Guide to Japan and Teaching in Japan

A General Message For Educators Seeking A Job in the Japanese University System

by David Alwinckle (Arudo Debito)

Fellow educators, be advised:
The Japanese educational job market is becoming increasingly insecure for all educators. Japanese academics are losing their job security through the slow but planned elimination of tenure by central government policy. More important, however, are the deteriorating conditions for non-Japanese in Japan. Foreign educators' employment status (never very secure due to government targeting) is becoming even more ambiguous and abusable in terms of legal rights. I'll make my point right away: Know well what you are getting into before coming to Japan and assuming a position at a Japanese university. There are pitfalls that trap all too many inexperienced people. Following are some of those pitfalls, seen after several years of experience and legal cases over here, that I hope all will take care to avoid:

1. Foreigners are usually hired by Japanese universities under contract. This is highly disadvantageous. If you sign a contract, your continued employment is at the whim of your employer. Do not do this.
Fixed-term contracts are the norm for foreign faculty here. While the word "contract" may sound secure--more secure than none at all--this is not the case. Japanese do not have contracts; up until now Japanese receiving a full-time position have almost always been granted tenure, and from day one (meaning there is no standardized "up or out" system in Japan). This is generally still the case despite recent legal changes. Whether or not you agree with the principle of automatic tenure, the fact is that almost all Japanese full-timers have it, and almost all non-Japanese (and this includes Japan-born ethnic Koreans and Chinese) do not. Japan's academic job market is thus segregated by nationality.

This has had adverse results on professionality and job security. Contracts have been frequently used as a means to fire foreigners only for reasons unrelated to those professional, such as reaching their forties, not being "fresh" enough, not doing as they are told, or getting too expensive for the school's budget. This phenomenon has occurred at the Japanese government's bidding. The Ministry of Education (Monbushou) in 1991 began tacitly forcing universities to fire their older foreign faculty and replacing them with younger, cheaper foreigners. This meant that foreigners here, including the long-termers who have Japanese spouses and kids, house loans, paid-in taxes, and a nonrefundable investment in the Japanese Social Security system, were being recycled. It worked; from 1991 onwards, most older foreigners in the National and Public universities had their contracts terminated.

Contracted status renders foreigners powerless in other ways, including non-admittance to faculty meetings, no chance for promotion, even denial of biannual salary bonuses (which means that although compared to your Japanese colleagues you are getting paid more monthly, per annum your wages can drop by up to a third). These are nationally-enforced conditions that neither your tenured Japanese colleagues in Japan or in overseas universities have to deal with. The final nail in the coffin is Japanese law: arbitrary terminations of contract have been recently legally upheld in Japanese courts. Reasoning: if you sign a contract, the courts will assume you knew your position was only temporary. In sum, DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT. YOU ARE SIGNING AWAY YOUR EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS.

2. Know what type of university you are getting into.
If it is a National (Kokuritsu) or Public (Kouritsu) University, chances are that you will be hired on a contract, since that is the policy all of them have been told to have towards foreigners until 1997. Despite recent liberalization's, few are changing their policies. If it is a Private University (Shiritsu, aka Watakushi-ritsu), there is more chance you will be given a tenured full-time position, but not much. If hiring you sight-unseen or with no connections, almost all universities will hire you on renewable contracts, while a few offer "tenure track". Almost none offer foreigners the same deal as Japanese: tenure from day one.

3. Know what kind of deal you are getting into
As Monbushou (The Japan Ministry of Education) requires universities to inform employees of employment conditions in advance, you should be told if there is a term limitation in the job advertisement. If they offer the garden-variety full-time contract, the duration is usually two to three years (though by the Sentaku Ninkisei Law they are supposed to be three years, no more, no less), renewable a fixed number of times or indefinitely (based upon the school's experience with previous foreigners).

But there is some fine print. Some, mostly the National and Public, cap the age of applicant at around 35, claiming that Monbushou requests that. Others say that anything other then contracts are impossible for foreigners; working at National and Public Universities would make foreigners into Civil Servants, and tenured foreign Civil Servants are forbidden by Monbushou.

This passing of the buck to the bureaucracy, is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie. As of 1998, a statement issued by Monbushou, insists that ALL universities now have the authority themselves to determine the employment status of their foreign staff. Any employment restrictions based on race, age, gender, nationality, or anything else unrelated to educational qualification is purely self-imposed by the university. If questioned about these restrictions, Monbushou will deny any involvement (as it always has to diplomatic channels when Ambassador Mondale was still here). In sum, avoid contract positions if you want a secure job.

As for "tenure track":

4. Do not trust promises of tenure via "tenure track positions"
Tenure tracks, which last for three years and up, effectively put you through the same probation period as a contract. "Probation" might sound like a normal screening process if there was a standardized "up or out" tenure deadline. But there is none in Japan. In practice, few tenure tracks have actually ripened into tenure.

Common university tactics to avoid it have been 1) extending the 3-year probation period at the last minute, or 2) making life rough enough so that the faculty member leaves To see if tenure is likely at your institution, ask them how many tenured foreigners they have. If none, or only one or two tokeners, chances are that you will not get it. Do not think yourself exceptional. Even if this sounds too bad to be true, be it known that the outcome of recent court rulings here indicate no real legal deterrent to employment abuses. Let's turn to matters of redress:

5. Do not trust promises of equal treatment as native staff, because you, as a foreigner, do not have legal recourse to redress broken promises.
It is public record that the firing of people on contract positions in National and Public Universities have always been upheld by Japanese courts. Worse yet, the precedent in the Privates is that even if, after years of litigation, a court rules in your favor, the school can reinstate you and then fire you all over again. The result is that universities can do what they like to non-citizens; Japanese courts either will not rule in your favor, or will not enforce their rulings. You might think you could, as the ultimate resort, take your case to the streets. In a Private University you could, as you are technically a Laborer (under the Labor Standards Law). However, if you are employed in a National or Public University, as a Civil Servant it would be *illegal* for you to, say, go on strike. Or you can form a union. But I'm jumping the gun. The point is that if you want to protest, you will have your work cut out for you in getting your grievances even listened to, let alone addressed, by established negotiating channels.

6. Keep in mind incentives: The bottom line for Japanese universities these days is cost.
Some demographics: It is a well-recognized fact that the number of Japanese students, due to the declining birth rate, is declining by percents per year. There is impact already; already many Junior Colleges (Tanki Daigaku) and specialty schools (Senmon Gakkou) are folding or being absorbed into their mother universities. With fortunately very few exceptions, these places cannot fire tenured Japanese, so they have no way to reduce excess staff but to wait for the Emeriti to retire, or just not tenure new entrants.

Now for some economics: It is cheaper for the school to ease out their expensive long-timers and hire younger, fresher, cheaper faculty in their staid. Because the school can if they are on contracts, foreigners are the first to go. Hence to a Japanese university, a non-Japanese employee is nothing more than an expendable work unit, so don't expect any differently no matter how many faculty friends you cultivate. There is little precedent for tenured non-Japanese in Japan, and there is certainly no economic incentive for them to create it now.

7. I do not recommend you work in Japan anew as an educator
If you want to come here on a lark for a few years, I understand. Japanese universities will welcome you as a pigeon to be plucked. You will get different pay scales, more classwork, less (or no) say in school affairs, than the natives. You do as they say, you'll probably have a good time, but your life is not your own; you'll have to leave when they tell you to. But if you want to come here and put down some roots with your spouse and kids, I say forget it. You'll either have to be well-informed about things around you, or get lucky.

I recommend you speak good (not rudimentary) Japanese so you can negotiate on your own behalf; you CANNOT rely on your Japanese colleagues to work in your best interests, because precedence dictates they will not alienate their native colleagues and Monbushou to defend an uppity "guest worker". I will be even franker: The Japanese University system is for foreign faculty, more often than not, a racket. Your coming here will only enable the school to substitute a fired long-termer with a neophyte, and thus perpetuate the cycle. Your arrival, I'm sorry to say, will in fact weaken the bargaining position of those already here. For our sake as well as your own, I recommend you do not come.

8. If you do, always settle for tenure from day one of employment - No Contract, No Tenure Track.
It's time for foreigners to get wise and demand better employment conditions. Here's how:

9. Know more about the particular school you are interested in:
To shift fortune in your favor a bit, I have taken the liberty to create a Blacklist of universities who discriminate against employees on the basis of nationality, and a Greenlist of those who do not. Check to see if the university you are interested in applying to is here.

Conclusions
In terms of employee treatment and progressivity towards people with differences, Japanese universities, in a system centralized under an all-powerful ministry intransigent towards change, are probably the worst in the OECD. It hasn't changed much for the better, and defeated expectations, for a rich country to be more open-minded, have certainly made it worse. If you as an educator want a position abroad, I say go somewhere other than Japan. If, however, "The Land of the Rising Sun" is really what you have your sights set on, that's your decision. But don't say we didn't warn you.

« Newspapers & Magazines | Main | Computers »

• JET (5)
• Living in Japan (12)
• Teaching in Japan (11)
• Terminology (4)
• Universities (1)

• Handpicked Links
• Acronyms A-D
• Acronyms E-L
• Acronyms M-Z
• Japanese ELT-related Words
• A Guide to the JET Program - The Application Process
• A Guide to the JET Program - Metropolis or Rice Paddy?
• A Guide to the JET Program - Pre-departure: Gifts to give and things to leave behind
• A Guide to the JET Program - The First Class
• A Guide to the JET Program - Japanese Students: Maybe Not Quite What You Expected!