But Japanese sensibilities gave a different flavor and meaning to the term. For the national-level bureaucrats, there was never any question that "grassroots internationalization" needed both impetus and management from the top. National-level ministries, in spite of being highly compartmentalized, all view the policy process similarly. Put simply, ministry officials subscribe to a theory of top-down change that sees the national government providing training of, encouragement to, guidelines for, and subtle pressure on prefectural governments, who in turn leverage the next level of the system; this process continues downward until satisfactory policy outcomes are achieved. The theory is that enough muscle applied at each level will eventually bring compliance."
The formal administrative structure of the JET Program that resulted from this approach is shown in figure i. Local initiative was to be encouraged, and employment contracts were to be signed with the local host institution (prefecture or municipality), which could request the number and kind of JET participants desired each year. That local institutions, not a national-level body, were designated as the "official employers" goes a long way toward explaining the variation in working conditions experienced by JET participants (see chapter 4). Nonetheless, local autonomy played out within a framework set largely at the national level. The sponsoring ministries would make key decisions about programwide policies and the annual number of participants; they would provide the services of selection and placement in host institutions; and they would coordinate the Tokyo orientation, midyear block conferences, and other support services.
Figure 1. Formal administrative structure of the JET Program. Source: Advertising brochure, The JET Programme, 1995-96 (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1995), n•p.
CLAIR: A Cultural and Structural Broker
At the center of JET Program administration stands the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (Jichitai Kokusaika Kyokai), more commonly known by the acronym CLAIR. With its own staff and building, this nonprofit, quasi-governmental agency is responsible for the dayto-day management of the program at the national level.29 Like most Japanese organizations, CLAIR consists of an entirely symbolic advisory council; it was initially chaired by Shunichi Suzuki, the former mayor of Tokyo. Significantly, it also serves as a "retirement post" (amakudari) for one former bureaucrat from each of the three sponsoring ministries. In theory, these individuals are to serve as liaisons with their respective min istries, but in fact they are quite marginal to the day-to-day operations of CLAIR.
Appointments to CLAIR are made by the Ministry of Home Affairs, local governments, and private companies in fairly regular patterns. As one corporate representative noted, "There was a strong feeling that the JET Program could never be made to work solely by the power of the hard heads of bureaucrats." There are representatives from Kintetsu Travel Agency and Daiichi Kangyo Bank, as well as lower-level staff from selected prefectural and municipal offices. These staff members usually serve one year in CLAIR's Tokyo office and then a second year in one of the growing number of overseas offices (they serve as windows on the world for the Ministry of Home Affairs).
But in spite of the presence of these representatives, CLAIR is beyond question an administrative arm of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The top three CLAIR officials in terms of day-to-day decision making-the secretary-general, the deputy secretary-general, and the General Affairs section chief-always come from Home Affairs; and since these upperlevel staff must return to that ministry after their appointment in CLAIR, they have little incentive to exercise independent judgment or initiative. Other than the amakudari, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education are not represented in CLAIR, and the only person with educational experience is the chief of the Counseling and Guidance Section (shidoka). The result is a government-business alliance in which educational specialists are marginalized.
Most intriguing is the employment in CLAIR of a handful of JET Program alumni as liaisons between the Japanese staff and the mass of JET participants. Sometimes called "gaijin handlers" because they coordinate large numbers of foreigners, their primary responsibility is to manage the flow of information to and from the JET participants and to assist in those aspects of program implementation that require the linguistic and interactional skills of a native speaker. In the same way that Japanese officials at CLAIR act as brokers between national ministries and local host institutions, the program coordinators, by their own admission, serve as buffers. One, rather uncharitable in his depiction of the Japanese staff, put it this way: "There's no question we're used as buffers. All information to ALTs goes through the program coordinators. We always have to break the bad news because if they [the Japanese staff at CLAIR] do it, they come across as bureaucratic sods. The less contact they have, the better." In theory, assuming good coordination within the CLAIR office, there would be no need for the Japanese staff at CLAIR to become directly involved with JET participants, nor for the program coordinators to negotiate with local Japanese officials. But on numerous occasions (regional block meetings, crisis intervention, etc.) both Japanese and foreign staff at CLAIR have entered into direct negotiations with JET participants and local Japanese officials.
As an administrative office, CLAIR is in a very delicate position. It must negotiate with a whole host of ministries and agencies at the national level, with local governments throughout the country, and with the thousands of JET participants themselves. Though CLAIR has little input on major policy decisions, the Japanese staff and the program coordinators have considerable power when it comes to shaping program content.
Participating Countries
Having embarked on an ambitious plan to enhance Japan's valuing of diversity, the next decision government leaders faced was selecting those who qualified for inclusion. Four countries were invited to join the JET Program in its inaugural year: the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Canada and Ireland were added in 1988, and France and Germany joined in 1989 (see chapter 3), for a total of eight countries participating in the ALT component of the program. Table 1 shows the breakdown of ALT participants by country for JET's first five years.
The already functioning MEF and BET programs made the choice of the United States and Britain obvious. In fact, participants were given the option of renewing their contracts and staying on in Japan under the JET Program.j0 The addition of Australia and New Zealand was engineered primarily by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now that the English program was loosened somewhat from the viselike grip of the Ministry of Education, diplomatic considerations could be entertained. Japanese language study was booming in those countries, and both had been knocking on the door for admission to the MEF and BET programs for some time. Significantly, their participation would not greatly increase the overall number of applicants.
Indeed, the numbers indicate a strong American bias. During the first year of the program, 70 percent of the foreign participants hailed from the United States; even after two more participating countries were added in 1988, the figure was just over 6o percent. This overrepresentation is due not only to the larger pool of potential applicants in the United States but also to the close relationship that Japan has developed with the United States in the postwar era. One Ministry of Home Affairs official told me bluntly: "The first thing you should know about the background of the JET Program is that Japan likes the United States." The origins of the program in U.S.-Japan trade friction also provided some impetus to recruit heavily in the United States. Finally, since prefectures were allowed to put in a request for certain nationalities, both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Education expected that local governments would primarily request Americans in the first year of the program. They did not wish to disappoint local officials.
The initial list of participating countries also reveals that in Japan internationalization is primarily perceived as linking with Western countries. No native English speakers from India or Singapore, for instance, wer
e invited. This attitude stems at least in part from the striking differences in Japan's historical relationship with Western and with Asian countries. Asia has been colonized by Japan for much of the last 150 years and until recently has been regarded largely with contempt; but the technological, military, and economic superiority of Europe and the United States during most of the twentieth century has led Japanese to view Westerners with a mixture of fear and awe.31 To achieve greater international status, the Japanese feel they must concentrate on their relations with Western countries.
SALARY AND WORKING CONDITIONS
Another noteworthy structural feature of the JET Program was the generous package of benefits offered to the foreign participants. Their salaries were set at 3,600,000 yen per year. This came to about $25,700 in 1987, but with the stronger yen it has averaged about $31,ooo. Not only is this package more generous than most college graduates in the humanities could hope to earn in an entry-level position in their own countries, it is also slightly higher than most beginning Japanese teachers make.
source: Adapted from The JET Program(me): Five Years and Beyond (Tokyo: Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, 1992), 24.
Why such a high salary? According to ministry officials whom I interviewed, members of the original planning committee were extremely nervous about their ability to attract enough qualified applicants. This uncertainty as to whether JET would crash or fly was captured by the qualifier printed at the bottom of advertisements for the JET Program in 1987: "This program will be reviewed on an annual basis." Given the concern over the image of Japan that had given rise to the program in the first place, the prospect of failure held added terror. They were therefore inclined to bend over backward to provide the teachers with a good impression of Japan. The planning committee consulted the pay schedule for foreigners teaching at public universities in Japan before arriving at the figure chosen.
The workweek for the JET participants was set at five days in accordance with common practice in Western countries, even though Japanese schools at the time operated for a half day on Saturday as well (the Ministry of Education has since endorsed a plan for all Saturdays to be holidays, though its implementation is gradual). The six-day workweek had been the focus of many complaints from the foreign participants in the MEF and BET programs, and officials worried that such a large number of foreigners new to Japanese customs would be unable to physically tolerate the demands of the longer workweek.3z
With these policies in place, the only other initial task was to secure visas for the JET participants. Consultations with the Justice Ministry enabled both ALTs and CIRs to be accorded special visas under the discretion of the justice minister. This simplified, faster process would also alleviate the need for official sponsorship from the prefectural governments. According to one member of the planning committee, "In the beginning there was no problem with the Justice Ministry. We simply explained that the JET participants are not delinquents (furyo), and they agreed to admit them because they are positive participants who are going to contribute to local internationalization and progress."i3 Under the agreement, JET participants were given a ninety-day grace period to return to their respective countries after they had completed the JET Program.
RECRUITMENT OF JET PARTICIPANTS ABROAD
Once the basic administrative structures of the program as well as its key framework policies were in place, the Japanese turned to the problem of at tracting a large pool of high-quality applicants. This was the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in the United States it fell to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C., to coordinate the selection process among its fifteen consulates.
The ministry did not hire any additional Japanese staff at its consulates abroad to handle the considerable demands of JET Program recruitment. As a result, some lower-level attaches, though personally quite sympathetic to the program, felt tremendously burdened. From advertising the program to reviewing applications, forming a selection committee, conducting surveys of participants, and planning a predeparture orientation, the administrative time required was considerable. Moreover, the cycle had to be repeated annually for an ever-increasing number of applicants.
Nor did the ministry hire any former MEF participants or other individuals knowledgeable about Japanese education to assist administratively. In fact, in keeping with the critical role of the personal introduction in personnel decisions in Japan, the embassy in Washington took just the opposite approach.34 Carrie, a Wittenberg graduate, recalls the day she was hired to serve as administrative coordinator of the JET Program in the embassy's Press and Information Section:
I sent off a resume on a Wednesday. They called me Friday and said, "Can you come interview on Monday?" So I drove down there and it was the most bizarre interview of my life because I sat on a couch across from three Japanese diplomats, and only the guy in the middle talked. And he explained the entire job to me, everything it would entail, and then he said, "So do you want it?" I said "Yes, and here's why," and I started giving him all the reasons I could think of for why I should get the job. But he stopped me and said, "No, I mean when can you start?" You know, I thought they were playing a joke on me because I had absolutely no knowledge of Japanese culture or language. It turned out a friend of mine was working there and had pulled my resume from the stack and said, "Oh, I know her. She's a good person." So that's how I got it. The decision wasn't based on my qualifications to manage an intercultural exchange program, it wasn't based on my Japanese skills. It was the power of introduction. It was hysterical.
The ten months between the official announcement of the program and the arrival of the first wave of JET participants was a time of extreme administrative confusion. For one thing, ministerial negotiations over the precise number of new JET participants dragged on and on. The Ministry of Education was intent on keeping it as low as possible; for its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs waved the flag of internationalization and replied that a hefty increase was necessary. A compromise was finally reached-715; but the infighting delayed the advertising brochures, which in turn delayed the application process. As a result, only three weeks separated the announcement and the deadline. Late January had been set as the cutoff for submissions, but applications arrived at the consulates abroad only in late December. Carrie remembers sending 75-pound boxes of applications to Hawaii and Guam by Federal Express. Responses to an evaluation form sent to all applicants who had been accepted into the program but had declined to participate underscored this chaos: "most would-be JETS' reasons for not entering the Program stemmed from a lack of confidence in the Program and delays in the recruitment process."35
Once applications were received, however, the selection process itself was based almost entirely on local input. To handle the initial screening, the Japanese embassy in Washington chose the prestigious Meridian International Center. A Washington-based nonprofit organization that administers the International Visitor Program of the U.S. Information Agency, this agency is famous for its training of international diplomats. A Japanese official in the Boston consulate explained to me that the Meridian Institute was chosen primarily on the basis of its high status: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was determined that such an important program should have nothing but the best. Curiously, though, for many years there were no Japan specialists on the Meridian committee that reviewed the initial ap- plications.36
The composition of the interview committees at each consulate was also determined by local input. Committees consist of three or four "local persons" from academia or Japan outreach programs, such as the Japan Society. The invitation to be an interviewer-which includes a stipend of $400 per day-is hard to turn down. Only one Japanese representative sits on each committee. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs retains the right to overturn the recommendation of the selection committee in making the final decision, this authority is rarely exercised.
The JET Formula: Social Fit and Social Type
The specific
criteria used by the Meridian Institute to screen the initial applications are confidential, but a numerical score is assigned to each application based on academic performance, letters of reference, and the personal essay. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence that Japanese language ability and the prestige of the applicant's college are factors considered. I discovered quite by accident that too much fluency in Japanese could actually work against one's chances of being accepted. At the time, I was on the selection committee for a separate program, the Ohio-Saitama English Teaching (OSET) Program, to which an Oberlin graduate had applied. This young man had a very strong academic record, a cogent personal statement, and outstanding recommendations. What set him apart from the pack, however, was his extraordinary language skill. He was a unanimous top choice of the OSET selection committee. But when he submitted the very same application to the JET Program, he was rejected in the initial screening by the Meridian International Center. Apparently, ALT applicants with outstanding Japanese ability are seen as working against two major purposes of the program: the teaching of English and the introduction of Japanese language and culture to a new generation of foreign youth.
The prestige of one's alma mater clearly figures into the equation, as graduates of high-status universities are particularly desirable. In Britain, graduates from Oxford and Cambridge were especially sought after. In the American case, Carrie recalls,
Gaimusho really wanted the Harvards and Yales. It's never in writing, but you know that. There's a lot of tension between D.C. and Boston, with our office putting pressure on them. Gaimusho would sometimes get directly involved. I remember the second or third year the JET applications from Harvard were misplaced in a file drawer by the Harvard liaison and by the time she discovered them and sent them in to us, the deadline was way past. There was a huge fight between the educational attache here in D.C. and Gaimusho in Tokyo because we had already been through the interviews. We felt it just wouldn't be fair to let them in, but Gaimusho said, "We must have these people." In the end, they didn't get in. It was just too late. But it was not a happy scene.
Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program Page 8
