Education for global integration in Japan: A case study of the JET Program

At a time when nations around the world are struggling with ethnic unrest, Japan is under international pressure to solve a problem of precisely the opposite order: to ''create'' diversity and to expose its insulated population to foreigners in keeping with its growing status as a world economic leader. This article, based on two years of fieldwork in Japan, examines the contradictions and ironies in a high-profile government policy to transform the nation's vaunted ''internationalization'' campaign from rhetoric to reality. With an annual budget of over $300 million, the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program invites nearly five thousand college graduates each year from primarily Western countries to team-teach foreign language classes and foster international perspectives in secondary schools throughout the country. Many observers thought the JET Program would equal Japan opening up to the West and freeing itself of biases; this article, however, chronicles the many ways in which the foreign teachers are treated according to Japanese cultural norms and bureaucratic priorities. While Japanese teachers and administrators at all levels see JET as a ''cause'' and are willing to salute the flag of internationalization there is a striking gap between the abstract symbolization of internationalization and the day-to-day priorities of prefectural offices of education and local schools. Nevertheless, as with Peace Corps, the program has been very successful in generating a feeling of ''closeness'' towards Japan in the minds of some of the foreign teachers.