Foreign Language Instruction in Japan
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Perpetual Motion Machine

Perhaps with the exception of the universe itself there are no perpetual motion machines; nevertheless, Japan has created a system of English language instruction that closely resembles one. Let us start at the bottom of this machine and work our way up.

All Japanese children are required to study the English language when they enter middle school. From this point, until they reach the end of their high school careers, they are required to study English several hours a week in school and, depending on the student, several additional hours out of school. With the exception of English language teaching assistants, who are hired by the Japanese government to offer students direct exposure to native speakers, most of these students' English language instruction is obtained from native Japanese language instructors, who have only rarely lived in a country where English is the dominant spoken language.²⁵ Students who graduate from these schools and go on to college to become English language teachers are not required to live abroad before they obtain their certification. Moreover, like most middle and high school instructors, many English language college and university instructors are also lacking in significant overseas experience. Thus, with university certification in hand those, who started in middle school many years before, return to the classroom as teachers with little or no exposure outside of Japan. The hermetic path is therewith complete, and the cycle begins again.

Having obtained an overview of Japan's perpetual motion machine let us now examine its mechanism in detail.

Racial Purity and Rite of Passage

The goal of the Japanese Ministry of Education can hardly be that of a bilingual nation; for if it were, English would be introduced to Japanese children at the earliest possible age. Neither can its goal be the creation of world citizens.

Indeed, it is not until after 12 long years of learning what it means to be Japanese, that most Japanese children begin their first, direct, formal exposure to the outside world. This exposure usually comes to them, if it comes at all, in the form of a young foreign college graduate interested in overseas adventure, Japanese language and culture, and/or the acquisition of grade school teaching experience. These youthful, largely inexperienced, overseas teaching assistants are invited to Japan by the Japanese government to help native Japanese speaking English teachers in the performance of their teaching duties. Because of their age, their lack of experience, and the newness of their host society, these teaching assistants are easily molded and tractable. Moreover, the knowledge they provide to still younger Japanese middle and high schoolers is carefully monitored and controlled by older, more experienced, Japanese host instructors. Accordingly the impression of Japan that these young assistants obtain is also easily shaped and packaged.  Ideally the assistants perform as talking puppets for their Japanese hosts and Japanese school children and return home with pockets full of well-rehearsed popular propaganda.

By stalling the study of the English language as long as possible Japanese teachers have ample opportunity to instill in Japanese children a sense of racial and national purity that reinforces the popular Japanese notion of group homogeneity and national identity à part. Moreover, introducing English at puberty enhances the division between what is Japanese and what is not by taking advantage of the psychology of change that accompanies the biological metamorphis of children into young adults. This is especially true of young boys, whose voice customarily changes during this crucial period of their lives, and of young girls who begin shedding blood for the first time.

Japan's second coming

Drawing a historical parallel between the puberty of a Japanese child, his or her introduction to the English language, the second arrival of Commodore Perry's kurofune (black ships) in 1854, the two atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, and the arrival of General MacArthur is not entirely absurd.²⁶ This is part of the magic of nihonjin-ron. It is Japan's second coming.

This notion was best captured for me in a ground floor mural leading to a staircase in the entry hall of Yokohama's Naka-ku Yakusho (Naka Ward Office) in the mid-1990s.²⁷ Depicted as one in the mural were a hatching egg and an atomic bomb blast. In short, a new world created from a single act of mass destruction. This same idea has been repeated elsewhere in other artistic genre including Japanese manga (comic books) and animé (animated cartoons). Perhaps the most celebrated of these in East Asia is Drift Classroom by Umezu Kazuo.²⁸

Puberty and entry into middle school (chûgakkô) can be rather abrupt occurrences for many a school child. After six long years of primary education (shôgakkô) during which one learns to read, write, and speak entirely in Japanese, the introduction of English language studies forms an important part of this important and sometimes difficult transition.

Commodore Perry's arrival in Uraga in 1853 and his return in 1854 were also sudden occurrences that ushered in a new age. After more than 200 years of enforced isolation the Japanese people were confronted by high-tech Europeans and North Americans demanding that Japan open its doors to trade with the West. Japan was faced with the choice of modernizing itself or being overwhelmed by those who were offering it the keys to modernization. Are not Japanese school children left with a similar choice when they enter middle school: either learn English and move ahead, or do not and fall behind?

Of course, moving ahead only to fall flat on one's face, as did Japan's empire during World War II, is hardly an inspiring scenario for young school children and their parents. Thus, in order to create a more positive image, it was and remains convenient to reincarnate Commodore Perry as General MacArthur in the popular mind and equate the Meiji Restoration with Japan's postwar reconstruction. In this manner what happened between the the arrivals of Perry and MacArthur can more easily be forgotten, and Japanese history simply skips from the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo to the reconstruction cum restoration of the Japanese emperor in Japan's post-war cum post-Edo capital. In order for this to work a cause for historical amnesia is required -- namely, the sudden shock of two atomic bomb blasts over Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

It is no secret that the Meiji Restoration was an attempt on the part of Japan's leaders to reconsitute Japan, as a more formidable adversary and thereby contradict the presence of its unwanted European and North American guests. The building of the Japanese empire appears to have been a somewhat reckless afterthought. The original intent was to embrace modernization well-enough, so as to keep the foreign presence at bay, and thus preserve the integrity of Japan free of a direct foreign presence. When Japan's empire fell, Japanese historians were quick to point out that Japan had wandered from its originally intended path, and must now start over.

Accordingly, the role of the English language during postwar reconstruction appears to have been little different from what it was during the Meiji Restoration: a tool of technological acquisition and a means of dealing with an unwanted foreign presence. Its additional role today is the sale of exports to raise money for the purchase of energy and raw materials necessary to keep the world's second largest economy alive.

Many Japanese view the building of Japan's empire as a mistake. So, when it comes to Japanese overseas expansion today, many Japanese view it with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they recognize the necessity of expansion and are enamored by Japan's economic success. On the other hand, they are hesitant to repeat an old mistake and seek refuge in the wisdom of the Tokugawa shogunate and Meiji ishin reformers. As a result, language education in Japan remains bifurcated: a solid base of Japanese language and culture for twelve years followed by the introduction of English in middle school as a weak second language thereafter. Consequently few Japanese ever master the language well enough to hold a reasonable conversation.

The introduction of English in middle school marks the beginning of a new era for Japanese school children. What they leave behind is a relatively uncontaminated world free of foreign influence. What they enter is a world of suspicion, fear, envy, arrogance, and desire in which they covet technology, power, and wealth and greet strangers -- both foreign and domestic -- with a mixture of respect and aprehension behind a veil of politeness unparalled in the industrially advanced world. It is at this time that Japanese youth finally shed the well-worn English salutation "bye-bye" (bai-bai) taught to them by their parents since they were toddlers, and adopt other, less puerile, Japanese phrases, such as mata-ne, ja-ne, and ja-mata. Whereas bai-bai is learned in trains and other public places where children are likely to be confronted by foreigners, the latter phrases are more likely learned from older middle schoolers --  senpai. Generally speaking, boys shed the prepubescent saluation bai-bai before girls. Is it that boys catch on to the commercial aspects of the expression more readily?²⁹

Group maintenance

Although it is unnecessary to live overseas to learn a foreign language, it is important that one live in an environment in which the language you are seeking to learn is spoken regularly. By way of example, probably the best place to learn English in Japan is in a town or city located near a US military base, for it is there that one's chances of meeting native English speakers on a regular basis are fairly high. Unless you are a motivated learner; however, you may not always find someone to speak with free of charge. This is because few people find it very interesting to speak with others, who do not speak their own language well. Avoidance in this regard is unlikely a special feature of native English speakers, Students of second languages the world over are encouraged to live in the country whose language they wish to learn, because their chance of finding someone with whom to speak increases many times when they live in a place in which everyone speaks the target language. Moreover, what you learn is constantly reinforced by what you hear around you.

With this in mind, one may be shocked to learn that the Japanese government invests substantial sums of money to bring young foreign graduates to Japan in order to teach Japanese school children English, but spends either little or nothing to send future Japanese language teachers overseas. Although surely some private school English language departments require that language students study overseas in order to graduate, to the best of my knowledge overseas training is not a requirement to become a certified, public language teacher in Japan.

In 2001 there were just over 8 million middle school (chûgakkô) and high school (kôtôgakkô) students. During this same year the Japanese government sponsored 2,477 English language teaching assistants, govenment coordinators, and athletic assistants through its JET program.³⁰ This means that in 2001 there was approximately one publicly employed, native-speaking English language teacher for every 3000 secondary students enrolled in a Japanese public middle or high school. With a student teacher ratio like that is there any wonder that so few Japanese ever learn to speak anything but katakana English?³¹

By not requiring language instructors to train abroad the Japanese government reduces their exposure to non-traditional Japanese values. Thus, when they enter into schools as certified instructors for the first time, these instructors are compliant and easily molded into the same system that denies them the active language skills their own students might someday require to become communicative in English. With nearly the entire focus of Japanese public English language education on the passing of school entrance examinations, each new generation of students and teachers simply acquire and pass along what previous generations have acquired and passed along before them. As a result, not only is the English spoken by Japanese difficult for foreigners to understand, but what is spoken is often severly dated.

So long as students are denied training in active language skills, and everything they read is interpreted for them by instructors, who have never lived outside of Japan except for brief vacations in the protected English language environments of international hotels and tourist buses, cross-cultural etiquette and self-expression in the target language is also rarely acquired. Teachers could just as well be teaching mathematics or world history, as the language and culture they teach are taught in Japanese and the cultural interpretations they provide are severely bounded by their own Japanese perception of the world.

In order to justify this system students are told that English is a language spoken the world over, and that Japanese is too difficult a language for most foreigners to learn. They are also told that Japanese are a polite people, and that in order to be good hosts they must speak English with foreigners. Furthermore, they are told that their own language and culture are more unique than those of other cultures, and by-and-large incomprehensible to most non-Japanese. Thus, many Japanese students leave school thinking, if they have not mastered English they are not international and cannot communicate with foreigners. When the day finally arrives that they meet a foreigner directly, many Japanese are confused and helpless. On the one hand, they feel a need to perform the duties of a good host, but do not know how; on the other hand, they feel a need to practice what they have learned, but are unable. So, they freeze or retreat unable to engage their foreign guests. For this they are often said to be shy.

Those students who actually do master enough English to at least read the labels on their clothing and offer foreigners directions, leave school with an exaggerated air of international importance and language competence and seek English conversation with every foreigner they meet -- no matter where he is from, be it France, Russia, Argentina, or La Mozambique. These Japanese are anything but shy and more often than not obnoxious. Sadly, when they are addressed by foreigners in Japanese, they reply only in English, and thus deny foreigners the opportunity to learn Japanese. And so once again, the line is clearly drawn between Japanese and the outside world and the one tool that Japanese believe will help them overcome their national barrier best, simply raises the barrier even higher by creating an artificial competition between foreigners wanting to learn Japanese and Japanese wanting to practice English!

Proverbial guest syndrome

The JET program, the crown jewel of the Ministry of Education's "internationalization" strategy, is the epitome of Japan's desire to have it both ways: ­ internationalize while maintaining a clear separation between things Japanese and things not. Several important ends in this regard are served with one tactical maneuver. The JET program satisfies binational reciprocity agreements, exposes Japanese children to a foreign presence, provides Japanese educational staff with English language practice, reinforces Japan's proverbial guest syndrome, and offers foreigners an opportunity to observe Japan's educational system from within.

Let us now consider each of these ends in turn.

RECIPROCITY

Although designed to bring foreigners to Japan, the JET program ultimately paves the way for Japanese to go abroad. In this context the benefits received by those who participate in the JET program are relatively unimportant.

Obviously international exchange is important; nevertheless, one must consider the nature of the exchange. Brief visits can be just as blinding, as they are enlightening; and long visits can be just as damaging, as they are constructive. In the Japanese context some things to consider are the duration of overseas stay, the number of participants, the nature of the program, and what becomes of those who engage in the exchanges.

People who readily compare Japan's JET program with similar programs in other countries, but do not take into account the culture-specific features of Japanese society are likely to err. The same psycho-sociological barrier that holds foreigners at arms-length within Japanese society is carried in the minds of Japanese when they leave Japan to go abroad. In effect, most Japanese are not as out-going as their USAmerican, Australian, and British counterparts, and most are unable to interact overseas with the same spirit of adventure as might an Australian in France, or a German in England. Those who are outgoing often belong to the obnoxious stereotype described earlier.

With the exception of those Japanese who attend an overseas school long enough to graduate and/or find work, few Japanese remain overseas long enough even to get their feet wet. The first three to six months of any overseas visit are almost always filled with wonder and amazement. The next six months to a year and a half are a hard encounter with reality. It is not until after the first one or two years of living in a host country that one becomes comfortable enough in one's host language to begin making friends. It takes even longer before one develops the behavior and attitudes required to feel at home.  Japanese returnees are simply not as pliant as their more domestic counterparts and are often confronted with rejection by their own peers upon their return.

SUPERFICIAL EXPOSURE

The exposure to foreign society that Japanese receive from JET language assistants and other JET hires is of course far less intimidating. The supervisors of these language assistants know well what transpires between them and their students, and as a result can easily intercede when they fear that their assistant is overexposing their students to foreign culture. Of course, this is unlikely ever to happen, because the contact between the foreign assistant and the teacher's students is rarely more than one hour per week. One assistant at the same school is commonly spread over many grades and class sections. Thus, it is difficult to imagine an assistant developing anything resembling a close relationship between him and his students. Soon after his arrival the assistant becomes known among the student body and teaching staff as the school's English speaking gaijin (foreigner) ­ -- a target prototype for their eventual encounters in Japanese society with other native speakers.

Moreover, depending on these assistants' countries of origin and personal determination, unless they have already spent several years at college studying Japanese, they are unlikely to acquire enough spoken Japanese to hold a conversation, let alone exchange everyday aisatsu (Japanese greetings). In effect, they are at the mercy of their English speaking host caretakers and a few especially talented students eager to speak English. This artificially created natural tendency reinforces further the student's notion that Japanese is too difficult a language for foreigners to learn, and that all Japanese student's must learn English so as to become international citizens.

FACULTY LANGUAGE PRACTICE

Even if these assistants have studied Japanese for several years before coming to Japan, it is unlikely that they are able to speak Japanese intelligibly enough to be understood when they first arrive. Moreover, Japanese instructors who rarely find time to go overseas, but who are desirous of learning English so as to raise their "international" prestige among their colleagues and circle of friends are very well-positioned to pump these fresh graduates for English language practice. This is not to say that all instructors will be so inclined, but it is difficult to imagine many who are not. As a result, the only real opportunity for many assistants to learn Japanese is in Japanese society-at-large where they are likely subject to pressures similar to those encountered at the schools where they work. Simply, outside of school these assistants will have greater freedom to seek out their own contacts, and might just sometimes find those Japanese who are not embarrassed by their inability to speak English, but still have an interest in learning about their own and foreign culture in their own language from beginning students of Japanese. Thus, many JET program assistants probably leave Japan never to return, or abandon all effort to learn Japanese, A few others actually succeed, learn Japanese, and provide a solid link between Japan and the outside world.

THE PROVERBIAL GUEST

Without learning one's host country's language one is often viewed as an outsider by one's host country citizens. JET assistants reinforce this notion among Japanese teachers and students, as well as Japanese society at large. This is because JET assistants come and go with the change of every school year, occupy their place of residence for a short period of time, and are regularly replaced by someone else, whose non-Japanese appearance is very similar to their own.  It takes a long time to become friends with your neighbors in Japan and judgement of who you are is often very superficial. Because the contact is both short-lived and superficial, all assistants are treated pretty much the same. Indeed, from the students and teachers point of view JET assistants are like living language puppets, who perform before students at the behest of their regular teachers and school administrators. When the act has become worn and getting to know these assistants becomes imperative, they are simply bade farewell and replaced.

Japanese have convinced themselves that being international and cultural assimilation are separate issues, and that the latter of the two is mostly undesireable and difficult. The JET program is a perfect fix, because it produces exactly that outcome which most Japanese expect -- a temporary, small, easy to control, ever-changing foreign presence.

Unfortunately, lured by paid adventure in a wealthy, modern East Asian country with a fascinating history and a controversial reputation, there will never be a dearth of JET participants. One has only to be adventurous, a native speaker, and a college graduate and already one is a potential candidate. Moreover, with such a large pool of candidates to draw from, the administrators of Japan's middle and high schools will rarely ever feel the need to hire permanent foreign staff, nor will they feel compelled to place upward pressure on Japanese universities and the Ministry of Education to force Japanese teachers-in-training to spend time overseas.

TEACHING "GAIJIN" PROPERLY ABOUT JAPAN

JET teaching assistants represent a portion of a much larger class of foreign residents in Japan known by Japan's immigration office as jinbun-chishiki-sha (culture and language experts), who are brought to Japan on a temporary basis to provide Japanese with exposure to foreign language and culture. Although some of these experts take advantage of their Japanese sojourn to acquire Japanese language and culture, many do not. For many of these young teachers Japan is their first and, with the exception of foreign travel as they grow older, often their last overseas experience.

Because of their age, lack of overseas experience, and relative inability to communicate in Japanese, they are at the mercy of their host institutions, and more importantly those Japanese within these institutions whose job it is to insure a steady, satisfying turnover of new assistants. In the end, the image of Japan that is portrayed and received is largely the product of numerous conversations between a select group of seasoned institutional "gaijin handlers", who are themselves often a product of the same perpetual motion machine described in this section and foreign neophytes with no previous overseas experience.

When they have completed their contracts these hapless, language puppets return home carrying with them the distorted image that necessarily results from these discussions. As a result, the problem of cross-cultural misperception is exacerbated on both sides of the oceans that divide them.

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²⁵  The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme invites young college and university graduates from overseas to participate in international exchange and foreign language education throughout Japan. [online document] (text)

²⁶ Although Commodore Perry is frequently given credit for bringing an end to Japan's more than two hundred year policy of relative isolation (sakoku - 鎖国); opening Japan more completely to trade with the West was achieved in several arduous steps, numerous solicitations from both the Dutch and US governments, and two separate treaties between the Japanese and US governments. The US signatory to the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (nichi-bei shûko tsûshô jôyaku 日米修好通商条約) that finally resulted in commercial activity between the US and Japan was signed in Edo (江戸) in 1858 by Townsend Harris, a US envoy stationed in Shimoda (下田), who had been sent to Japan in 1856. This same or similar treaty was then expanded to include England, France, Russia, and the Netherlands in 1859 and eventually became known as the Five-Nation Accord (ansei no go ka koku jôyaku - 安政の五カ国条約). Although more commonly known by Japanese as the Unequal Accord (fuheitô jôyaku - 不平等条約), because of its unfavorable tariff requirements, it did not enter into full force until 1868 when the port of Nigata (新潟) was finally opened. Most of the trade that followed took place between England and Japan -- not the United States.

Commodore Perry's celebrated journeys took place in 1853 and 1854, when he twice entered Uraga (浦賀) and demanded safe passage for US sailors on their way to China and refuge for US whalers shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. On his first journey he brought four warships and on his second journey seven. No conflict took place. The 1854 treaty that resulted is popularly known as the Kanagawa Treaty (kanagawa jôyaku 神奈川条約), because it was signed in Kanagawa -- not Edo, the seat of the Japanese shogunate. This treaty of accommodation, more formally known as the nichibei washin jô yaku (日米和親条約), was a compromise, as it met only the security -- not commercial concerns -- of the US government.

With the exception of the Five-Nation Accord, the two treaties mentioned above were signed under two different US presidents. To the best of my knowledge Commodore Perry never made it to Edo, and the entire process of opening Japan truly began in 1842, when Japan unilaterally decided to revoke its longstanding policy of refusing help to shipwrecked sailors. Apparently, the Japanese government was frightened by reports from Dutch and Chinese traders, who brought word of England's forceful and devastating entry into China during the Opium War (アヘン戦争, 1840-1842). Thus, the entire procedure took 26 years and was a combined -- sometimes joint, more often separate -- effort on the part of several Western governments to get Japan to open its doors to Western trade and influence. Once the doors were opened, there was an avalanche of new information and change initiated by the Japanese government to modernise Japan and thus avoid major occupation and conflict with the West. Unfortunately this was not the outcome, as history later proved.

Source: 石井進、笠原一男、児玉幸多、笹山晴生。１９９４年。詳説日本史。第６章：幕藩体制の確率。２幕府体制の成立、「鎖国政策」及び「長崎貿易」頁 １７６−１７９。第９章：近代国家の成立。「開国」及び「開港とその影響」頁２２６−２３１。東京：山川出版者。Ishii Susume, et al. 1994. A detailed history of Japan. Chapter 6 The Baku-Han Political System.  Section 2. Establishment. pp. 176 - 179. Chapter 9 Birth of a modern nation. pp. 226 - 231. Tôkyô: Yamagawa Publishers. (text)

²⁷ Like many large Japanese cities, the city of Yokohama (横浜市) is divided into several political and geographical districts called ku (区) or wards. Naka-ku (中区) is Yokohama central ward and is located along Yokohama's waterfront.  The nakaku yakusho (中区役所) is the name of the ward's central office. It was here that I received my first gaikokujin tôroku shômeisho (外国人登録証明書) with the my registered Japaense alias Hashimori Iwato (new window) (橋 守岩人 - new window) engraved on it. The gaikokujin tôroku shômesho is an identity card that all foreigners living in Japan must carry. Along the water front, not far from the central office, there is a musem dedicated to the arrival of Commodore Perry and his black ships (kurofune - 黒船). (text)

²⁸ Drift Classroom (漂流教室) by Umezu Kazuo (楳図かずお). The story begins with a devastating explosion that destroys everything but a school and its occupants. A limited stock of food and subsequent fight for survival leads to many episodes of death and carnage. Finally realizing that they are the only humans left on earth the surviving students make a solemn pledge of peace and begin the creation of a new world. Umezu Kazuo was 9 years old when the world's first, second, and only atomic blasts leveled Nagasaki (長崎) and Hiroshima (広島) in 1945. Drift Classroom received the 20th Shôgakkan Comics Award (shôgakkan manga shô - 小学館漫画賞) from the Foundation for the Advancement of Juvenile Education in Japan 財団法人日本 児童教育振興財団. (text)

²⁹ The term "bye-bye" (売買 baibai) in Japanese also means to buy and sell. (text)

³⁰ According to one of three websites found for Japan's JET program, the program "was started with the purpose of increasing mutual understanding between the people of Japan and the people of other nations. It aims to promote internationalisation in Japan's local communities by helping to improve foreign language education and developing international exchange at the community level. [website]. Other JET websites where additional information can be found about the program include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [website] and CLAIR, the program's apparent operational headquarters [website]. (text)

³¹ The term katakana English refers to the Japanese pronunciation of English words that results from the way in which the English language is transcribed into the Japanese syllabary for ease of pronunciation by nonspeakers. (text)