Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (6 page)

But even this early catch-up period was closely linked to a larger national purpose, especially to national defense. The modernization policy
was sometimes described by the Japanese as "using the barbarian to control
the barbarian."22 As a result, Japanese officials took a very pragmatic stance
toward the oyatoi; Hazel Jones argues that they were actually treated as
"live machines," their humanity overlooked in the rush to appropriate
their skills.23 When Japanese officials were satisfied that enough information had been provided, the oyatoi were asked to leave. While this treatment clearly frustrated some of the oyatoi themselves, it provides important insights into how Japanese approach learning from abroad. Japan's
intense preoccupation with borrowing seems to be matched only by its
drive for mastering what has been appropriated. In the early Meiji period
the heavy reliance on cultural adoption and foreign teachers and technicians did not lead to permanent dependence on foreign sources. A combination of humility and willingness to be placed in the position of learner,
on the one hand, and national pride and purpose, on the other, proved astonishingly effective in the push for modernization.

By the i88os, however, enthusiasm for Westernizing was ending. The
Meiji oligarchs were increasingly humiliated by their treatment at the
hands of the countries they tried to emulate. It had begun with the unequal
treaty negotiated in -1858 by the American consul, Townsend Harris, under
the threat of naval power: foreign traders in Japan were protected by their own military forces and the extraterritorial privilege of trial by their own
judges under their own laws, and at the same time the tariffs that Japanese
could levy on Western imports were limited. After the turn of the century,
resentment was heightened by the failure to secure a clause on racial
equality in the Versailles Treaty and by the continued discrimination
against Japanese in U.S. immigration laws; the Japanese felt unwelcome in
the community of nations. Reaction against foreign influence took several
forms; for example, the Imperial Rescript on Education explicitly linked
education with providing glory to the emperor, and the folk religion,
Shinto, was harnessed to the goals of state building and the legitimation of
the emperor.24 The waging of "the Greater East Asian War" obviously represented the culmination of this nativist sentiment.

The Postwar Period

Defeat in World War II marked the beginning of another swing in public
opinion away from nationalism and toward democracy. Progressive reform
of Japan's constitution, its political system, its education system, and its
land policy, as well as dissolution of the large financial conglomerates (zaibatsu) and encouragement of unionization, were all goals of General Douglas MacArthur's temporary government. Yet because implementation of
many of these reforms was left to Japanese, and because the advent of the
cold war led Occupation authorities to concentrate on rebuilding Japan as
an ally, many were reversed after the Occupation forces left. For instance,
local boards of education, which were to be elected under Occupation
guidelines, were made political appointments. But there was no backlash;
instead, a series of gradual and moderate changes took place.

Despite such reversals, the war is today nearly universally rejected as
having been immoral. This has created a profound ambivalence about the
use of nationalistic symbols in contemporary Japan. Debates about the emperor's responsibility in the war, which surfaced in the media following Hirohito's death in 1989, made it clear that the imperial institution does not
unequivocally symbolize national unity. Sometimes the Japanese flag and
the anthem are questioned, as neither of them is mentioned in the constitution. While the Ministry of Education has decreed that the flag be raised
and the national anthem sung at all official school ceremonies, compliance
has not been universal." Finally, official visits by the prime ministers to
Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of all soldiers who died for the country
in wars are cherished as sacred, have been very controversial; they are seen
as a sign of resurgent militarism by Japan's Asian neighbors, who suffered greatly at Japan's hands. Thus the major symbols of national identity-the
imperial household, the flag, the anthem, and national monuments-were
largely discredited by World War 11.26

After the war, the focus of Japan's global articulation shifted from military expansion to economic recovery and then growth. Yoshida Shigeru, a
prewar diplomat and postwar prime minister, came up with the formula
that has served as Japan's national policy virtually to this day. Japan would
ally itself with the United States, which would take over all defense functions and allow Japan to concentrate on its economy. In return, Japan would
accept American leadership in foreign policy. As Yoshida said, "If you like
the shade, be sure to find yourself a big tree." By most accounts, these efforts have paid off handsomely. Today Japan boasts the second-largest GNP
in the world, and its corporations are household names around the globe; it
is the world's largest donor of foreign aid; its education system is widely
praised for producing uniformly high levels of academic achievement and
social order. Many Japanese cite the publication in -1979 of Ezra Vogel's
best-seller, Japan as Number One, as evidence that they had finally
achieved prosperity. Rather than the emperor system or military might,
the Japanese economic system, particularly its community-oriented aspects, had now become the principal symbol of national pride. Japan's
alacrity in equaling and surpassing Western countries is all the more astonishing given its relative lack of technical and material advantages in the
mid-nineteenth century. Japan can truly lay claim to being the dark horse
of the twentieth century's peacetime competition .17

EDUCATIONAL REFORM AS THE SOLUTION
TO INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE

As it has emerged as an economic power, Japan-with its relatively homogeneous population and sense of isolation-has faced an acute problem of
global integration. Western countries have protested with growing vigor
what they perceive as the closed nature of Japanese society and Japan's refusal to play by the rules of the international liberal trading order. Foreign
pressure on Japan to take concrete measures to liberalize the country and
to reform what is seen as a feudalistic value system has been a political
constant during the past few decades.

On the one hand, contemporary Japanese society ranks quite high on
most "objective" measures associated with the term "internationalization." Overseas investment is flourishing, and more and more countries
are doing business in Japan. Every year millions of Japanese travel abroad, and almost all American and European books of any importance are translated into Japanese. A great deal of attention is given to foreign language
learning: most Japanese youth study English for at least six years. The Japanese have a great propensity for importing foreign loanwords, and a typical person knows thousands of katakana words that are derived from English. Today few nations are more acutely conscious than Japan of living in
a global environment, and the Japanese appetite for foreign goods and ideas
shows no signs of abating.

On the other hand, critics have observed that evidence of a closed mindset is not hard to find; in fact, there appears to be a direct connection between Japan's forging of international linkages and the rise at home of national introspection and the search for roots.28 Even in the early postwar
years, the archaeological excavation of a site from the Yayoi period (300 B.C.E.
to 300 C.E.) enabled many Japanese to repair their wartorn national identity
with the comforting knowledge of an unbroken 2,ooo-year history of rice
cultivation.29 Since then, the boom in nostalgia and furusato (consciousness of native place) can be read as indicating a search for an "authentic"
past in the face of new and unpredictable challenges.30 Takie Lebra points
out that the increasing number of intercultural marriages has provided
fodder for private detective agencies that screen job and marriage candidates for purity of background. Similarly, David Titus notes that the more
contemporary Japan accepts influences from the outside, the more the entity called "emperor" is sought after as a symbol of Japanese community
and uniqueness.i1 As the homogenizing framework of the world system
presses closer, cultural identity is fostered and intensified.32

One of the most striking manifestations of this national introspection in
the postwar period is the surging popularity of a genre of quasi-academic
and popular literature known as nihonjinron (literally, "theories of Japanese culture"), in which authors have attempted to define their country's
uniqueness.i3 In much of this literature, race, language, and culture become
synonymous, resulting in what one Japanese critic calls a "unitary ethnic
nation, intolerant of alien elements, constitutionally unable to accept the
existence of different kinds of Japanese."34 Dependency (amae), hierarchy
(tateshakai), and left brain orientation have all been suggested as defining
features of "Japaneseness." Some politicians have taken these ideas to extremes-for example, making the outrageous claim that the Japanese intestinal tract is unable to digest foreign-grown rice. Sales of books in this
vein have skyrocketed almost in parallel with Japan's rising economic penetration overseas; any decent bookstore in Japan now has a shelf devoted to
the genre.

These writings have been harshly criticized by Western writers who
view nihonjinron as the worst kind of pseudo-scientific enterprise. In fact,
the phrase "nihonjinron-like portraits" is now widely used among Japan
specialists as a put-down of analyses of Japanese society that perpetuate
the homogeneity myth and stereotypical pictures devoid of diversity. So
eager are critics to unmask the "real" interests that lie behind nihonjinron,
however, that they largely ignore the public's huge appetite for these
books. Clearly, the message of nihonjinron is welcome to many Japanese.

Moreover, a strong sense of separateness and a concomitant arm'slength approach to global integration have some benefits. A feeling of cultural uniqueness, reinforced by a shared language, makes it easier to
achieve internal compromises and sustain a decent society without the
skewed income distribution that plagues some industrial democracies.35 In
addition, speaking English and feeling comfortable in personal meetings
with foreigners are not necessarily prerequisites for being able to read
technical manuals and acquiring the know-how for conducting concerted
export drives.

Yet foreign criticism and pressure simply will not disappear. In recent
years, Japan's success at integrating foreigners into domestic institutions
has increasingly come to be seen by outside critics as its litmus test of internationalization. A global economic power such as Japan, they say, should
open itself to foreign peoples and learn how to be more comfortable with
the Other, both at home and abroad. Indeed, it can be argued that this lack
of a certain fellow feeling with the rest of the world is at the root of many
of the problems facing Japan in the late twentieth century. In the United
State, for example, most of the criticisms that media, politicians, and scholars have leveled against Japan center on relations in trade, but others address the domestic treatment of minorities.

Though U.S.-Japan trade friction has eased somewhat in the late 199os,
for most Americans the bilateral relationship is summed up in the conflict
over annual trade surpluses, which hovered around $5o billion for much of
the 198os. With this imbalance came a sudden anxiety about "losing" to a
competitor, and some critics complain that the Japanese are not playing fair.
Pointing to the failure of many Japanese firms with U.S. operations to integrate into local communities, they question not only the companies'
business practices (e.g., reliance largely on Japanese suppliers) but also
their commitment to racial and gender equity (offering as a case in point
the notorious April 1996 lawsuit against Mitsubishi alleging sexual harassment). Conversely, they argue that a variety of nontariff barriers within Japan-the rigid and complex distribution system, the timeconsuming system of patenting, the presence of industrial groups
(keiretsu) that obstruct free competition, and bid rigging in industries such
as construction-make it practically impossible for foreign competitors to
succeed there.3" And the charge that the Japanese attempt to win economically at all costs carries over to analyses of foreign policy. Japan has been
criticized both for its persistent refusal to link politics and economics (e.g.,
Japan was one of the last countries to suspend business dealings with the
apartheid regime in South Africa) and for the strongly commercial orientation of its foreign aid .17

Even on the level of personal contacts, Japanese are criticized for preferring package tours over arrangements that might bring them into informal
contact with foreign people. And their behavior at home has fallen under
still harsher criticism. Japan's increasing visibility internationally has exposed to the world the persistent fissure between dominant and marginal
groups, the latter including in particular Koreans (who make up nearly half
of the relatively small number of foreign residents in Japan) and burakumin (long-ghettoized descendants of the outcaste class of the feudal pe-
riod).38 Foreign suspicions about Japanese prejudices have only been
heightened by a series of highly publicized racial slurs by prominent Japanese officials. In 1986 Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro connected the
presence of minorities in the United States to declining American intelligence levels, and before the decade's end two cabinet officials were quoted
making remarks critical of blacks in particular."

Images do matter, and try as she might, Japan simply has not been able
to shake the perception that the country as a whole is intolerant of diversity. The very strengths on which Japan's economic success was built have
become liabilities as the country is drawn further into a global environment. How, then, to raise Japan's status in the eyes of the international
community without completely sacrificing the familiar modes of social relations that have served the nation so well?