Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (31 page)

As a woman I do not feel safe at enkais [parties] because people casually
joke about sawari [groping] and there are men at my office who are well
known for sawari. I have never been physically molested but nonetheless, I feel threatened by the possibility that I may be subject to abuse.

Initially, I trusted my supervisor as we had briefly discussed sexual
harassment and he reassured me that he had read the CLAIR handbook
and was aware of the problem.... However, at my Kangeikai [welcome
party] my supervisor got drunk and he verbally sexually harassed a
woman I work with. At one point he turned his attention to me. He
looked at me lecherously and began to tell me I was attractive, but I
quickly shrugged him off. He then continued to bother the other
woman as he tried to make her dance with him, but she escaped by
making an excuse to go home.

As a result of that incident I no longer trust my supervisor and even
find it hard to respect him. I finally discussed this incident with him last
week. I tried to be tactful by explaining that sexual harassment is not just
physical but verbal as well. He assumed I was referring to someone else.
... I finally had to tell him it was he that offended me. He listened to me
politely but it was clear that he did not understand my point when he responded that sexual harassment is a matter of cultural interpretation.21

The most prominent public case of sexual harassment occurred in 1993,
when a village assembly in Nagano-ken voted to remove a deputy mayor
from his post ostensibly for pawing an ALT at a village party.25 But the
ALT involved argued that the action taken by the village assembly was disproportionate to the seriousness of the event, leading to speculation that
"sexual harassment" may have been used as an excuse for an internal political move; I was unable to determine the validity of this account.

Japanese officials at the national level were quick to line up for the fight
against sexual harassment. At the annual information meetings held for
prefectural administrators, CLAIR and Ministry of Education officials regularly allowed the program coordinators to give short lectures on "the
meaning of sexual harassment," though Tanabe-san, who attended one of
these meetings, recalled that most of what program coordinators warned
against was considered normal behavior for men in Japan. In -1989 CLAIR
directed all prefectures to ensure that single women not be housed in firstfloor apartments, regardless of their preferences. And CLAIR officials even
agreed to conduct a survey of JET participants about sexual harassment;
these questions were eventually included in the annual living conditions
survey. At first glance, the results were striking; nearly 40 percent of respondents in 1989 indicated that they had been harassed verbally (19 per cent), physically (5 percent), or both (15 percent).26 It is difficult to assess
the significance of these replies, however, since "sexual harassment" was
not defined in the questionnaire.

To my mind, what is most revealing here is the extent to which Japanese
policymakers conceptualized sexual harassment as a "foreign problem." By
Tanabe-san's own admission, it was the fear that the situation might turn
into an "international incident" that ultimately determined how the prefecture treated Lisa. At the national level, too, CLAIR officials wholeheartedly supported the program coordinators' lectures to prefectural administrators on sexual harassment even though no comparable training was
conducted regarding the harassment of Japanese women and even though
the program coordinators' well-intentioned efforts to raise awareness at
times crossed the line into "the West knows best" sermons.

The Pension Confrontation

Only a few months separated Lisa's departure and what Sato-sensei described as another of his most disagreeable memories (iyana omoide): a
heated confrontation with an Australian ALT over the requirement that
JET participants pay into a pension fund from which they would receive no
benefits (see chapter 3). The actual clash took place in May 1988, in a district board of education to which two ALTs had been posted-Toby, a
thirty-two-year-old former schoolmaster from Australia, and Trisha, a
twenty-two-year-old American woman. Both felt strongly about the injustice of the pension policy and decided to fight it. Toby laid out their case:
"Our argument was that we would accept it if there was some potential
benefit to us, but without that, it seemed unjust to say the least. So we each
wrote a letter to Sato-sensei explaining our position, and he actually came
out to [our district board of education] to explain the policy. He basically
said that every group which employed twenty or more people was required
by law to do this." This explanation did not appease Toby and Trisha, however, and they firmly told Sato-sensei that they were not satisfied with his
response. They also informed him that they were planning to write to the
local newspaper about the matter and to consult with other ALTs in the
prefecture to decide on a course of action.

Sato-sensei was quite upset by these threats, particularly because his relationship with Toby was already stormy. He had contacted Toby several
times prior to his departure from Australia to ask him to bring textbooks
and encyclopedias that could be used to design reading comprehension tests in the prefecture. After being invited by Sato-sensei to meet him for
dinner one night to receive the books, Toby had returned to his board of education and listed the trip and dinner as a business expense. This led his
ETC there to call Sato-sensei, who angered Toby by labeling the trip and
dinner a personal expense. Having gone to some trouble to find and transport the books, Toby expected to be reimbursed. In addition, Toby was close
in age to Sato-sensei and was not at all inclined to play what he called the
"subordination game."

After consulting with the board of education section chief, Sato-sensei
decided on a course of action. He traveled to Toby's office on Saturday
morning, called him in from his house, and proceeded to read him the article in the JET contract on political activity. In doing so, he was warning
Toby that if he wrote a letter to the newspaper or contacted other ALTs
about this, a fine would be deducted from his salary and he would be barred
from renewing his stay for an additional year. But Sato-sensei was totally
unprepared for Toby's reaction. In the middle of the office, Toby suddenly
raised his voice and began yelling that threats would not work and that he
couldn't be responsible for the actions of other ALTs. Flustered and visibly
embarrassed, Sato-sensei tried to recover his poise and hold his ground,
but as Toby later described it, "he began twitching all over-he's really a
very nervous person." That night Toby rounded up seven other ALTs for
an emergency meeting at a local pub that catered to foreigners, and numerous letters were written to CLAIR. Beyond that, however, Toby backed
off his threat to write to the newspaper and Sato-sensei took no further action. At our next meeting over coffee, Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san engaged
in a lively appraisal of the run-in and discussed how they would handle
similar incidents in the future. Sato-sensei warned, "We can't forget that
that kind of person is among us. I suspected right from the start that he had
other reasons for coming here, like making money. Why else would he quit
his job as a principal? In his case, there's no effort put into team teaching
and nothing changes. His district office has had a terrible time, so I really
want to put some good people there this year." Tanabe-san half-jokingly
came up with a plan for future action: he would sacrifice himself on the
front lines should a similar problem arise. "Since I don't understand English very well," he pointed out, "it won't bother me so much if the ALT
gets upset."

That Sato-sensei would find this kind of face-to-face conflict extremely
unpleasant is hardly surprising, but I was completely taken aback by a
subsequent development. Because of his age, nationality, and, ironically,
his involvement in protesting against the pension payments, Toby re ceived a phone call the next month from a British program coordinator at
CLAIR asking him to come to Tokyo for an interview for that position.
Because he had already been handpicked for the job (CLAIR needed an
Australian program coordinator at the time), the interview was perfunctory, and CLAIR recommended that he be hired on condition that his current supervisors agreed on his suitability for the position. And when the
documents asking for Sato-sensei's comments arrived, he declined to fight
Toby's nomination. "I just wrote that I had no reservations," he recalled.
"It's not worth creating a fuss over it." Though he had been given the opportunity to sabotage Toby's nomination, Sato-sensei chose the path of
least resistance. In this case, his potential exercise of power was deflected
by an even more powerful cultural preoccupation with avoiding direct
confrontation."

School Switching

One of the more common headaches for Sato-sensei and Tanabe-san was
caused by the desire of renewing ALTs to switch schools. But in 1989 they
instituted a policy that an ALT must spend two years at a school before the
board of education would entertain any such request. "We're just not going
to listen to their ultimatums any more," Sato-sensei told me. "From now
on, if they want to renew, they have to stay where they are for two years."

It was only a matter of months before the new policy was tested. Chad
was a twenty-three-year-old American; though based at Kitano High
School, he also made irregular visits to six other high schools, including
several dominated by union teachers. Chad thoroughly enjoyed his newfound celebrity status at his base school; although he was not particularly
attuned to Japanese culture, his outgoing personality made hirn well-liked
by students and teachers. At the midpoint of his stay, he had indicated to
Sato-sensei that he planned to renew for the following year. Only a few
weeks later, at a team-teaching workshop, Sato-sensei had told him that he
would remain at Kitano as his base school and that he would visit only
Sano and Yamaguni; a new ALT would take over the other three schools.
Chad was excited about the idea of making fewer visits while still being
able to keep Yamaguni, which had by far the most active group of JTLs and
students.

But sometime thereafter, Sato-sensei decided to reshuffle the visit
schools for the new ALT to include Yamaguni, precisely because the teachers there were such an enthusiastic group. It was exchanged with a strong
union school that had expressed little interest in team teaching, where Sato-sensei felt it was dangerous to send a new ALT. Unfortunately, Satosensei forgot to directly notify Chad, who felt betrayed when he received
word from a JTL at Yamaguni that Sato-sensei had changed his mind. The
prospect of staying for an additional year seemed much less appealing to
Chad if he would be traveling to schools that were lukewarm about team
teaching and the ESS club. He immediately called Sato-sensei, who apologized for the misunderstanding but stood firm, saying that the decision had
already been made.

After some thought, Chad decided to press his cause. He met with several of his favorite teachers at Yamaguni and explained how much he liked
the school and that he wanted to stay on the following year. Chad then developed a three-pronged argument: first, it was unconscionable that he
was not consulted before his visit school was rearranged; second, it was
unfair to put the new ALT into a teaching situation that would demand so
much work; and third, the teachers at Yamaguni did not want him to leave.
All of this Chad put into writing in a lengthy letter that closed with a
veiled threat: he was not happy with the way his situation for the following year was shaping up, and he hoped to be able to come back to Japan
and start afresh with a good attitude after his short trip home during summer vacation. Chad then took the extraordinary step of calling Yoshiro
Tagai, the section chief and Sato-sensei's boss, at io:oo P.M. on a Sunday
night to explain his difficulty. Tagai, a former principal at one of Chad's
visit schools, listened carefully to Chad's explanation and promised to see
what he could do, though he stressed that the matter was Sato-sensei's responsibility.

The following day Chad hand-delivered his letter to the board of education. Though he had planned to just drop off the letter and leave, he happened to encounter Sato-sensei, who, without reading the letter, began to
reiterate that his decision was determined by structural arrangements. At
this point Tagai intervened and called Sato-sensei and Chad over to his
desk, where he explained to Chad that in a sense, his argument was valid,
but the decision had actually been made by a superior. Chad replied that he
should have been consulted before a decision was made, and he was asking
the board of education to reconsider its decision in light of the arguments
in his letter.

Three days later, Sato-sensei called Chad to inform him that he had
been allowed to keep Yamaguni. When I asked Tanabe-san what had happened to change his mind, he replied: "That was a really difficult case. We
called the principal of Yamaguni, and it turned out that Chad was very well
liked by teachers and students there. We also didn't want another ALT to leave the prefecture since we had had such bad luck up to that point. But
Sato-sensei felt strongly that we had set a policy and ought to abide by it.
He didn't think we should cave in to ALTs' demands. We went back and
forth a long time, but ultimately Mr. Tagai and I persuaded Sato-sensei to
give in." Tanabe-san also noted that even though Chad had ignored the
usual protocol by leapfrogging Sato-sensei and issuing an ultimatum, he
had acted with some restraint. Moreover, both Tagai and Tanabe-san liked
Chad as a person and thought he was doing a good job in his school visits.

Chad's case offers several important lessons for understanding the response of Japanese bureaucracies to conflict. Especially interesting was how
Tagai handled his encounter with Chad, ensuring that Sato-sensei would
not lose face. In reality, there was no other "superior" involved in the decision, but it was crucial for him to support Sato-sensei at that moment. In
addition, in dealing with Chad as in dealing with Lisa, the principal decision makers at the board of education differed markedly on how to reconcile conflicting factors. While all three of the administrators involved felt
Chad was out of place in making his demands, that agreement by no means
led to a natural consensus on what action to take. Finally, the case illustrates yet again the susceptibility of Japanese officials to foreign pressure
and the persistent concern with how "international conflict" might harm
the prefecture's image.