What Prof McBean has done is to write a biography of General MacArthur in 14 brief chapters. He has also supplemented his clear text with vocabulary points, discussion themes and a decent bibliography for those whose appetite has been whetted for further detail.
The work was written to coincide with the fact that this year is the 60th anniversary of Imperial Japan's surrender and the start of MacArthur's lengthy rule as the American shogun in occupied Japan.
"Any seminar room would be enlivened by debating topics raised at the end of each chapter."
McBean began out of concern that his students at Oita University in Kyushu had precious little awareness of MacArthur and the occupation. He reckoned that this needed to be corrected both because the students he polled said that they would like to know more and that it would also conveniently serve "as an English language textbook -- the first of its kind in Japan."
The result is in fact much wider than merely a rehash of MacArthur's doings during the occupation. We get seven chapters by way of build-up to MacArthur's famous arrival at Atsugi on Aug 30, 1945, where he stands imperiously on the steps of the "Bataan" with that everpresent corncob pipe in his mouth. This provides a useful reminder that MacArthur was already 65 years old by the time the occupation got underway and that his family links to Asia - particularly the Philippines - stretch back to his father's years there at the turn of the century.
Any seminar room would be enlivened by debating topics raised at the end of each chapter. Take, for example, important questions such as "how do you think the people would have reacted?" to an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands in the autumn of 1945 if the atomic bomb had not been deployed or "do you think General MacArthur should have prohibited all executions?" of those found guilty at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal.
The paperback can be used by both Japanese and native speakers as an introduction to MacArthur's life and times, though with the slight caveat that it's often pretty sympathetic to the man whose career was packed full of controversy from his West Point days to his final dismissal by President Harry S Truman during the tense months of the Korean War.
It begins in Little Rock, Arkansas in January 1880 Å\ the improbable birthplace of Douglas MacArthur, thanks to his father's posting there in the era when the U.S. military's role was to guard what was left of the frontier. It ends as recently as January 2000 by noting the burial of MacArthur's widow next to her husband in the central rotunda at the neo-classical MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia. It is not every five star general whose final resting place is in a major port of the U.S. Navy, though the explanation is simply that this is where his mother hailed from.
The heart of the book centers on MacArthur's undoubted role in setting much of the agenda for the occupation. The challenges facing the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers called for immediate leadership of a high order in order both to work with reformist groups who wanted a new Japan and to ensure that the nation's blitzed economy could get back on its own two feet as quickly as possible.
We need also to be reminded that MacArthur's "magnanimity" toward defeated Japan was poles apart from revengeful public opinion among the other victor nations and the initial hatred back in the United States for the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent treatment of prisoners of war and internees.
McBean devotes considerable space to his hero's determination to work with and through the emperor, arguing that "MacArthur's strategy of protecting Emperor Hirohito - in the face of strong criticism which has persisted to the present day - was a major reason why the Occupation achieved its goals." He ends his chapter on MacArthur's support for a modified imperial system by claiming that this "was probably his most important decision during the Occupation."
As the starting point for an account of MacArthur's career before and during his years in occupied Japan, Prof McBean's work deserves Murayama's praise. MacArthur - "born on an Army base and died in an Army hospital" - ought to be better known in contemporary Japan, given the impact of his constitutional, educational and rural reforms. But then, perhaps, he ought also to be better known in his home country, too, where his far-sighted handiwork in promoting U.S. goals in east Asia is increasingly forgotten. Students everywhere might learn a great deal from this text and its accompanying CDs. ]]>
"a must read for anyone pondering signing up for the JET Program or any of Japan's fast-growing private ALT providers"
Shunning thousand-mile walks, the martial arts, zen and forays into art and culture in favor of beer, day-trips and karaoke, Nicholas Klar's My Mother is a Tractor offers a disturbingly realistic look at life as an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan.
Klar, an Australian from Adelaide, came to Japan by way of California as a part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. His motives for deciding to come are never fully explained but one gets the sense that he came out of lack of anything more interesting to do. As a result of this, he brought with him surprisingly few pretentions about what he hoped to accomplish in Japan and what he expected to find. His book, rather than being an epic travelogue, is a quiet memoir that takes us on a day by day, drink by drink, yen by yen tour of his two years in the tiny town of Omi, a small, one company town wedged between the sea and the mountains at the Western end of Niigata Prefecture. Being trapped in a small, boring town that doesn't appear on most maps, inevitably sends him out on a series of adventures and parties with fellow JETs and the occasional drunk principal.
Klar's journey from ignorance to, well, a kind of deliberate ignorance (he refuses to learn Japanese for reasons he explains as he goes along) is salted with witty insights about Japan and the Japanese. Klar supplements his personal insights with those of other ALTs (he's apparently never deleted a single email he's ever received or sent) and an impressive amount of research about why things are the way they are in Japanese politics and history.
Despite a healthy dose of cynicism about his job as an English teacher in a system that neither rewards students for learning English nor punishes them for not, Klar manages to keep his views well balanced. Although often bewildered by, and critical of, the things he encounters, he manages to avoid being mean-spirited. He even manages to make the standard Japanese enkai (an overpriced, two hour drinking “party” complete with speeches and myriad rules of etiquette) seem much more interesting than it actually is. He is also pleasantly self-deprecating as he explains how his efforts to get out of Omi at all costs often ended with his bag trapped in a train station and him sleeping in the bushes or on a concrete slab. The exceptions to all this “balance” and “fairness” usually involve his encounters with Japanese bureaucracy, including a delightfully funny tale about trying to fax a ministry when the office he needed had no fax machine.
Readers will also quickly notice that, although Klar was brought to Japan to teach English, very little of the book actually mentions what happens inside a Japanese classroom. (The book's title, in all fairness, does come from a student essay he had to mark.) While this may seem to be an oversight, it actually represents a kind of honesty: Almost no ALTs find satisfaction in their jobs (the better qualified they are as teachers the more this is true) and most ALTs in small towns sprint for the trains after school lets out in order to get to a bigger town with better drinking establishments. Klar makes no apologies about this—in fact, if his town had been more interesting the book would not be interesting at all.
Despite its charms, the book has a few weaknesses. The people Klar encounters are often reduced to capsule descriptions and names. No one, except an American dubbed “Ernie,” who maintains that the "biggest problem with Japan" is that “It ain't got no chewin' tabacca” and who later acquires female companionship via enjo kosai (paid dates), is given anything resembling real development. Everyone else could be easily interchangeable.
Finally, at times, Klar's writing style leaves the witty and enters the overwrought and artificially sentimental. A scene where he describes the fate of his mountain bike is especially cringeworthy as he describes his hopes for its life without him.
Still, these are more annoyances than serious problems and, in Klar's defense, he does establish the importance of having a decent bicycle (as opposed to the ubiquitous, bulky mamachari bikes everyone else seems to have) when living in a small town. Some of the best scenes in the book, such as when he finds an abandoned elementary school in the mountains, involve his bike.
All in all, I found this book to be a refreshing break from the more epic and pretentious travelogues mentioned earlier and reviewed elsewhere on this website. Far from bashing Japan or overly praising it, My Mother is a Tractor is, in an odd way, a grand thank you from Klar to Japan for treating him so well for two years.
Early in the book, Klar quotes someone who said that “young Australians travelling abroad tended to see the world as an extended pub-crawl.” This is an apt description of Klar's book. This is also what makes it a must read for anyone pondering signing up for the JET Program or any of Japan's fast-growing private ALT providers. The book's message, or warning, is simple: This is life in Japan. Enter at your own risk. Enjoy your stay.
Read more about My Mother is a Tractor at Trafford Publishing's web site: www.trafford.com My Mother is a Tractor is now being distributed by Trafford Publishers and it is available online. ]]>
"one of the best depictions available of a particular kind of cosmopolitan social life in Tokyo"
Tales of the city from a writer who knows how it looks from myriad angles. Most of the viewpoint characters are privileged and moneyed, like Henry, the Porsche-driving financier and babe magnet of the chapter titled "Sex, Lies, and Too Much Champagne" who picks up girls like pollen but embarrassingly underestimates Japanese determination when it comes to shedding them. Others are gaijin struggling with English teaching and hostess work, trying to realize themselves in a denaturing social jungle that demands fakery and display.
It is ingeniously constructed and organized to be readable either as short stories or as chapters in a socially panoramic novel reminiscent of Short Cuts, the Altman film of the Raymond Carver stories. The storylines intertwine and characters gossiped about in one story are seen from the inside in another. Once suspicions are allayed about a certain self-admiration and brand-consciousness in the authorial point of view, it becomes clear what a subtle and worldly-wise writer Christine Miki is, and how sharp her eye for farcical sexual entanglements and party disasters. She describes a round of casual relationships and bitchy one-upmanship with comic aplomb and shrewd sensitivity.
It has to be said that it is doubtful that the book would have appeal far beyond the gaijin community in Japan--a reflection of its literary limitations--but nevertheless must stand as one of the best depictions available of a particular kind of cosmopolitan social life in Tokyo in a particular era. You might barely be aware from these stories that a few Japanese people live in Tokyo as well, though their social and inner lives remain inscrutable, and their consciousness disappointingly is not subjected to Miki's sophisticated treatment.
Having said that, some of the best writing in the book concerns Espie, the long-suffering Filipina maid whose quiet virtue is eventually rewarded.
Reviewed by: James Mulligan (Tokyo Weekender)
Christine Miki's 15-year stretch in Japan as a diplomat, marketing exec and journalist means she has obviously rubbed shoulders with characters similar to those found in Tokyo Stories and Tokyo Weekender.
From ELT to Oomalian Ambassador, she trots them out in amusing fashion in her jolly debut novel that interconnects the lives, loves and laughter of a gaggle of gaijin who live in Tokyo. Miki presents familiar scenarios for anyone who has been around the Tokyo block, and she is right on the button with her characterizations. Aspiring cads and bounders would be wise to take heed of the problems wealthy stockbroker Henry has finishing with Kiyomi, who moves in to his bachelor pad after he is a little nice during a one-night stand that lasts a weekend: Hell hath no fury like a twenty-something OL scorned, we learn.
For those in the high-falutin' ex-pat community whose lives revolve around the Tokyo American Club, National Azabu Supermarket and International School circuit, Marjorie will ring a few bells. She's a woman who, "because she couldn't speak Japanese and didn't intend to learn it either decided to consider her Tokyo stay as one long sunny holiday at the Tokyo American Club." You'll either laugh knowingly, or look guiltily in the mirror.
And we meet Peter, who is losing his mind and his ability to talk in his language-teaching job. Full of self-loathing, he's torn between throwing the towel in and heading home or continuing to eke out an existence and save for his dream condo. Don't expect anything too deep though. A case in point is the aforementioned Henry, and Ernesto the diplomat, a couple of skirt-chasers whose lives are one long Krug-quaffing, bed-hopping frenzy.
In other "big city books" the author would try to paint a picture of moral decay and dissolution in these protagonists' lifestyles that ultimately leads to unhappiness. Miki just makes the reader bloody jealous of all the fun they're having. "Painfully delightful" is how co-Publisher Jim Merk describes it in his foreword. Well, it's mildly diverting stuff. Read it on your next vacation away from Tokyo. If you find yourself yearning to come back, obviously this book is for you. In fact, this book is you.
Read more about Tokyo Stories at the official web site: http://www.tokyostories.net/. ]]>
"...don't ever say: 'It can't get any worse.' It always does."
Just in case you've missed the past 50 years of Japanese television, or can't handle the self-aggrandizing tributes on NHK this year, William Penn (the pen name of a prominent local writer) has brought together a very readable and often witty selection of the best and worst that Japanese TV has to offer. Penn, the Televiews columnist of the Daily Yomiuri since 1987, draws upon the vast experience of having endured all that Japanese TV has to offer. What is truly amazing is that anyone that has watched that much television can still write at an intelligent level. Maybe TV isn't as bad for us as we have been told?
As someone who constantly endures the endless supply of NHK morning dramas, senseless variety and wide shows, and the talentless tarento, all for the sake of a Japanese spouse, I can attest to a general apathy towards Japanese television. Give me cable or give me the radio, but please not Japanese TV. Yet, William Penn puts it all in perspective in one flawless statement, "...don't ever say: 'It can't get any worse.' It always does." One hallelujah later and the book had my attention. It is that kind of humor that makes this book so approachable, even for the most jaded of us.
The book is organized into 10 readable chapters covering genre such as dramas, comedy, news, and variety shows. There is additionally a very thorough 11th section containing contact information for broadcasters, as well as important television-related websites and places to go.
Organized as a journey around the important television-related locales of Japan (starting at Kansai International airport heading for Kyoto and ending at Sapporo's Chitose airport), a nice linear flow takes us behind the scenes into the wheres and whys of television as well as presenting many memorable (and some forgettable) shows. The first three chapters provide ample background into television, including important plot lines, recurring themes, and the hidden subtleties and innuendo that appear again and again in Japanese programs. Put it this way: you'll never look at a bento the same way again. Anyone interested in learning the techniques of screenwriting would find this book full of ideas and approaches to subject matter.
From chapter 4 onward much of the writing originates from the original Daily Yomiuri Televiews columns of the author. This approach makes the book very readable as the longest portions (the background nuts and bolts stuff) are at the front of the book. From Chapter 4, the organized columns are easy reading. The reader can read one or two of the columns and stop, without ever losing one's place. This book is an ideal accompaniment for a trip, or as something to read on the daily commute. It could also be adapted to content-based English language classes specializing in comparative television or media, and this is how I plan on using it. Aside from the entertainment segment of television, some of the columns take us back to important television events (the Hanshin earthquake and coverage on Aids in particular) and how Penn saw the coverage at the time.
Penn's book is a welcome and needed addition to understanding Japanese television. I was quite surprised at how many of the shows mentioned in the book were actually familiar. Penn answers a number of questions as well and has an answer to many of those questions I've been wanting to ask. How many Mito Komon have there been? What's the big deal with SMAP? Why is the 7:00 news on NHK sometimes only 8 minutes long? They're all answered here. Both long-time Japan residents and those new to the scene will find the book has something to offer. Even those who are turned off by some of the program choices will find a new way of looking at Japanese TV, and maybe a new appreciation, through Penn's book.]]>
"See the enemy! If you practice hard you will develop a mind that is as calm as still water. Karate is moving Zen, and it is the Zen state that you must strive for."
With that stern criticism of his performance, a young Welshman in Japan begins to understand the deeper nature of what he has dedicated two years of his life to achieve. C.W. Nichol, young and hot-tempered, first came to Tokyo in 1962 to study Karate. Speaking virtually no Japanese, he nonetheless dove headfirst into his newfound challenge. Along with countless hours of seemingly endless Kata (forms) and Kumite (free sparring), his demanding instructors imparted upon him various lessons on how to live outside of the Karate dojo. His often-frustrating experiences forced him to confront his own pre-conceived notions, and ultimately led him to a new life of tranquility.
During the course of this engaging and extremely readable book, Nichol expresses his feelings plainly and with candor, as if he were chatting with an old friend. He shares many tales of good and bad times alike, and is refreshingly honest in his even-handed perspective on Japanese life as a foreigner. While clearly enamored of the Japanese people and their fascinating culture, he never glosses over any of the negative experiences he had. His various encounters with culture shock, racism and alienation only made him that much more determined to reach his goals.
As Nichol trains and learns more about Karate and other martial arts, his understanding of the Japanese lifestyle deepens as well. In the dojo, he finds a place to belong. He gains greater insight into the sempai-kohai relationship, and sees just how this vital balance plays out in Japanese social interaction. Using the analogy of a vehicle, Nichol notes that "If the teacher is the driver, and the class the engine, then the sempai are the rods that force the rest of the engine to work."
As the two years pass, his life continues to change in many ways. His once-violent temper remains, but he gradually learns to control it more effectively. His admiration and respect for his Karate instructors grows ever stronger, even as they become more and more severe with his training. He falls in love and marries a young Japanese woman, moving in with her family and enjoying the peaceful life of a small town outside of Tokyo. Most of all, he begins to understand the profound nature of Zen that exists in all of the Japanese arts, and how it comes full circle to include all things, both living and non-living alike.
This moment of understanding comes to him as he waits alongside his fellow students to take the Shodan (1st-degree Black Belt) Test at the dojo. Having trained hard and advanced quickly through the ranks, this moment is the culmination of all his blood, sweat and tears spent learning Karate. As Nichol sits patiently and waits for his name to be called, he feels that he has finally become one with the dojo and all who have passed through it before him. As he relates it, "My personality permeated the walls and floor, mingled with the others. I was a valid, true, inseparable part of the stream of its being. I belonged there, along with the others, and it no longer really mattered if I passed or failed the test this time."
For anyone interested in Karate or other Japanese martial arts, Moving Zen is highly recommended. Indeed, it has already become something of a modern classic. Even more than that, I believe that this eminently readable work provides invaluable insight for foreigners living, studying and working here in Japan. C.W. Nichol, an author, educator, martial artist and long-term resident of Japan, personifies the ideals of international exchange in the global community. By generously offering his personal insights and examples to the reader, he invites us all to move forward and face our own challenges, both great and small. In doing so, we can follow our own paths toward peace and tranquility. ]]>
He shows that there are large changes going on in society these days, something obvious to those of us that live and work here.
While reading J@pan Inc. magazine in January 2003, a review of Matsumoto's book appeared and intrigued me. I went to Amazon.co.jp and ordered this book along with two others about Japan: Japanese Higher Education as Myth (McVeigh), and Dogs and Demons (Kerr, last month's review -ed.). Matsumoto's Debunking was the most unabashedly academic of the three, yet a bit sophomoric. It was clear, to the point, and easy to read. The flavor of the writing made it feel like a pop psychology textbook.
Matsumoto begins his book with a review of the classic conceptualizations of the Japanese culture, from Lafcadio Hearn through Inazo Notobe and Ruth Benedict to Ivan Morris. He analyzes attitudes toward bushido, giri, on, chuugi, shame, wisdom, benevolence, self-discipline, honor and courage in Japan. In contemporary views, he covers Chie Nakane and asserts that the status of contemporary analysis of culture in Japan even today is of a classical nature. This may be a bit of straw man as Nakane's analysis is somewhat dated. He goes on to describe how some Japanese psychologists, such as Sanchez Hiroshi Minami and Takeo Doi, see Japan.
At the end of the first chapter he begins to cite studies on Japanese people's views of contemporary society, and an international comparison of views on the merits of information technology. He shows that there are large changes going on in society these days, something obvious to those of us that live and work here. You must remember, though, this book was written in the U.S. for what I am going to presume is a U.S. university audience.
Chapter 2 is the heart, the meat and the skeleton of the book. He decimates 7 stereotypes about Japan with well thought out arguments and a goodly amount of data collected by him and colleagues in the field. He finds that Japanese are more individual and less collective than their western counterparts. He finds that Japanese have an independent self concept and are not as interpersonally aware of the group as is the common conception. Japanese are not as emotional as they are generally thought of. The concept of the Japanese salaryman is no longer valid, along with the eternal myth of lifetime employment. Even Japanese marriage habits are changing. There is indeed a huge generation gap that has formed and is moving up the ranks. All these assertions are backed up with solid data and incisive insight.
This reviewers' life intervened, and I had to set the book down while reading Chapter 3. I was unable to come back to it for about 10 days. Upon the return, it felt almost like a different book. Gone was most of the hard data along with quotes of other experts. Chapters 3 through 5 did a good job of explaining the contents of Chapter 2. It contains a lot of Matsumoto's perceptions of Japanese culture, which are undoubtedly accurate from his point of view as a Nisei (sansei?) professor in San Francisco.
Matsumoto refers many times to his association with judo organizations both here in Japan and in the United States. We start to get a feeling in the later chapters that perhaps his view is not all that common. One other small quibble: he needs to get a new graphic designer for his graphs. Alternative and gradient shading from black to white through gray made discerning the numbers a puzzle and an optical illusion.
I can't help but compare Matsumoto with Dean Barnlund, his predecessor (granted, in a different department, Speech and Communications, retired) at SF State. With a quote by Shoko Araki (Oberin U.), you could see he has Japanese approval for following in Barnlund's tradition. He has the same warm fuzzy classroom lecture style but does better than Barnlund in acquiring new evidence of shifts in the cultural milieu of Japan.
If you're a longtime resident of Japan, you might consider getting your local library to buy this book and then read Chapter 2. If you're unfamiliar with Japan, you probably want to buy the book for yourself, as you will need chapters 3 to 5 to fill in the blank spaces. ]]>
Japan without brakes
careening quickly toward
a long slow decline
This book was particularly depressing for a guy in my situation. You see, I'm 46 years old, and have two daughters in junior high school. About the time the last one graduates from university I will be ready for retirement. According to Alex Kerr, it doesn't look good. He spent six years researching the Japanese government and the way it manages the land, the economy, the bureaucracy, and society.
Luckily for the world, Japan has become less relevant, both economically and politically, since the bursting of the bubble.
Japan has been very successful in reaching a pinnacle of economic success up to this point. The problem is that the devices that worked in the past no longer apply to today's situation, yet the government and the bureaucracy continue to use the same tools. It's as if they used a hammer to build a house and now know no other tool, so they continue on building the countryside, the cities, and even its own history.
Luckily for the world, Japan has become less relevant, both economically and politically, since the bursting of the bubble. Since 1990 the recession, along with the advent of the Internet, should have caused a change in the approach toward managing the country, but it hasn't. Kerr thinks that this country is over modernized. Essentially, the approach was frozen in the year 1965. Japan lacks a way to say enough is enough.
Read some interesting facts Kerr puts forward. All but three of Japan's 113 major rivers have been either dammed or diverted. Japan spends three to four times what the U.S. does on public-works projects, even though it is 5% of the size. By 1993 more than half of the entire coast of Japan was encased in cement. Construction investment is about 18% of the GDP in Japan, where it is 12.4% in the United Kingdom and less than 9% in the U.S. Japan raises about 30 times as much concrete per square foot as the United States.
Kerr, who grew up in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese, thinks that Japan still sees itself as a developing nation, not one with a mature landscape. This propensity to master nature, he says, comes from a historical attitude about nature. He quotes Donald Ritchie, "What's the difference between torturing of bonsai and torturing the landscape?" They are also expanding to Southeast Asia.
This is just the first chapter. He goes on in a similar vein to talk about the hacking of the trees to populate the hillsides with cedar, which may be causing the spike in allergies. He covers Japan's financial system in the third chapter, giving very good evidence that Japan's capital is not based on tangible goods but on government fiat. A giant shell game that requires stock prices to continue to rise, it fell apart in 1990. The problem is it's still falling apart. Chapter 4 deals with the losers' tendency to hide his losses, here done with "cosmetic accounting" and government corporations. Did you know that Japan has two budgets?
Chapter 5, about the bureaucracy, is in some ways the most frightening because the system of power and privilege is so endemic, so interwoven with the government and corporations it is Machiavellian, as is his quote on the first page. Amakudari, "special government corporations" and "public corporations" are the tools. The instruments are over-regulation, with licenses and their inevitable fees (institutionalized bribery) bringing in the money. Kerr points out, as an example, "In short, if you want to teach aerobics, you must run the gamut of four agencies and pay for six permits." Total cost: about 650,000 yen.
The title of the book relates to the propensity of the government to start grand expensive projects while ignoring more difficult, smaller projects that actually improve people's lives. In the chapter entitled Monuments, he exposes an airport built to shuttle radishes to the capital (never mind that it is too expensive to actually ship them that way). Add to that the highway system with mid-level agencies taking their slice of the pie for merely doling out work. Japan is the only industrialized country still building dams (500 more in the next ten years), while others are tearing them down. I now notice small articles in the newspaper almost daily about projects large and small that have no real purpose other than employment of the rural (voting) constituency.
Kerr lives part of the year in Kyoto, part in Bangkok, which he finds much more of a livable place. The Kyoto train station comes in for special scorn for ruining the whole city's architecture. He notes tourism to Kyoto is dropping steadily as there are fewer interesting historical places without unfettered modernism encroaching. In Japan's cities the tangle of electrical wire is a result of government regulations, as well as the sunshine law being the cause of overcrowding. England and Germany are just as crowded as Japan, yet they manage to both keep historical sites and allow their people to live in comfortable housing.
The latter part of the book goes into the theories and thinking that is behind this benign destruction of Japan. He often points to Wakon Yosai (Japanese Spirit, Western Technology) as a marriage made in hell, leading to current abuses.
Education is one particularly good example of this, with compulsory education (western technology) and the feudal desire for total control (Japanese spirit). He opines that the real purpose of education is to inculcate obedience to the group. School is not a pleasant place to be, nor is it one where individualism or creativity is nurtured. Passive complicity with bullies fits into the control aspect of educators. University and post-graduate education are merely ineffective and out so synch with today's needs.
Kerr uses Japanese cinema as an example of the impoverishment of creative spiritual activities in Japan. Unnecessary for the production machine Japan has become, it is an under-funded financial distraction. Internationalization is properly exhibited as a very sad joke, with many examples of insular treatment of foreigners and even Japanese who don't fit the mold, leading to an exodus of creative talent.
Kerr finally examines Japan's ability to change, and comes out less than enthusiastic. His prediction is for a long slow decline into a second-tier economy with little social or economic importance outside, having lost most of its valuable traditions and esthetic. That will be about the time I retire.]]>
By creating workers with interchangeable basic skills, Japan is left without self-motivated, critical thinking, creative talent.
The basic premise of the book is that Japanese "institutions of higher education do not accomplish their aims." He cites Refsing's four-function approach of evaluating education in post-industrialized society. While Japan excels at three of these (socialization, selection and depository), it fails miserably in its primary function, education. The problems are political because the government and large corporations want universities to create interchangeable workers for economic success. But by creating workers with interchangeable basic skills, Japan is left without self-motivated, critical thinking, creative talent.
He decimates the typical arguments defending the status quo at universities. He calls them "daigaku," a term which gradually gains negative connotation throughout the book. These excuses include; 1) Japanese students learn all they need in secondary school, 2) Japanese companies want malleable graduates that they can train themselves, 3) all the universities are the same anyway, 4) Japanese universities should be evaluated using Japanese standards, 5) Japanese culture is different.
McVeigh explores the collusion between government, large corporations and universities in creating a simulacrum, a chimera of what universities should be. Central to all this is the Mombu-gakusho (MEXT). He uses the term educatio-examination regime to show how students, the victims of the system, are observed closely throughout school, but taught little. He shows how student apathy is developed because of cultural and management decisions. He explains in detail how daigaku in Japan only simulate education, just going through the motions.
Most interesting to me is the chapter (7) on how the teaching of English, so prevalent in Japan, is actually a way to define a statist, national identity among the Japanese, reinforcing differences in culture. He quotes a lot of people I know; J.D. Brown, Bill Gatton, Greta Gorsuch, Stewart Hartley, Bern Mulvey, and Stephen Ryan, among others. He shows how Japan's TOEFL scores are so lacking and have not improved even though other Asian nations with fewer resources have. He dissects the JET program and the reactions of the ALTs. He looks at student reactions to English at different levels of education, and how they see entrance examinations. He tells war stories about inter-faculty battles over how to inculcate students with English. He talks about student reticence to speaking as differences between, reticence, reluctance, recalcitrance and resistance. He shows that "Fresh Foreign Faces" are needed not for "Genuine English", but for "Japan-Appropriated English" or even for "Fantasy English".
The great majority of McVeigh's evidence is either gleaned from popular press or academic articles (like the TLT). He fleshes out the basic ideas with anecdotes of experiences of his own or people he knows. There is also an occasional qualitative study to bolster his opinions. This is called an ethnographic approach, which may be seen as weak evidence in some circles, but here, with so many experiences explained by so many sources so close to the situation, it gains in credibility.
I am saddened to say that I have seen many of the same situations he has, in almost as many places, in my 19 years here. He has given those situations a framework with which to look at how education at the daigaku level works here in Japan. If you teach at a university here in Japan, you should definitely read this. You may not agree with everything he says, but my bet is that you will agree with most of it. ]]>