Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program
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Solving the twin problems of poor attendance and irresponsible behavior by JET participants has proved more difficult, but a number of approaches have met with some success. First, the program coordinators leveled a variety of warnings and pleas; as one secretary-general of CLAIR told me, "Because the program coordinators are a kind of 'in-group' for JETs, they can say these kinds of things in a way that won't sound as harsh as if Japanese were to say it." When these exhortations had no effect, CLAIR required all JET participants to sign in on the first day of the conference; but some simply left after signing in. Finally, at one renewers' conference an unannounced attendance check was done, revealing that over 25 percent of ALTS were missing. As program coordinators apologized profusely for treating the JET participants like kindergartners, the ALTs were informed that this time the names of all those not present would be forwarded to their prefecture or municipality, and ultimately to their base school; the offenders were then required to write a letter to their principal or ETC explaining their absence.22 The strategy led to more problems, however: JET participants who had missed the session for legitimate reasons became defensive, and local Japanese supervisors were put in the awkward position of having to respond to the transgression of their ALT. This last tactic was not used again, though attendance is still taken at some conferences.
On at least one occasion the new, tough approach exposed a fascinating rift between program coordinators and senior Japanese staff at CLAIR. On the second day of the 1989 Renewers' Conference, Ann, a program coordinator, announced the transgressions of the night before-a gate to a park ing lot had been broken by ALTs who were seen drinking while sitting on parked cars, an expensive ashtray had been knocked over and broken, and an ALT returning from a party had thrown up in her taxi just as the driver pulled up to the hotel. She exited hastily, leaving the taxi driver to demand that the hotel staff make her return to clean up the mess. The following morning at the plenary session, Ann reported that the Japanese staff of CLAIR had decided that this kind of behavior could not be tolerated: "I was asked to tell you that such actions affect the reputation of the JET Program and in your contracts there's a clause about morality. The Japanese staff has made the decision that if something happens during the next two days your contract will be terminated." At this point, there was scattered applause, indicating at least some approval of taking harsher measures against peers who act irresponsibly. That afternoon as I made the rounds with the counseling section chief of CLAIR, he commented: "We can't even imagine what kind of people these are. Whoever broke the parking gate should be terminated. If we can find evidence, we will. The local institutions, you know, are too lenient. Sometimes we'll advise them on a particular person and you'd naturally think that person wouldn't be renewed, but then we see their name on the renewers' list."
But there was a considerable gap between words and deeds. Hotel video cameras had actually filmed the perpetrators returning to their rooms after damaging the gate, and several of the Japanese staff and program coordinators confronted these JET participants. They initially denied their involvement, but after seeing the video they confessed, and eventually apologized; they then were lectured on proper conference comportment by the Japanese staff. At the end of this encounter the secretary-general of CLAIR told them otsukaresamadeshita-literally, "you must be tired after this or- deal"-and sent them on their way. His leniency absolutely infuriated the program coordinators, who confronted the secretary-general in what one described as a "heated exchange," asking why he had "wimped out" and demanding that he carry through on his threat to terminate the contracts of the guilty parties.
In this case, CLAIR officials were caught between the hard-line attitude of the program coordinators and their own cultural tendency to avoid confrontation and to be satisfied with an apology. Moreover, their threat was empty, as the secretary-general of CLAIR later admitted: "Actually, CLAIR has no power to hire and fire. So the threat is in a sense a bluff, although I suppose we could advise the local host institution to do it. But at the local levels if they fire someone, then it's looked at as a real dark spot; so the most common response is to wait it out." In the end, CLAIR did notify the prefectures of the transgressions of these ALTs and urged that their contracts not be renewed, but no further pressure was applied. The program coordinators, however, were very distressed that a few bad apples had given all ALTs a bad reputation. Scott, an incoming program coordinator, felt strongly that a severe speech about professionalism ought to be given to ALTs at the next conference; after the approval of the secretary-general was secured, this was done.
The conferences have thus evolved largely by trial and error, and chronic problems persist. Although the number of JTLs participating has increased they are still in the minority, and there are always a few workshop leaders who have been picked by the ETCs for reasons no one can fathom; the keynote speeches are still uneven in quality; and attendance at sessions remains a nagging concern. The overall tone of the conferences, however, has improved greatly, and in general the JET participants seem more sensitive to Japanese concerns. Robert Juppe, a longtime program participant and observer, offered this assessment in 1996:
I can remember a workshop on textbooks and the JTL had given a very befuddling kind of talk-very vague, and he didn't quite know what to say. And then this ALT got up, a real overcharged, hyperactive guy, and gave an impassioned talk about the problems with the textbooks and the whole mood turned into how bad the textbooks were, and I hate this chapter, and why do we have to use them? It was just one after another, and it finally hit a crescendo, and one woman stood up and said, "We HAVE to get rid of the textbooks" and a quiet descended over the room. And I'm in the back thinking, "What an absurd workshop. This defies the term." And then Mr. Wada stood up at the end and said if ALTs don't adopt a more mature attitude, we're going to stop holding these midyear conferences.
That was in 1988. Now I look and the same topic is there-how to use the textbook effectively-but the discussions seem so much more effective and focused. You'll get the occasional character who'll stand up and say, "These texts are all censored, and I won't have anything to do with them," but overall the ALTs seem more willing to adapt, and they work harder with the JTLs to get them to understand team teaching. Even the JTLs are more forthright now, and once in a while, they'll stand up and say, "Look, I can't follow this. If you want me to stay and contribute, slow down! "z3
The Assimilation of AJET
In perhaps its boldest move, CLAIR defused AJET criticism by allowing the association's members to attend special AJET-sponsored sessions at the re newers' conference the day after the official program ended. This offered AJET an opportunity to hold elections, to allow its special interest groups to meet, and to discuss topics such as "learning the Japanese language" that weren't on the official program. AJET also won the right to sponsor an independent speaker at this session, and the organization has worked hard to bring in people who would offer a critical perspective on Japanese culture; past speakers include the academic Gregory Clark and the journalist Karel van Wolferen.
CLAIR not only allowed AJET this extra day at the conference but also subsidized the entire affair, and in the long run this may have been one of the most effective strategies for preventing AJET from developing into a full-fledged resistance group. In fact, the financial support for AJET's activities had begun in the early years of the program, as one former AJET chair recalled:
I used to go over to CLAIR on a weekly basis for an informal meeting with the secretary-general, just to fill him in on what AJET was doing. Strictly informational. And as I was leaving he would say, "You mean you're not asking for anything?" and I'd say "No, I just wanted to keep you up to date on our activities." I think he really appreciated that, and after a while he started saying, "Well, if you ever need something, let me know." Pretty soon we got into some projects that needed financial support, and so a program coordinator gave me this account number, and it was like money from CLAIR would just show up
in this account to be used on certain projects of joint interest. It seemed unlimited, though I never knew since I didn't request much. But in the end I think AJET was weakened by getting money. It was a crutch.
The leverage provided by financial assistance was particularly useful when confrontations threatened. In 1994, for instance, hoping to get a critical perspective on Japanese bureaucracy, AJET approached Masao Miyamoto, a former bureaucrat at the Health and Welfare Ministry, who had been fired after writing a scathing tell-all critique of the culture of Japan's bureaucrats.24 Celebrated as something of a hero abroad but reviled by government ministries in Japan, Miyamoto immediately accepted the invitation, only to find out that Ministry of Education and CLAIR officials had vetoed it as soon as they discovered AJET's plan. The curriculum specialist at the ministry explained their disapproval: "Miyamoto is not representative of the dominant way of thinking in Japan. If we were to allow someone like him to speak, JET participants would get a very skewed impression of what Japan is like." In handling this issue, unlike the gay rights controversy discussed in chapter 3, CLAIR had considerable leverage over AJET. They threatened to cut off funding, including the extra overnight hotel stay, for the AJET-sponsored session, and AJET leaders quickly dropped the invitation to Miyamoto.2s
The larger story of AJET is that it has, in a sense, been transformed by its own success, as former AJET chair Robert Juppe noted:
I always use the Solidarity parallel. In the first year of the JET Program, membership was close to 8o percent. Now it's around 30 percent and people say, "Well, we've accomplished everything we set out to do-what do we do now?" And they're right. AJET in a way did all that. There were initially a lot of kinks in the program, things that needed ironing out, and AJET worked hard on it, CLAIR helped out a lot, and now the program's at a point where it's down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's. It's become so refined, and every year they have evaluation meetings, and they'll change the orientation to reflect feed- back.26
While infighting and the high cost of AJET membership in the early years were contributing factors, the biggest reason for the decline in membership was that CLAIR and the Ministry of Education eventually adopted most of AJET's ideas (as former AJET leaders generally recognize).
Nevertheless, AJET continues to play an important role in the operation of the overall program. In 1999 AJET still had more than 2,300 membersroughly two-fifths of the entire population of JET participants. There were fifteen special interest groups, nine nationality interest groups, and numerous popular support activities such as Tatami Time Share, a system enabling JET participants to share accommodations while traveling. AJET has been active in Earth Day activities, and an eighteen-month AJET-sponsored charity drive raised in excess of 3 million yen for survivors of the Great Hanshin Earthquake. The Team Taught Pizza, a resource manual for ALTs and JTLs, has sold thousands of copies and has gone into a fourth printing. But the confrontational and critical stance that was AJET's hallmark in the early years of the program has disappeared. By the tenth anniversary of the JET Program, AJET seemed to have become another branch of CLAIR.
Taming Expectations and Honing Policies: The Program Coordinators Revisited
In examining the learning curve at CLAIR, one cannot help but be struck by the steady adjustment of expectations. One longtime participant in the program mused:
I think a lot of it has to do with getting expectations right from the start. They have really been able to downplay the teaching aspect of the job enough. They've tempered the orientation so you know you're not going to be a crusader. There used to be such an expectation of importance, and, you know, the ministers would all get up and say, "You're wonderful. You're going to change, totally transform, our society." So people got this idea that they were big shots and then they'd get out to some homely little school building in the countryside and they'd say, "Wait a minute. What happened to my importance? I'm supposed to be a V.I.P. Where's my air conditioner?" Now they're constantly reminding them that reality is going to hit in two days, never mind the fivestar hotel. Also, there's so much more information out there now for new people. They can correspond with their predecessors; the predeparture orientation is more developed, there are videos on JET ... 27
Host institutions, too, have acquired what, for lack of a better term, might be called "JET know-how." Helped by the accumulation of experience, more detailed guidelines from Tokyo, and numerous opportunities to talk about and reflect on their "JET experiences" with colleagues, they have a much clearer sense of what the JET participants' expectations are and how to solve and avoid problems.
The role of the program coordinators in fostering more realistic expectations and proposing and carrying out improvements in program policy cannot be underestimated. Consider the issue of placement. When Scott Olinger arrived as a program coordinator at CLAIR in 199o, the process of assigning JET participants to prefectures was, in his words, "haphazard." He proposed to tighten the process by allowing JET applicants (i) to indicate their preference for rural, town, suburban, or urban areas; (2) to choose regional blocks as well (Hokkaido/Tohoku, Kanto, Hokuriku, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku, Shikoku, or Kyushu/Okinawa); and (3) to list up to three specific prefectures or designated cities. This proposal was quickly accepted by Japanese officials at CLAIR and was put into place in i99i, taking much of the guesswork out of placement.
Another issue that initially caused problems was the treatment of married JET participants. Philip recalled one couple who had applied to be in the JET Program when they were engaged. They were assured by the Japanese consulate in the United States that if they were both accepted and got married before their departure, they could be placed in the same prefecture. But the consulate forgot to inform CLAIR of the couple's intentions-and because their applications showed different last names, they were placed in separate prefectures.
One ended up in Hyogo and the other in Koochi, which geographically are very near but there is an ocean between them and at that time the bridge [the Seto-Ohashi Bridge] hadn't been built. Of course, they both wanted to be on the program but they also wanted to be together. It was a mess. They felt they had been misled because the consulate assured them they would be together. CLAIR was very much in the middle because CLAIR had never been told by the consulate they were married. But of course neither prefecture wanted them to quit. Ultimately, one was moved to an island nearer to the other prefecture where they could commute back and forth on weekends and the prefectures were persuaded not to schedule classes on Friday afternoon. But that was a difficult problem. And two or three years later the same thing happened again and in this case one absolutely refused to live apart and ultimately quit the program. And the prefecture wanted their money back and all that. These sorts of things were very, very difficult. There was nothing we could do, really.
And once again, cultural difference compounded the difficulties. In Japan, it is not uncommon for married men to go off to various parts of the country for long periods of time to work, leaving their families behind (tanshin funin). While it was relatively rare for a husband and wife both to be accepted to the program, CLAIR officials initially had little sympathy for the argument that the two absolutely had to be placed close to one another. When only one partner was in the program, he or she would arrive with spouse (and sometimes children) often to find no reservations for the family members at the hotel for the Tokyo orientation and none on the train or bus to the hosting prefecture; much bad feeling would ensue. The program coordinators worked hard to convince CLAIR officials to place married JETs as early in the process as possible so there would be time to clarify procedures and temper expectations. One recommendation was that married JETs leave their dependents at home for the first two weeks, but this advice was sometimes resented and even ignored, leaving the program coordinators scrambling to secure additional accommodations.
Each of these improvements had only a slight impact; but taken together over the years, they markedly increased administrative efficien
cy and certainly contributed to the high morale among new participants that is so noticeable today. Another cumulative effect has been a new openness among CLAIR officials in discussing the strengths and weaknesses of program policy. Consider, for example, this striking disclaimer about the CIR position that appeared in application materials in 1995:
The Japanese concept of "coordinator" differs from the Western perspective. As a result of a different contractual status, the CIR is essentially outside the body of mainstream employees. Advice, suggestions, and assistance offered by the CIR may in fact be viewed as the contribution of an outsider. While on the one hand this seems restrictive, on the other hand it provides for considerable leeway in the decisionmaking process. In all fairness to applicants, employers and the success of the programme, it may well be more realistic to describe the CIR as "Assistant, International Division."28