsibilities lay with the
JET Program.

32. See, for example, Robert Juppe, Jr., "Time to Structurally Develop Team
Teachers," Tsukuba Women's University Research Bulletin 2 (1998): 1-17.

33. "Heisei 4-5 nendo Teimu Teichingu Kenkyu Shinshinko Kenkyu
Shuroku" (Summaries of reports from the 1990-92 team-teaching research schools), Chuto Kyoiku Shiryo (Curriculum Materials for Secondary Education) 4, no. 651 (1994).

34. Koike Ikuo, interview with author, Tokyo, 3 June 1993. This new course
of study marked a watershed in another way as well. For the first time the Ministry of Education used katakana, the phonetic alphabet used for foreign loanwords, in its guidelines.

35• ALTs are often asked to coach students in the recitation of a particular
passage from the textbook (with such titles as "The Titanic," "I Have a
Dream," "Save the Rainforests," and "The Hattori Shooting").

36. Huw Oliphant, personal communication, 12 May 1999.

37. Robert Juppe, Jr., personal communication, 1 April 1998.

38. Bruce S. Feiler's Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan (New York:
Ticknor and Fields, 1991), reflecting on a year in the JET Program, provides
wonderful examples of the kinds of meaningful relationships that can be established, particularly when the visitor is willing to place him- or herself in the
position of learner.

39. During my visit to Tokyo in 1996, Ministry of Home Affairs officials,
convinced that the JET Program has now become an unqualified success, assured me that its future was secure no matter what the state of the Japanese
economy.

40. David Plath, personal communication, 28 November 1992.

41. Hisaeda Joji, quoted in "Discussion Meeting," 203.

42. This hands-off approach to Japanese language learning at the national
level was usually mirrored by prefectures and municipalities as well. A few
host institutions, however, went their own way. Kumamoto Prefecture offered
a three-day Japanese language seminar for all new JET participants.

43• Hisaeda Joji, quoted in "Discussion Meeting," 192.

CHAPTER 7. FINAL THOUGHTS

i. Robert Smith, "The Cultural Context of the Japanese Political Economy," in Cultural and Social Dynamics, ed. Shumpei Kumon and Henry
Rosovsky, vol. 3 of The Political Economy of Japan, ed. Yasusuke Murakami
and Hugh T. Patrick (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 13-31; quotation on 29.

2. Thomas P. Rohlen, "Learning: The Mobilization of Knowledge in the Japanese Political Economy," in Kumon and Rosovsky, Cultural and Social Dynamics, 363.

3. Hidetoshi Kato, "Soybean Curd and Brine," in Listening to Japan: A Japanese Anthology, ed. Jackson Bailey (New York: Praeger, 1973), 5•

4. The Ministry of Education, for instance, has canvassed the English
teacher's consultants at the prefectural level, and CLAIR has done the same
with local government officials. Prefectural and local offices of education have
surveyed Japanese teachers of English, and the Japanese teachers of English themselves not infrequently conduct surveys of students regarding the ALTs.
As is typical when a "problem" emerges in Japan, outside organizations have
also rushed to conduct their own studies.

5. Kazukimi Ebuchi, "Kokusaika no bunseki shiten to daigaku Shihyo settei
no kokoromi" (The concept of internationalization: A semantic analysis with
special reference to the internationalization of higher education), Daigaku
Ronshu (Research in Higher Education) 18 (1989): 29-52.

6. Walter Edwards, "Internationalization, Nihonjinron, and the Question of
Japanese Identity," paper presented at the annual conference of the Japan Association of Language Teachers, November 1988, Kobe, Japan, p. io.

7. See, for example, Margaret Gibson's description of accommodation
strategies used by Sikh immigrants in California in Accommodation without
Assimilation: Sikh Immigrants in an American High School (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1988).

8. Edward Spicer, "Persistent Identity Systems," Science, no. 4011 (1971):
795-800.

9. Robert C. Christopher has framed the Japanese approach to change this
way: "Since their primary commitment is to the well-being of their tribe
rather than to ideology or religion, Japanese find it easier than most peoples to
accept change.... [I]n the philosophic sense, it is not really possible to speak of
an un-Japanese society; a truly Japanese society-like truly Japanese behavior-is whatever the Japanese consensus holds it to be at any given period."
The Japanese Mind (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1983), 55•

10. Harumi Befu notes how nihonjinron, as a discursive symbol of identity
with minimal emotive content, has been altered over the years from emperorcentered ideology to discussion of Japan's unique cultural, linguistic, and racial
traits; see "Symbols of Nationalism and Nihonjinron," in Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan, ed. Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 42-43.

11. Ronald Dore, "Cultures Don't Meet: People Do," Japan Foundation
Newsletter 26, no. 3 (1997): 9.

EPILOGUE: MIRROR ON MULTICULTURALISM
IN THE UNITED STATES

1. Francine Ruskin and Herve Varenne, "The Production of Ethnic Discourse: American and Puerto Rican Patterns," in The Sociogenesis of Language
and Human Conduct, ed. Bruce Bain (New York: Plenum, 1983), 567.

2. I am indebted to Thomas Rohlen for this insight.

3. Michael Olneck, "The Recurring Dream: Symbolism and Ideology in Intercultural and Multicultural Education," American Journal of Education 98
(1990): 161-62.

4. James Banks, Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice, 2nd ed.
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5. Diane Hoffman, "Culture and Self in Multicultural Education: Reflections on Discourse, Text, and Practice," American Educational Research Journal 33 (1996): 548.

6. See David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

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