This is the speech I presented at my going away talk given to the Yawata city board of education, in Kyoto-fu. The event involved bringing a number of teachers and a few administrators over to the Kyoikukenkyusho to watch a JET recruitment film. We then discussed the program as it actually operated in Yawata. My speech was translated into Japanese in both written and spoken form. It went over surprisingly well, especially with the Japan Teacher's Union representatives, though all written copies were confiscated from the teachers as they left the auditorium. The speech:

Introduction

Let me begin this talk with an apology. When I was first informed of this event, I decided to use it to approach what I believe are problems with the AET program in Yawata. As a result I will concentrate on the negative aspects of my experience here in Japan. Rest assured that if I had wanted to speak of the many positive aspects of my stay I could talk for at least twice as long, but I am not sure that by doing so I would really be helping those who come after me or the students of Yawata. I want things to be better, and that means that potential problems must first be identified and brought out into the light. Before doing so let me thank the vast majority of teachers and the Japanese government for giving me this wonderful opportunity to study and learn to appreciate your culture. I have consistently enjoyed interacting with the students. I have not met a single student here in Yawata whom I did not find capable of a successful life and basically good-hearted. I wish to thank the many teachers from the kindergartens, elementary, and junior high schools who have been incredibly hospitable and kind. Funaki-sensei, Kihara-sensei, and a number of others have gone out of their way to help me on numerous occasions. Thank you very much and I apologize in advance for the negative tone of this talk.

Section I: Who We Are

Three Types of JETs

There are three basic types of individuals who apply for the JET program in America. Almost all of them hear about the program on university campuses from teachers or representatives of the program. Applicants are recruited from reputable schools and must pass both an examination of their academic credentials and an interview test.

The first type of Jet is the individual who already has an interest in Japan. They have studied Japanese art or philosophy in college. Zen Buddhism is well known in America, as are Japanese gardens, bonsai, calligraphy, and the martial arts, especially Aikido and Karate. Many young liberal Americans have a genuine intellectual curiosity about different cultures. We believe that in an interdependent world we must learn to appreciate different cultures and races so that we can work together to solve common environmental, economic, and social problems. Separate peoples acting together, must take advantage of the great gift of the relative peace following the end of the cold war to work together to diminish the brutality, racism, nationalism, violent conflict, and greed that have marked the history of the world from its inception.

The second type of Jet is the ambitious young businessperson who wants to be able to put on his resume a period of international experience. This will help him or her to find work with a large firm or to be more easily promoted within a firm they are already connected with. Despite Japan's recent recession it is still considered a good spot for someone interested in business to study and visit.

The third type of Jet is a someone who has a passion for teaching. Japan's educational system is often criticized but of course it still has a formidable reputation abroad. Many teachers would think it very profitable to study such an alternative to their own system. In the US, educational reform is a very pertinent topic often discussed. The opportunity to come and teach in Japan under the supervision of trained teachers is a welcome opportunity for potential teachers. They come to Japan and gain confidence in and develop public speaking and teaching skills and can take the time to decide if this is really the career that suits them.

Negative Stereotypes of JETs

While many Japanese teachers understand very well who the Jets are and why they come, it has become clear to me that others do not. They have certain negative stereotypes of Jets and foreigners that are usually inaccurate and make it more difficult for Jets to do either of their jobs, internationalization or teaching.

The first stereotype concerns the qualifications of the Jets and the state of affairs in their home country. Despite what we often see on TV, life in all of the developed countries of the world is pretty good. Compared to these nations own histories and to undeveloped nations the people have a greater say in their own affairs than ever before, and enjoy an economic and material plenty that is unprecedented. Never before have so few been faced with famine or unemployment. The problem is not one of too little food, but of too much. Education is available to and pursued by almost all, and the threat of violent death, robbery, or disease relatively small. The problem of developed nations is how to sustain such good fortune, and how to extend it to those within and without developed nations who are not benefiting fully, and how to solve the lingering problems that remain.

Nations often try to belittle each other out of competitive instinct or pride, or to distract their own populations from problems at home, but nowhere in the developed world is life terrible or incredibly difficult. And we should remember that things change very quickly. In the late 80s and early 90s the US economy was in recession and Japan's was doing well. The Japanese Prime Minister declared in 1991 that he felt sorry for America. Now the Japanese economy is troubled and America's is doing well. At no point in the last 20 years has it been so easy for a recent American university graduate to find work as now.

Yet some teachers believe that we Jets are pathetic individuals who come from impoverished and dangerous countries and have been forced to flee to Japan. They think that we should be very humble and grateful and should agree with them when they say rude things about our ethnic groups and home countries. Well usually Jets are bright well-educated young people who were not forced to come to Japan, but chose to do so because they thought it would be interesting and enjoyable. Incoming Jets had a number of options to chose from. Jets are grateful to have such a great opportunity, but the Japanese people are lucky to get energetic, intelligent, and enthusiastic young foreigners to add excitement and new ideas to their education system and communities. The Japanese people have an opportunity in the Jet program to create a network of friendly people from around the world who far from being failures will likely go on to positions of influence in education, business, and government. The teachers who view us as pathetic are wrong. The incorrect impression some teachers have about our qualifications or home countries causes them to lack confidence in our abilities or to view us as having nothing to contribute except a warning about how bad life is for someone not graced with the gift of Japanese blood and birth.

Another common misconception is that all foreigners who come to Japan are lazy, pleasure-obsessed playboys and girls. Teachers assume that we know the Jet program or juku jobs are not that difficult before we come. I did not know that. the Jet program is presented to applicants as a great challenge that they would be very lucky to be selected to attempt.

Life as a Stereotype

Before I came I was worried that I would be expected to teach classes alone just after arrival. It was only later that I learned that in many classes I would have to try to persuade teachers to let me do any more than play the occasional easy game, act as a human tape-recorder, and sit quietly at the back of the class. Some teachers really believe that we come to Japan knowing about these often silly jobs and do it just so we can go out every night and party, drink, and have sex with anyone we can get. Some Japanese people who believe the playboy stereotype do not dislike foreigners. They think that gaijin are kind of lazy and not serious, but essentially amusing and fun. Many believers of the playboy stereotype, however, hate gaijin and view them as dangerous and threatening. We are, they think, people who take advantage of the kindness of Japanese people, and the naivete of Japanese women.

In Yawata, several teachers told their homerooms that the Jets were dangerous and likely to attempt to molest, rape, or otherwise do harm to them. This obviously makes it hard for the Jet to establish friendly relationships with the students. Let me dispel this absurd view now.

Japan does not have that great of a reputation in America as a fun place to go to party. Americans, like many Japanese, would think first of Thailand or Spain or any number of places before thinking to come to Japan for fun. Japan's reputation is as a business center and as a place with some beautiful art and an interesting culture, not as a pleasure capital. Even many tourist agencies describe Japan as humid, crowded, and expensive. The fact that many Japanese people are worried about foreign playboys, says much more about your culture than ours. Japanese people are expected to work long hours, even if there is not always that much for them to do. Large numbers of Japanese people do not get to enjoy life or their prosperity very much. So some people are quite jealous of gaijin who have what seem to be very easy and fun jobs.

Sexual Mores

I think that many Japanese worry about the uncontrolled sexuality of gaijin because Japanese society tends to be less strict regarding male sexuality than do many other developed nations. Also Japanese people often view gaijin as simpler and less civilized than themselves. Therefore they expect gaijin to behave like, but worse than themselves. Enjo kosai ("paid dating") and child pornography, however, are not as serious problems in the US as they are in Japan. American high school students do not wear uniforms that become the fetish of middle-aged men. Prostitution and marital infidelity are still today regarded as wrong and somewhat shameful by most Americans.

Furthermore the Western value system is, as Ruth Benedict noted, not as centered on the community as is the Japanese. The old American view was that the eye of God was always upon you. Thus, assuming he has an effective conscience, the westerner is less likely to leave it at home with his community than is the Japanese. Even today, there is still a difference in sexual mores between the Japan and the US, and you Japanese are the people who are, depending on your point of view, more open and natural, or less disciplined and predatory.

I think the stereotype of the conscienceless playboy traveler better fits some Japanese salarimen than it does any Jet. Your students and children were always safe with me, and I think probably safer with most Jets than with a number of Japanese men.

Section II:
The Primary Problem facing Jets in Japan: Racism

The Concept of Race in Japan

Japan is one of the most difficult nations for international companies to keep long-term employees in. Most foreigners from developed countries do not want to stay for a long time in Japan. Yet, as Japanese people know, there are many nice things about life in Japan. There are beautiful temples, nice parks, low amounts of street crime, and in general a high standard of life. What is uniquely difficult about Japan?

It is your racism. Racism exists everywhere and explodes into violent confrontation in many parts of the world, but only a few of the developed nations of the world embrace a truly racist ideology as Japan does. In Japan even many educated people believe that they are unique by virtue not only of culture, but something "in the blood", and no gaijin can become entirely accepted on easy, equal, and friendly terms, because a gaijin, even if born and raised in Japan is not by blood Japanese. The gaijin is too often ever a gaijin and not just another person. Japan then is one of the few countries in which it is possible to be a professional foreigner.

Usually being from a distant land makes you a little interesting, but it is rare that foreign birth is considered so strange and alien that you can be paid just to exist and to be a kind of bridge by which one people can try to understand and communicate with other people who are, for them, deeply strange and inaccessible. The gulf of water which has separated the islands of Japan from the rest of the world has grown through history to become a kind of psychological gulf which prevents Japanese people, even on this hyper-connected postmodern globe, from seeing themselves not as uniquely unique, divided by a deep gulf from, but in fact essentially the same as many other people.

The Rise of Modern Racism

Japanese people have feared, ever since at least the Meiji era, the disappearance of their japaneseness in the face of the adoption of western technologies, cultures, and beliefs. The Japanese, however, have also wanted very much the power and comforts that western technology and culture bring. The Meiji and early modern Japanese not only wanted western power, but they feared what would happen if they did not have it. Thus they unhappily adopted western technologies and systems. To avoid the possibility of becoming a colony, and out of pride, Japan became a colonial power.

With its new western derived power Japan attacked the rest of the Asian world and separated itself from the sources of its original culture. Japan came to be in a position that was both anti-western and anti-Asian. It was anti-western in that it created an identity for itself that was based on a unique essence which was diametrically opposed to the perceived essence of the west. It also saw itself, accurately, as the only non-western nation to possess western power. This kind of thinking is perhaps best seen in Junichiro Tanizaki's "In praise of shadows". In that essay Tanizaki takes a generalized idea of the aesthetics and philosophy of the west and builds the idea of a Japan that exists not so much as an independent culture, but an anti-western one.

Japan is what the west is not. Japan is alienated from Asia because it was a westernized nation which used its adoption of western ideas and technologies to exploit its Asian neighbors, imitating the imperialism of European nations like England and Germany. Many Japanese intellectuals came to identify this Japanese essence as expressed in art and culture, but yet not of culture. They could not argue that Japaneseness was of culture because of the rapid modernization of Japanese society and culture in this period. The essence was moved to something in the blood, a spirit carried within the blood of the race. This essence was an unchanging part of Japan separate from history or culture. In this way Japan came to inherit a situation in which its most important feature was not philosophy, culture, art, food, language, etc, but race alone. And this was a race that saw itself in conflict with both the East and West.

It was this ideology which Japan carried into its fascist period and WWII. After WWII the United States failed to take strong measure to break this ideology or to remove from power those who held it. The US feared that without a stable and firmly controlled Japan that communism might be able to gain a real foothold in Japan as it had in China. What occurred became known in Japan as Gyaku Kosu, or reverse course. The great zaibatsu cartels, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and others, were not broken apart to make room for labor unions and smaller enterprises but instead were given capital for investment by the US. The purge of ultra-right elements in government, business, and the military ceased. Members of ultra-nationalist organizations and the yakuza were recruited to investigate communist activities and act as spies.

In 1960 Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke called on the fascist criminal Kodama Yoshio to organize a paramilitary force of thugs to supplement the police during President Eisenhower's visit to Japan. Kishi himself had been classified as a grade A war criminal and spent 1945-1948 in prison.

Japanese Racism Today

In Japan, despite an active opposition and movement toward real democracy, an alliance of essentially racist and somewhat fascist individuals in control of business, the bureaucracy, the Liberal Democratic Party and the yakuza came to have supreme power in Japanese society. Those in control believed or thought it useful for ordinary people to believe in the idea of Japan's racial essence, and transmitted this belief to most Japanese through the educational system and the media.

This alliance switched over time from violent conquest to peaceful economic development, but they asked much of the Japanese people. The belief in uniqueness was used to drive the people to work ever harder, to regain pride, to simultaneously imitate the west while feeling separate from it, to lead Asia while being above other Asians. Even today with the LDP under challenge and the hegemony of the bureaucratic-business elite being threatened because of numerous examples of corruption and mismanagement, most Japanese people still maintain a racist conception of Japan.

It is impossible for many Japanese people to conceive of Japan in terms other than of race and to fail to see racial identity as a positive and not a negative force. Even nice Japanese often believe this way and over time gaijin come to understand this. Gaijin will almost never be just another person. They cannot transcend their foreignness. And not all Japanese are nice. Everyone experiences negative emotions -- hate, anger, jealousy, contempt. When you have such a strong racial identity as Japan does the gaijin becomes a good target for your negative emotions. I have been spat at, a victim of a hit and run, been driven off the road by a fascist truck, had people start arguments with me, and been insulted and made to feel bad about my non-japaneseness on many occasions.

Many nice Japanese people know they are polite people and see only the comfortable apartments and salaries that many Jets have and do not understand why Jets are sometimes unhappy or grumpy. They are unhappy because they are often in token jobs in a society in which being a hard working Japanese is the most important thing in life. That is why.

Section III: Specific problems and solutions/Jet program in Yawata

Limited Duties

The primary problem Jets face in Yawata is a lack of work. Many teachers have negative stereotypes of foreigners, and are unhappy or confused as to how to utilize gaijin who come to their school. They may fear for the children or become angry when the Jet, a gaijin, is popular because of his strangeness and role as entertainer, while the Japanese teacher is less exciting because of his Japaneseness and role as a disciplinarian.

In addition many Junior High school teachers are very busy. The English curriculum does not have that much room for experimental classes or teaching which will not directly prepare the students for English entrance exams -- despite the fact that entrance exam English is of little actual use. The language barrier is real, at least for the first year of a Jets visit. In Yawata many teachers do not realize that the Jets first role is cultural exchange, and do not want the Jet to engage in extracurricular activities with the students. There is the mistaken belief that the Jet must be used in the same way at every school, instead of differently as the situation dictates. Thus one teacher who thought it would be useful to use the Jet in a Japanese class, and another in a social studies class were told that this was prohibited.

Also it is important to note that in Yawata the Jet is spread throughout 4 schools, and thus comes to each school on average only once a month. This makes it hard for the Jet to have the opportunity to really teach. I do not see the same class every week and so cannot build their knowledge or understanding little by little. The Jet becomes a kind of entertainer, or spends much time left to sit alone in the teacher's lounge while most other people are busy.

In Japanese companies when an older executive is being forced out it is common to give them a job which has little work, and to force them to do it in front of many busy workers. Usually the executive quits from shame. Japanese teachers who do not realize that this situation is their fault and not the Jets' sometimes make stupid remarks about how lazy the Jet is, or how he is a "salary-stealer", just an entertainer, etc. Generally speaking, as a Jet you can often feel pretty useless, and it is often true that we do not have the opportunity to contribute much. In time the Jet begins to feel unhappy with his work, may experience difficult situations outside of work, and comes to be noticeably less genki, unhappy, etc. When the Jet becomes unhappy or ungenki or angry, the Japanese teachers become upset as well. Then the unhappy behavior of the Jet encourages the racist beliefs and fears of the teachers . In this situation the Jet program is a failure, with the Jet not building better international relations or improving the students English skills.

Quality versus Quantity

Many Japanese teachers have told me that the way to improve the Jet program is to move the Jet to a single school. With the Jet attending a single school or perhaps two schools every week it becomes easier for teachers to incorporate the Jet into the school. The Jet gets to know the students and teachers well and can be given weekly duties such as clubs, cleaning, etc. In time the teachers may come to see the Jet not as someone who is a burden imposed by Mombusho, but someone who can make things easier for them, or add interest to their school and classroom.

I agree that a closer relationship between the Jet and the school is needed. Teachers must learn to use the Jet and give him or her something to do. The Jet should be free to be used in any class, not just English. If you want to improve your students' English, but do not have time in the classroom, consider having extra classes in which the Jet is the primary teacher, free to create a lesson plan, and to try to approach the textbook material in a different way. Perhaps especially bad students should be required to study with the Jet after school. Or perhaps especially good students should be given an opportunity to receive special eikaiwa classes -- the Jet acting as a free juku. The problem now is that teachers are busy and are not interested in doing much with the Jet.

Extracurricular activities

Another solution is to allow the Jet to spend more time studying Japanese language and culture. Why should the Jet sit in the staff room doing nothing when he or she could be in Japanese class, visiting Japanese temples, or learning a traditional Japanese hobby like shogi, calligraphy, etc? Jets came to Japan to study and appreciate Japanese culture, not to sit doing nothing all day and then drink themselves to sleep at night. With study time even if the Japanese teachers are too busy to do much with the Jet, the Jet will learn about Japan, be happy, and bring this happiness to the school when he or she does come.

Also, perhaps, if the Jet came to the school less often there would be more for the Jet to do on those days. Some teachers get very angry when I mention this solution. They get very jealous, and say that it is not a job, but a paid vacation. What many Jets have now is not a job, but an unpleasant vacation. When we sit in the staff room doing little it is still quite tiring and frustrating.

Housework and Inferior Races

During the first four months I was in Japan I was commuting into Kyoto three nights a week to take Japanese classes, and taking karate classes three other nights a week. I was not getting home until 12 or so. Sugiura-sensei told me that all Japanese people work such schedules and that if I was tired it was because I was a member or an inferior race. When I thought about it, I realized that she was mistaken.

All students live at home -- even if they go to Juku at night. Their mothers take care of most of their laundry, shopping, cleaning, and eating. Most of the teachers are married and receive much help with their daily chores. They also have cars which save them much time and energy. Also they speak Japanese perfectly and are living within their own society. The Jet, especially the recently arrived Jet, does not speak Japanese well and does not know where to go, or how to get things done. Simple tasks like mailing a package or going to the laundromat can take at least twice as much time and energy to accomplish. Often those single teachers who commute long distances and work long hours are frankly quite ungenki, tired and crabby. Not I assume how you want your Jet to be.

Giving Jets time to study Japanese is generous, but not ridiculous. Many Jets are not able to study Japanese language and culture with much greater focus than they did at home.

Conclusion

The two jobs Jets are supposed to accomplish are improved international relations and improved English education. Most Jets only want to study Japanese culture and like Japan. We can not do any of this without your help. If the majority of the teachers decide that the benefits of the Jet program do not match the costs, then do not take your anger out on the Jet, but speak to your superiors and cancel the program. There are many useful ways the money spent on Jets could be alternatively utilized. If you do think Jets are worth the money then work though your suspicions of gaijin and find useful ways for us to assist the students of Yawata. Try to let us learn about the positive aspects of Japanese culture and life.

Thank you for your time and attention.

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