Lately, I have decided to leave Japan after living and working here for the past 8 years as a lecturer at a Japanese university. The main barrier is the language, not so much spoken form but the demands on reading and writing is high and I have lost the motivation to learn Japanese. I think Japan will keep losing out in the long term as unlike other Asian nations, it remains closed to receiving foreign talent. What\`s on paper and what\`s in implementation are two different things? But I like Japan. The other reason is children. My kids will not be able to compete internationally with a Japanese education as Japan\`s education is not academically rigorous. It is easy to get a A or a B and even to pass a course at a Japanese university. So, I am very suspicious of any graduate from a Japanese university apart from the hard sciences course modules in national universities. All other courses are suspect. This explains why universities here do not make it to the international table primarily because it is not an international university as what is normally perceive. Japan remains insular and closed in practice and this can be concerning for my children moving forward. Any thoughts are welcome. I want my kids to have an international education and not a monoculture that doesn\`t promote internalisation and rigor in learning and academics.
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May I ask how you got the opportunity to lecture at a university in Japan? I will be moving there in July on the JET Programme. However, I would eventually like to lecture fine art at a university. Would it be required that I have N1/N2 Japanese?
Why not just send your kids to a university in your home country and then they can get the best of both worlds?
If you don’t want your kids to culturally identify as Japanese, it is probably best to raise them at an international school or in your home country. Although, many parents like that have them go through elementary school here then move. The elementary schools here are pretty solid tbh.
Western universities are the same it’s so easy to get an A and B since everything has been mostly moved online.
>Any thoughts are welcome. I want my kids to have an international education and not a monoculture that doesn`t promote internalisation and rigor in learning and academics.
So preface: what’s right for you and your family isn’t my business, and this post in no way is an attempt to tell you otherwise. I’m part of the peanut gallery here, and I don’t get a vote in how you live your life.
But that said, this isn’t quite clear exactly what you’re calling a monoculture and I’m uncomfortable with it. I believe pretty strongly that Japan is *not* a monoculture, and that’s a hill I’m ready to die on, at least as far as anonymous internet conversations go. I have worked with tons of kids in the Japanese education system who identify all sorts of different ways, not to mention the questionable notion of lumping all Japanese identity together as a monoculture.
But on the other hand, if you’re saying Japanese academia is a monoculture, I’m not totally sure I’ll say no to that. Certainly, it does seem to me that the people who get rewarded and promoted through the Japanese educational system tend to fit with a more specific sort of Japanese demographic. Even Japanese educators I know who fancy themselves to be progressive and worldly tend to reveal parochial attitudes when it comes who is a real educator and who is an assistant, regardless of education, experience, and work history. Maybe you’ve had a raw deal in your job the way I’ve had a raw deal in mine, but while I will defend the multicultural nature of Japan *the country* even though most people take for granted that it is not, I do think that Japanese academia is a different story entirely, at least for what I’ve seen of it.
Good luck to you, wherever you end up.
Japanese academia is one of the 3 pillars that controls the country. The other 2 being the Keidanren and the bureaucrats. Like the other 2 branches, it’s a cabal of mostly right wing ideology that encompasses control over govt policy by being “advisors” on education, medicine, culture, urban planning and other related sectors. That’s one reason it’s quite weak in terms of international standards and why it’s opposed to foreign intrusion. It’s a tribal sinecure populated at the top with connected people from the families of the elites and professional academic families hewing to the “traditional” ways which is sort of the antithesis of what the learning and discovery of academia is all about. You’re making the right move to bail.
There may be all sorts of ways in which Japan is not the right choice for you or your family.
Still, I’d like to take issue with:
>My kids will not be able to compete internationally with a Japanese education as Japan`s education is not academically rigorous. It is easy to get a A or a B and even to pass a course at a Japanese university.
First off, I agree the education here is not that great and it’s not that difficult for mediocre students get high marks — or for any student to pass a course. So I’ll concede that from a certain angle they’re “not academically rigorous.” While I’ve seen people from SEA / ME / Africa / China think the education here is amazing, nearly all Westerners I’ve seen have been shocked at how little rigor the classes have.
But I think there’s two flawed assumptions in what you’re writing past that:
“compete internationally” – what does this really mean? I understand if your kid is trying to set a world record in the 100m dash that it would be critical for them to get training that enables them to compete internationally but for most educational endeavors the phrasing suffers. If they do their educations in Japan, then they’re primarily competing with people in Japan for jobs — or alternately they’re trying to work at international companies that *do* hire people from Japan despite any issues with its educational system.
The second sentence seems to strongly conflate the grades in classes with learning (I think it’s fair that there is connection, but in e.g., MA and PhD programs, the grading scale is nothing like the undergraduate one even if it uses the same letters; similarly, even if they give As easily are the educational outcomes really so different between a creative writing graduate in the US and a humanities major here?).
The way I explain Japanese universities to people abroad is that the classes are terrible, the educational format is bad, but there are some extremely intelligent people doing research in some of them.
So I guess what exactly are you hoping for in your childrens’ education that you believe will be supplied somewhere else?
This place is a monoculture as in they raise everyone to be the same and everyone in the comments trying to pretend otherwise is really troubling. Everyone here is familiar with the nail that sticks out analogy and that shit is SO real in a way we can never understand bc we weren’t raised here. They even expect and want foreigners to fall in line with that monoculture 100% or be ostracized.
So friend, safe travels, get your children out of here unless you want them to be a slight variation on that monoculture mixed in with whatever they are pushed towards bc they are foreigners and exotisized and somehow still have this forced limitation set by Japanese society.
There is no way in fuggin HELL I would allow my child to be raised by this society. International community included.
All fair points . Good luck
I agree with you 100%.
I just posted on another thread about this, but I used the wrong term – isolated vs insular. Insular is what I meant.
But yes, I do agree with you. I will quote a friend doing MA in Education in Japan : Japanese education is obedience-based.
My frustration is the lack of critical thinking skills. Like, absolutely no one can give me a good reason when I ask why kids have to use a randoseru. (NOTE: I found out that actually they don’t, not in my school).
I’m Japanese. And I agree too. Still in the long run, like in centuries long, I think the country will survive.
We indeed have a closed community here. And it still kinda works, at least in some industries. Like idol industry, anime, etc.
That said I dunno what will happen with all the declining birthrate problem.
Maybe work in a us university before the judgment. I cant tell you how many times profs should’ve failed students but passed them anyways…
I feel you. I used to teach at several top Japanese universities and I was forbidden to fail any students. Even if a student never showed, but remained on the rolls, I had to give a D, minimum. We moved to the US when our kids were in elementary school and in our area, there was a Japanese community and a weekend Japanese elementary school. So my kids went to 2 elementary schools, which probably wasn’t all that fun, but my wife insisted (mostly for language and culture, not so much “learning”). My kids both turned out great. Both are fully bilingual and were top students in high school. Both took AP courses as well as technical college courses as high school students. Both were in their top 10 (about 1000 other students in their graduating classes) and my daughter was valedictorian. Both have gone on to STEM degrees at top US universities. Even my J-wife is amazed at the academic excellence here and how much more rigorous it is than in Japan. My wife also has a successful business here and makes a lot more $$$ than she could in Japan, so she’s happy about that too. I’ve since retired back to Japan, but fly back to the States once a year to visit. Anyway, you’re making the right choice IMO and although it can be difficult at times, it’s worth it. Good luck to you!
Moving out of Asia after nine years was a giant mistake for me. If you are from America, the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence.
I do like the suggestions to send your kids to an international school.
I think these are ridiculous generalizations based on personal anecdotes. The Japanese kids I come in contact with daily are much more mature, skilled, and intelligent than the kids I meet when I travel home. But I have also taught in places in Japan where it was complete chaos and then went abroad and met amazing kids. The stats seem to show Japan is an extraordinarily successful society by historical or current standards. Japan is prosperous despite minimal natural resources, safe, peaceful, literate… There are some small pockets of Asia where I meet really on-the-ball young people but also lots of dysfunction in huge swaths of Asia. Where are you comparing? Compared to the US? LOL! I wouldn’t even step off a plane in that hell hole. UK? No thank you.
I had a similar conversation with my (Japanese) girlfriend, and she more or less hit all those points. I’m an ALT right now and probably going home after the year is done, but when I told one of my teachers that kids in America can forced to repeat grades if they fail classes, she looked so shocked and bewildered that something like that could ever occur you would have thought I had just confessed to some horrible crime.
Remind me in 3 years.You will mostly come back
>It is easy to get a A or a B and even to pass a course at a Japanese university.
I was heavily involved with foreign students at my university. All of the Japanese students would say university in Japan was much easier. Even friends who studied abroad in Japan mentioned the difference.
I am a Japanese software engineer.
I think I am at a great disadvantage in terms of language.
A search in Japanese does not yield any decent information.
I can read and write a little English, but it is not as efficient as doing it in my native language.
I think it is better not to make Japanese the first language of your child.
100% this. I’ve determined that I’ve got one or two more years in me (I’ve been in Japan just over seven years). I’m actually looking at other non Asian countries besides going back home to the US.
Damn you didn’t learn Japanese in 8 god damn years?
>It is easy to get a A or a B and even to pass a course at a Japanese university. So, I am very suspicious of any graduate from a Japanese university apart from the hard sciences course modules in national universities. All other courses are suspect.
Buddy, you just said that it’s easy to get As and Bs but you’re still putting STEM on a pedestal? Lol. Did you forget about the STAP cell fiasco? Every Japanese academic who wins the Nobel prize while doing the majority of their research outside of Japan? Let’s not pretend that the hard sciences are a bastion of academic rigour *in Japan* of all places.
I live in Japan and it’s very hard to get into the top universities here, we live in London but my kids prefer to live and study here in Japan!
Whereas I agree with you on some points regarding education here, Japan is doing totally fine and I think you’re in for a rude awakening if you’re returning to the West. You talk about monoculture like it’s a bad thing, even though we have the privilege of living safely due to that very culture. If you’re going to the US with Asian kids, you’re definitely in for a surprise. Good luck.
Japanese people seem pretty smart to me, though. Way smarter, less opinionated, more willing to learn, than the average New Yorker or frenchman, for example.
Good luck in finding a country where monoculture is not the norm.
I agree. You only have to look at the dreadful standard of Japanese doctors to know this. If even a medical degree is not that rigorous, what can we expect of other disciplines?!