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BRINGING THE WORLD TO JAPAN: REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR
WITH THE JET PROGRAM
Devon Burke
JET Program, Japan
The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program—which placed 4,334 participants
from 36 different countries around the small nation in 2010 alone1—purports to be greatly
improving the levels of foreign language education and grassroots internationalization
throughout the whole of Japan. While the sheer numbers speak well of the Japanese
government’s dedication to these admirable goals, the situation that lies beyond the bureaucratic
veneer is far from perfect. The very system that created the JET Program is often its greatest
adversary, derailing progress from within. Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) and
Coordinators of International Relations (CIRs) alike can often feel hindered in contributing as
fully as they might wish to, held back by the immovable hand of the Japanese bureaucratic
system. Educational progress moves along sluggishly, and JET Program participants can feel like
wasted resources at times.
However, despite these setbacks, the JET Program does not fail altogether in its
aspirations. “Every situation is different.” This mantra, well known by JET Program participants
ALT and CIR alike, is quoted ad nauseum during the seemingly perpetual string of orientations
one must attend before and after taking up one’s post. It proves itself perpetually true, and
therein lies one of the JET Program’s greatest beauties—one which helps redeem some of the
JET Program’s inherent structural failings. On the JET Program’s official website, it is clearly
stated, “…[T]here is no standard JET experience. Each participant on the JET Programme can
look forward to a unique role as a member of multiple communities.”2 Ultimately, this is the
aspect of the JET Program that allows for the most symbiotic gain for both Japan and JET
Program participants. While the JET Program faces more than a few stumbling blocks in
achieving its lofty goals, there are many things it is already doing well. Overall, the JET Program
is an inspired idea that does not quite deliver all that it promises or all it is capable of.
In The Office
After fifteen months of working as an ALT at a small high school in rural Miyazaki
prefecture, I feel no reservations in saying that I am as integrated into the office hierarchy as I
can be. There are certain realities that one must face as both a foreigner and a temporary
employee—both of which apply to all JET participants. Firstly, falling into these two categories,
no matter how much one tries to adhere to Japanese manners and customs, one will never fully
assimilate into the office hierarchy. Even if one stays multiple years, inevitably watching the
annual faculty turnover that occurs every April in Japanese public schools and government
offices, little ground is gained. Those new employees will only be beneath an ALT or CIR on the
1
”The JET Programme." The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations. Accessed November 11,
2010. http://www.jetprogramme.org/index.html
2
”The JET Programme."
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ladder until they have adapted. Once they have acclimated and found a few friends in the office,
the JET participant slips back to the bottom.3
This sort of rootless existence can be very frustrating and can undermine even simple
daily tasks. All requests go up the chain of command, as is only natural, yet an ALT in particular
is perpetually on the lowest link. Abiding by the ingrained sense of propriety of the Japanese,
requests and plans are seldom rushed, leading to what can feel to many foreigners like
excruciatingly long waits for simple requests, such as “Since I have no classes tomorrow, may I
take a vacation day?”4 It can be maddening, as can adapting to the far more passive-aggressive
communication style of the Japanese, which is designed to avoid insult, but can lead to a great
deal of confusion to those from countries with more direct communication styles. After more
than a year, I have managed to decode most of the less overt communication tactics of the
Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) with whom I work, but it has been a long road—and we
still misunderstand each other’s more subtle nuances fairly frequently.
These may seem like small personal complaints, yet these seemingly mundane issues can
hinder basic job functions, such as planning lessons or activities. It is not uncommon for a
request to do a certain activity or game to be met with a few minutes of silence, a request for
more time to discuss the idea with another JTE, and often eventual rejection of the plan in lieu of
something more orthodox. Of course, everything changes depending on the JTE, the ALT, the
school, and any number of other factors, and we find ourselves right back at our favorite motto:
“Every situation is different.”
In The Classroom
With the JET Program solidly into its 24th year,5 one would expect that average Japanese
students and English teachers have a firm grasp of elementary English. With a constant barrage
of tests and opportunities to compete in various types of English language competitions, this
seems a fairly realistic assumption. In Japanese high schools, English recitation, speech, and
debate contests are annual affairs all occurring at the local, prefectural and national levels.
However, the participants by and large study at academic schools or commercial schools. Many
Japanese high school students are in technical or agricultural schools. Although the contests are
open to every school, these students would find themselves very ill prepared to face their far
more advanced opponents. When one considers the strict testing schedule that often interrupts
and suspends classes in all high schools regardless of type, one realizes how little time students
have to spend developing practical skills. Teachers are encouraged to teach to the exams, further
hindering any real progress the students may make in real life application of their language
competency.
3
One of my newest JTEs graduated from college less than a year ago and has been working at my school for a mere
seven months. By her third week of employment here, I was already asking her permission for various things.
4
If such a request is inquired about at 8am, the query is likely to receive an answer by 2pm, perhaps with some
requisite nagging involved.
5
”The JET Programme."
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In many elementary and middle schools, it is an unfortunate fact that many JTEs are not
fluent, creating another level of complication between Japanese instructors and the foreign ALTs,
who more often than not cannot speak fluent Japanese. In many classrooms, elementary and high
school alike, ALTs are used as tape recorders for the students to mimic, often offering little in
the way of real conversation practice. One positive aspect of being an ALT in a non-academic
school is that this is less likely to be the case. Because there is so little emphasis on English
education in these schools, and students there are unlikely to use English after graduation, ALTs
are often given more freedom to plan lessons and stray from the often insubstantial textbook
material.6
Not being forced to teach to a test’s standards can allow time for more useful
conversation practice and games that pique the students’ interests. As an example, when my
Second Year technical students were learning to follow maps and directions last year, we used a
giant map with pictures of their favorite animated characters at different locations bearing
amusing names.7 The students were then asked to pretend to be jewel thieves on a heist, running
from the police. Each team had to follow spoken directions to safe locations and eventually reach
the airport before being caught. One of my least English-inclined groups—a class of
environmental engineering course students—enjoyed this game immensely. After doing the
activity two weeks in a row,8 the students could follow my basic directions at a near-natural
speed, far outperforming my commercial students’ listening abilities in that subject area.
As most ALTs upon questioning would admit, the classroom environment is far from
ideal. The educational requirements JTEs and ALTs are forced to adhere to, plus the fairly
rigorous and regular exam schedule in high schools, make having any true improvement of
students’ English ability feel more like wishful thinking than any achievable task. While part of
the trick is to help the students academically finding those activities and games that really
motivate the students while honing their skills, it is important to remember that teaching is only
half of an ALT’s job. Positive influence can be seen in areas other than excellence in English.
In a scholastic environment, the mere presence of a foreigner to aid in exposing the
students and fellow teachers to his or her native culture can be invaluable. Due to the very nature
of our jobs and the screening process, most JET participants are fairly outgoing, making us a
stark contrast to the classroom atmosphere most Japanese students are used to. Though they are
often too shy to ask the questions they may have in an open forum, students are curious and will
often pipe up with queries in one-on-one situations or outside of class. The downside for the
ALT is feeling like a circus attraction or a novel toy at times,9 but that is an inescapable fact of
life when residing in such a homogeneous country.
So, while class time can feel unproductive at times, there are ways to overcome the dayto-day difficulties of the status quo. Additionally, it is important not to discredit the passive
6
High school English textbooks are usually thin, paperback volumes rarely reaching a mere 100 pages in length.
Porky Pig’s Post Office was a class favorite.
8
Another unfortunate fact is that many ALTs see each group of students once a week or less. For middle school and
elementary, once a month is perfectly normal.
9
Questions like “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “What is your favorite Japanese food?” never manage to lose their
appeal for Japanese questioners.
7
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influence that an ALTs presence at a school—or a CIR’s presence in a municipal or prefectural
office—can have on the general impressions Japanese around them have concerning foreigners.
Whenever being a social contortionist gets tiring, it helps to remember that just being here has
benefits for those people JET participants come into contact with everyday.10 JET participants
come from all over the globe, representing every continent short of Antarctica, and the wealth of
intercultural knowledge available to the Japanese because of JET’s efforts is rich indeed.11 In
fact, cultural education and exposure are arguably some of the strongest and most important
aspects of the JET program.
Every Situation is Different
Ultimately, writing reflections on a year with the JET Program is a thoroughly personal
affair. While many JET participants experience the same workplace complaints, the fact is that,
coming from so many countries, living in such diverse settings, and working in such varied
environments, the old adage that we are all tired of hearing is true. No two JETs have the same
experience. Ultimately, with the ups and downs, pros and cons, typhoons and earthquakes, the
JET Program is exactly what one makes of it. Many JETs live for the weekends, completing the
nine-to-five workday and calling it quits after that. Others work the same hours as their Japanese
coworkers, sacrificing weekends for special events or school club practices. Who comes out
better off in the end? It all depends on the participants goals entering the program.12
Whether your apartment is one room in the middle of a prefectural capital or you have a
whole house to yourself in a village where the school has twelve students, there are things to be
gained and things to give back. These vast discrepancies don’t change the fact that many of the
JET Program’s recurring issues come from a major disconnect between the Japanese education
system and the goals of the JET Program, and for CIRs, the problems come from the rigidity of
the bureaucratic system—the JET Program’s greatest foe. Since neither situation is likely to
change, there are two options for participants: complain or make the best of it.13
Japan’s high school students most likely will not be fluent in English anytime in the
foreseeable future, but ALTs can still help their students understand more about the world
beyond Japan’s borders. The mayor of a city might not let his CIR change the wording of a
translation to make it more comprehensible, but the spoken negotiations will still run more
smoothly with a CIR present. JET participants will continue to keep their fingers crossed for
eventual change. It may not come in the two or three years of any one ALT’s tenure, but the
people we meet and interact with during our daily lives here will remember us.14 In the meantime,
10
If the only thing my students retain from my time here is that New York and Los Angeles are not the only two
cities in the United States, I will count myself accomplished, because their worlds are that much bigger.
11
In the classroom, culturally themed lessons tend to be well-received, especially those concerning the holidays.
12
However, I feel it is fairly safe to say that the JET Program would be happier to see its applicants become the
latter rather than the former.
13
While it is highly likely that JTEs and other Japanese who work in close proximity to JET participants have their
own lists of complaints, probably including general ignorance on the part of ALTs and an inability to speak more
quietly on the part of all foreigners, we all—Japanese and foreigner alike—face the frustration of miscommunication
and trying to reconcile the current system with what we wish it could be.
14
For many Japanese students, the ALT working at their school is the only foreigner they have ever had regular
contact with, and in some rural areas, he or she is the only foreigner these children have ever met.
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JET and its participants do the best they can, and remind themselves of all the good that they are
currently doing.
The JET Program may not have mastered communicative harmony between foreigners
and Japanese in the office or foreign language education, but in all honesty, its greatest asset is
the ability it has to promote grassroots internationalization. Although the participants may often
be at arm’s length, stuck at the fringes of Japanese society, they are always visible. Our
coworkers, students, and bosses see us in our daily lives, and they understand just a little more
about the world outside of Japan. That is what the JET Program does best, and because
participants come from so many different cultures, the lessons we offer our communities also
vary wildly. In the end, even more than CLAIR or the JET Program realizes, every situation
truly is different—for the participant and the beneficiary community—and it is that novelty of
experience that gives the JET Program its strength.
JAPANESE INTELLECTUALS: ENCOUNTERS WITH AMERICAN
CULTURE, 1954-55: A MEMOIR
Wilton S. Dillon
Smithsonian Institution
[Editors note: Dr. Dillon, who worked on General MacArthur’s SCAP staff in Occupied Japan between
1945-1948, wrote this memorandum for a presentation in August, 2005.]
Sixty years ago today, the war between Japan and the U.S. and allies ended. The United States is
again at war. A new constitution is being drafted in Iraq. The Japanese experience with an Allied
Occupation is under study for comparative purposes. The history of the role of non-profit organizations in
the transition to peace and reconciliation remains an untold story. Let us start with these few personal
anecdotes about my association with the Japan Society of New York, soon to celebrate its centennial.
How were Japanese intellectuals—students, professors and visiting pro-fessionals—coping with
their exposure to American ways of life in the early post-war period? This aide-memoir fails to answer
that question. Instead, I will provide the context for a staff study whose interview materials I have
recently given to the Japan Society archives. They are the raw materials of an unpublished study for
which I did research as staff anthropologist. The unorganized notes serve as a kind of time capsule of the
epoch. They are loosely bundled together under the heading, Intellectual Cooperation with Japan.
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In 1954, Douglas W. Overton, then executive director of the Society, proposed to John D.
Rockefeller, III, president, that an inquiry should be made to address ways and means of dealing with the
stress of what now has come to be known as “culture shock.” Implicit was how to improve the Society’s
pioneering work in cultural diplomacy. Culture-contact is always a two-way process. Insights were
needed concerning how Americans would benefit by access to distinctive values and worldviews of
Japanese guests. Mr. Rockefeller was unusually sensitive to the host-guest relationship, as was Mrs.
Blanchette Rockefeller who often lent her guest house in Manhattan as a setting for seminars and
receptions for Japanese. (Both were interested in broad public education about Japan. They realized that
GI’s returning to small-town and rural America carried with some familiarity with Japanese culture,
remembering a few words of the Japanese language which their son, John D., IV, (Jay) was studying in
Tokyo. He is now a U.S. Senator, long remembered by me for his Life story explaining motives of
Japanese students who protested President Eisenhower’s visit to Japan. They were affirming the peace
plank in the Japanese constitution).
I had met Overton in Japan when he served as a diplomat in the US consulate in Yokohama, and
kept in touch with him after my return from three years as a civilian on the Civil Information and
Education Section staff of SCAP. (My duties included serving as liaison with the Japanese press for the
U.S. Education Mission to Japan, an advocate of exchange of persons programs). I had just completed a
teaching assignment at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, N.Y. when Overton asked me to
make an open-ended inquiry. Nervous breakdowns and threatened suicide were incipient symptoms of
extreme reactions to the challenge of some Japanese to deal with the seeming unstructured, less
hierarchical aspects of American society. It was hard sometimes to pick up cues about social rank from a
plumber who might dress like a banker. Stereotyping-cum-profiling was a predictable aspect of crosscultural perceptions.
The Society headquarters in 1954 were in a luxurious two-room rented suite of the old Savoy-Plaza
Hotel, later demolished to make way for the General Motors Building. (The space had once served as the
pied-a-terre for a Hollwyood tycoon). There, I met with the fine staff who handled administrative matters
for the Society, including the Japanese-speaking scholar, the late Eugene Langston. We decided that my
inquiry should include a wide variety of regions and institutions. While American culture, with a mass
market and mass communications, might seem homogeneous on the surface, important geographical and
sub-cultural factors needed to be recognized. As a Southerner, I was aware that our region was more like
traditional societies in Asia, Africa and Europe than like much of the United States. Kinship ties, social
class, a sense of tragedy (for having lost a war and thus being occupied), love of story-telling and soul
food cuisine were among the manifestations of a regional identity that would provide contrasts and
comparisons with other parts of our republic. Moreover, I had a keen awareness of the importance of
intellectuals as manipulators of myths and symbols in all societies. My two years in Paris, my three years
in Tokyo, and six months in Manila sensitized me to the social fact that an intelligentsia is an important
source of leadership. My fellow Americans historically have eschewed the word because it seems to
conflict with our egalitarian ethos. Are not eggheads elitist snobs?
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One early assumption in our study was that Japanese guests, all socialized to respect intellectuals as
an occupational group, would find Americans sometimes “anti-intellectual.” Nothing that I can
remember from the interviews makes that explicit. (In the half-century since, I wonder what a new
generation of Japanese guests and expatriates would make of the “dumbing down” process that I find so
unsettling about my country today. Social criticism by intellectuals is often deemed unpatriotic in the
current climate. Little attempt is made to cater to literary opinion-leaders because they are perceived as
irrelevant).
That bastion of “the life of the mind,” Harvard, from which Overton graduated, was my first stop.
Prof. Edwin O. Reischauer, whom I had met in Tokyo and Kyoto, was keenly interested in the Japan
Society’s mission to nurture the intellectual guests. “I will introduce you to the most mentally healthy and
adjusted Japanese you may find,” the Sensei told me. At the Faculty Club, I met Minoru Makihara, a.k.a.,
“Ben,” who then was the president of Adams House, perhaps the first foreigner ever so honored, and in a
house proud that Franklin Roosevelt once studied there. Ben, speaking flawless English, answered my
questions about his senior thesis in economics. Inspired by Max Weber’s Protestantism and the Spirit of
Capitalism and Richard Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Makihara was exploring Bushido
as the possible Japanese equivalent of the Protestant ethic in Japan.
(In November, 2004, I recalled that Harvard luncheon with Makihara when he took my wife and me
to his favorite sushi bar off the Ginza. As the retired head of the Mitsubishi empire, he collected us at the
Tokyo International House in his chauffered car. J.D.R.III was a “spiritual host” to our reunion, for it was
he who indirectly caused us first to meet, and to be reunited at an institution he helped to establish. Prof.
Herbert Passin, who served as Mr. Rockefeller’s interpreter in Tokyo when the House was to be
inaugurated, told me that Mr. R. hoped that traditional Japanese rituals would be observed in the
ceremony, e.g., the use of gohei, Shinto paper talismans. Makihara serves on the committee to help
oversee the future of the International House and its historic Iwasaki garden, both of which enjoyed
Rockefeller’s patronage).
I have not examined my interview notes from the fieldwork for more than 50 years, but I recall
visits to the University of Chicago, Brigham Young University and other centers of learning where I
could find both Japanese and their foreign student advisors. The Rev. Joe Kitagawa, an Episcopal priest
and advisor at Chicago, was particularly helpful.
Just for the record and beyond the scope of the study, I am happy that the Japan Society provided
me with an unusual opportunity to teach a course on Japanese society at Fordham University in the Bronx.
The Jesuits’ Institute of Missiology, founded by the late Father Ewing, chair of anthropology, wanted area
specialists to provide future missionaries with insights into several countries to which the Roman church
was sending carriers of the gospels. John Murra, Vassar anthropologist who had fought against Franco in
the Spanish civil war, was asked to provide guidelines to Andean culture. Though I was not a proper
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japanologist, I was familiar with a number of works on Japanese culture, especially Ruth Benedict’s The
Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which had been instrumental in my entry into anthropology and the study
of national character. Murra and I commuted daily to Fordham on the old Third Avenue “L” train from
Manhattan.
A highlight of the summer of 1954 was a visit with my class of nuns and priests to the Japanese
house in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art, a perfect place to exhibit influences of Japanese
aesthetics on American architecture and gardens. JDRIII had been instrumental in bringing over the house
and having it assembled. Japanese carpenters had been flown over to do the construction. Rockefeller,
always respectful of tradition, wanted me to find some Shinto priests who could perform appropriate
ceremonies at the laying of the central beam of the house. After much searching, where but in New
Jersey did I find the liturgists? They were among the Japanese farmers brought to work in New Jersey
gardens (producing veggies for frozen TV dinners) from a Japanese colony in South America.
In MOMA’s garden, I found three nuns waiting for me in front of a monumental sculpture by
Lipschitz. As I approached, one said, “Shh, stay silent for a moment…We are playing Lipschitz.” They
sat as in a frozen tableau vivant, until they giggled and said they were now ready to go inside. Removing
our shoes before walking on the tatami, I was surprised to see Alger Hiss taking off his on a neighboring
bench. The alleged spy for the Soviets had just been released from prison, and was celebrating his liberty
to a vicarious trip to Japan.
The Japan Society was interested in cultural encounters between Japanese and Americans outside
the world of the intellectuals and corporate executives working on trade relationships. To further that aim,
I escorted three of the Japanese carpenters who built the MOMA house to admire Lever House, the
shimmering glass skyscraper on Park Avenue facing Philip Johnson’s Seagram’s building. Through an
interpreter, I explained that Japanese influences were manifest in the Lever building. The organic
blending of inside and outside—viewing a garden through vast transparent glass frames—inspired some
American architects in the ‘50’s to build upon earlier works by Frank Lloyd Wright and California’s
Maybeck. Such influences were being documented by Clay Lancaster, the architectural historian, and
Wright’s disciple, Bruce Goff. The carpenters were less interested in arcane details of syncretism and
more delighted by what the building evoked in their minds. What did they see? “We think if a dancing
lantern hanging from a bamboo pole in a bon-odori,” was their collective response. I have twice
mentioned their poetic reaction in my letters to The New York Times in the wake of anniversaries of the
buoyant Lever House.
On that same memorable summer, Frank Gibney, author of Five Gentleman of Japan, then at the
start of his celebrated career with Time and later Encyclopedia Britannica, came out to Fordham, his alma
mater, to be a guest lecture to my class. He also enriched other Americans by his knowledge of Japanese
culture when I invited him to the Japan Society offices at the Savoy Plaza. He engaged in a dialogue with
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a Shinto priest who was using bamboo sticks to foresee the future. Frank wrote about it in a Time story,
Enter the Eki-sha. His son was later to produce the TV documentary series, The Pacific Rim.
On a personal basis, my time at the Japan Society changed my life in other ways for the next half
century. I used the posh office as a setting, after hours, to propose marriage to Virginia Leigh Harris, in
1955. We had met in Paris in 1952. Douglas Overton served as best-man at our wedding at the Church
of the Resurrection on East 74th St. He and I both were surprised and delighted to learn that her ancestor,
Washington Gwathmey, was a U.S. naval officer on one of Commodore Perry’s black ships, The
Macedonian. It seemed fitting and proper, therefore, that I took her to Japan for her first visit in 2004,
with a pilgrimage to Shimoda to see where “Uncle Wash” had landed. Donald Keene introduced us to a
celebrated local potter, Tsuchiya, who arranged for us to have tea with the Zen priest in charge of the
temple used by Townsend Harris as his consulate. My wife was treated as something of a living treasure
because of her DNA shared with one of Perry’s officers.
The Japan Society’s architecturally splendid present headquarters was the setting for a memorial
service for Faubion Bowers. I was among the speakers, providing glimpses into Faubion’s childhood in
Tulsa and his early interest in the Asian sources of Scriabin’s music. We had met in Tokyo in 1946 as he
was leaving the service of General MacArthur for whom he had served as aide de camp and interpreter
with the Emperor. This was coming full circle, for Faubion and his then wife, Santha Rama Rau, were
among the guests at a Sunday party I gave in the old Savoy Plaza digs for Americans with Japanese
influences. (The guests included David Riesman, the sociologist and author of The Lonely Crowd who
was interested in how Japanese might fit into his schema of people who are inner-directed or outerdirected; David Sills, co-author of The Japanese Village in Transition, later editor of The International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; Ralph Kirkpatrick, harpsichordist, and friend of Eta Harich
Schneider, specialist on gagaku, and author of The History of Japanese Music; and Eleanor Munro, art
historian and critic whose sinologist brother, Donald, was the Harvard room-mate of Makihara. Could
such connections constitute an American version of Gibney’s identifying Japan as a web society?)
In all these subsequent encounters with Japan, the Japanese, and japanized Americans, I continue
to exploit the 1954 experience of trying to put myself in Japanese “shoes” when they were confronted
with American culture, still exotic and baffling. That process of mutual understanding had already begun
in 1941 when, as a university freshman, I was writing a term paper, “Facts and Fallacies about Japan,”
Pearl Harbor struck just as I was finishing it. I learned about the Japanese quest for raw materials as a
prelude to The Co-Prosperity Sphere and warfare. My mother brought the paper to me in Tokyo in 1947
when she and my four youngest brothers arrived as my dependents after the death of my father. (She
became a serious student of ikebana). Now, generations later, Japan and the U.S. are intertwined allies
still trying to work out our special forms of reciprocity and gift-exchange to our mutual advantage.
Rashomon continues to serve as a metaphor for the ambiguity that is vital to such exchanges.