Do you guys have any advice on how to find adjunct lecturer jobs (or equivalent) in Japan? Is it possible with a basic level of Japanese (say, N5)? I started learning only two months ago at barely half an hour a day since I feel guilty about working on anything not-dissertation nowadays.
I am just wrapping up my ph.d from a US uni (if it makes a difference, it’s an ivy league one) and I have taught social science research methods & statistics classes since I was an undergraduate. I designed and taught two graduate courses, so I think I can bring an engaging class if all the students are fluent in English but I am having a hard time finding a job posting that doesn’t require me to use google translate.
Anyways, long and short of it – is there any chance of finding a uni teaching job in Japan without high Japanese proficiency? If so, how does one go about it? What are the websites etc, please help if you know 🙂 Thank you!
9 comments
Short answer, no.
Slightly less short answer, anything that’s not English will be taught in Japanese in nearly all cases. Colleges that have course tracks in English aren’t that great and are already oversaturated with applications from people that can’t teach in Japanese. Further than that, anything less than n1 and serious time in the country might as well be n99 and if you’re serious about a career in academia here you will have to take care of the majority of your responsibilities in Japanese.
Also adjunct positions are a revolving door here, just like in America more of the course load is being pawned off on adjuncts on limited contracts and tenure positions are hyper competitive. A career adjunct usually has to juggle classes at 2-3 universities to make a decent wage, and the chances to transition out of being an adjunct into a full professor can be very slim.
I spoke zero Japanese when I first came. As long as you can bring something to the table (experience, expertise or a gold star ^(your ivy league degree) ) you should be able to find some part time positions. Just remember, you may need two or three contracts to have a good life and that may take some traveling. Don’t get discouraged if you have to take a two hour train ride to a far away school once or twice a week, it may be worth it to make connections.
Extremely unlikely but there’s a tiny chance you could find something.
Even a PhD is not uncommon nowadays, everyone has one. Learn Japanese and get published .
Extremely unlikely. New grad with a PhD with limited to no real-world experience (TA experience isn’t really recognized as teaching experience) or publications, coupled by a nonexistent ability to communicate in Japanese. Unless you have some well-built connection, you’ll be hard pressed to find a university position in Japan.
1. all full-time university jobs are done through [https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekTop](https://jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekTop)
2. some are posted in English – sometimes that means they want to hire someone non-Japanese; sometimes that means it’s a university policy but they have no intention of hiring someone who is not Japanese.
3. having a PhD from an Ivy helps — ~~assuming they’ve heard of your Ivy (they know Harvard,Yale, Stanford but not Princeton and Brown).~~ [edited to clarfiy] Here, it’s important to understand that you need to view this in terms of the *perceived* reputation the university in Japan both among Japanese academics generally and Japanese academics in that field. Both matter because the people deciding the hiring are often not in your field (so, nearly everyone in Japan still thinks Harvard/Oxford are the best for everything and will give you a big boost; they’re not going to be as familiar with what Brown is great at. Princeton is oddly underestimated in many fields in Japan).
4. It’s going to matter greatly what specific social science your PhD is in as to whether they believe it’s best done by someone Japanese or not.
5. Your students won’t really be all that fluent in English.
6. University calendar here is almost without exception: April to August / October to February (note how that doesn’t match the US).
by “adjunct” do you mean 1 year positions or part-time positions?
Post-doc style adjuncts is not as much of a thing here; part-time teaching classes is a thing here but largely not something a university will bring a person from abroad to do.
Post-docs themselves are generally managed through/by JSPS.
​
In slight disagreement with another poster, I think the English-language programs come in three flavors:
1. attempts by the top-tier national and private universities where they believe they can put together competent programs in English. They hire faculty from outside of Japan regularly and the Japanese administration believes they want to be global. Students are what they are (some will be fluent beyond expectations; others will be sub-communicative).
2. Mid-tier boondoggles trying to mirror the best places but unwilling to hire a critical mass of non-Japanese (students are basically EFL learners).
3. Institutions on the brink of financial collapse who would only hire foreigners as English teachers (students are warming seats until graduation).
I should also mention that most people who post here are English teachers or university English teachers, so some of what they write doesn’t reflect the situation for people in other disciplines. That being said, I have a PhD in a humanity and a respectable number of publications in well-ranked international journals. While teaching English at a university, I’ve only made it to 3 interviews despite applying to about 10 jobs / year when I was actively pursuing moving.
Although it’s not a Japanese university it might be worth taking a look at Temple University Japan campus in Tokyo.
I have never heard of an adjunct lecturer with visa sponsorship. You might be able to get sponsored for a visa if you get a temporary ‘full time’ position (which will last for a few years); however, most such positions have explicit requirements for Japanese language ability of some sort.
If you have a doctorate in hand *and* a valid visa, you should be able to find adjunct positions if you are already in Japan. However, unless you’re in a big city, you may have trouble finding enough work to support yourself, as many universities limit the number of courses a single adjunct can teach. Also, you’ll be competing with people who have legs up because of connections and language ability. **N.B.:** Even for adjunct positions, you’ll be expected to have an in-person interview; remote video interviews *have* become more popular over the last few years, but as far as I can tell they’re not an option in many cases.
u/univworker is right about [jrecin.jst.go.jp](https://jrecin.jst.go.jp); as a rule of thumb, if you cannot read the listing for the job without a dictionary, the job’s likely not for you.
Are you planning to stay in academia after a year in Japan, or move into industry or something? I agree with u/univworker’s assessment of English programs, and will add that even at top-tier places, the majority of international hires are Not permanent and never will be (many are in fact dependent on the whims of governmental grants). Normally, I say that to try to give a dose of reality to people believing academic jobs are easier to get in Japan, but your post makes it sound like you’re not really looking to get a footing in academia.
If you were, I would suggest more seriously looking into a JSPS postdoc. They are generous and you don’t need Japanese if your field/advisor isn’t dependent on it. No universities will sponsor someone to be an adjunct. Many don’t even give adjuncts formal paperwork until just before starting, and it wouldn’t be enough to get a working visa from outside of the country. They’re almost exclusively hired through connections, and the need for Japanese language will depend on the field–but it’s rare to find adjunct positions that don’t need Japanese and aren’t English as a foreign language classes.
If you don’t plan on staying in academia and you had enough money to take care of yourself for a year anyway, why not just attend Japanese language school? You would get a new skill and a visa. You can work part-time as a student–if you lucked out it might actually be possible for you to find an adjunct position to teach a class or two once you’re here.
>Do you guys have any advice on how to find adjunct lecturer jobs (or equivalent) in Japan?
Here’s my two cents:
First, your best shot for a job is at a university with English as a Medium of Instruction ([EMI](https://jalt-publications.org/sites/default/files/pdf-article/jalt2017-pcp-036.pdf)) classes. The Ministry of Education (MEXT) has a program (they keep changing the name) called “[top global](https://tgu.mext.go.jp/en/index.html)”. One of the requirements to be a top global university is to have EMI classes.
In addition to the the top global, there are other universities that have EMI programs as well. These can vary in quality and purpose. Some of them are quite good like the [Liberal Arts program at Doshisha](https://ila.doshisha.ac.jp/en/) and some are pretty mediocre like the Asian studies program at [Kansai Gaidai](https://www.kansaigaidai.ac.jp/asp/). But if you are only looking for temporary work, then they should be fine for you.
The [JPSS](https://www.jpss.jp/en/) [website](https://www.jpss.jp/en/univ/english/) has a list of universities with both types of programs mixed together, but you’ll notice that it is not a long list.
Second, these universities teach a mix of Japanese and foreign students and they hire non-Japanese professors from abroad to teach a variety of subjects in English. These positions are full-time, limited-term contract. Usually a one year contract renewable up to five years total.
But just like universities in the US they hire by specific subject. So if your PhD. is social science: psychology but they are looking to hire someone who is social science: international studies, they won’t be interested in you. You will need to find a place that is looking to hire someone in your specific field.
Third, direct hire English teaching positions are probably a waste of your time. At the university level being a native speaker of English isn’t really considered a qualification and it can’t be your *only* qualification. To get a job, even an limited term EFL position, requires that you have multiple qualifications (degree in the subject, teaching experience, publications, etc.). Now before people start playing that ‘but I know a guy who got a job’ game, it is technically possible but you’ll have to be lucky–quite lucky as these jobs are pretty competitive. In fact, I’d argue that EFL positions are more competitive then EMI positions. In my experience, EMI programs have a hard time finding people because depending on the subject, Japan is a backwater. For EFL and applied linguistics Japan is one of the main arenas. The trouble with EMI positions is just that there are so few of them.
​
>Is it possible with a basic level of Japanese (say, N5)?
EMI programs will not expect you to have any Japanese ability which is one of the reasons I think you should pursue that kind of employment.
​
>I feel guilty about working on anything not-dissertation nowadays
I see what you mean. Your dissertation is far more important than preparing for your vacation. I understand fantasizing about living in Japan is a nice distraction, but eyes on the prize…
​
> is there any chance of finding a uni teaching job in Japan without high Japanese proficiency?
There is a chance but speaking frankly it is small. In my experience, one of the things that many people fail to realize just how small the higher education field is in Japan. There are fewer than 800 institutions and less than three million students. In contrast to the other three largest economies: the US has 4000 institutions and nearly 20 million students. The EU has over 18 million students at more than 2700 institutions. China has over 44 million students at nearly 3000 institutions.
And (for people on this sub who want to teach English) you have to factor in that the vast majority of Japanese universities only follow the MEXT minimum foreign language requirement (one 2 credit course usually taught by a Japanese professor) so the number of institutions that hire ‘native English speakers’ is quite small. We don’t have good numbers on this, but probably only about 300 to 350 institutions have English programs above the minimum. The number of EMI programs is less than 50 institutions.
So, there is a chance, but it is slim.
​
>What are the websites etc
I posted that here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/teachinginjapan/comments/14vdi0y/comment/jrdj4t7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachinginjapan/comments/14vdi0y/comment/jrdj4t7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
​
My advice, and I think that a lot of people are going to object to this, is to apply for a job with a company like [Westgate](https://www.westgatejapan.com/). They are an outsourcing company that Japanese universities use to hire foreigners for them. The advantage is that they hire from overseas and aren’t too fussed about qualifications, including Japanese ability. In fact you might be too qualified for them.
Don’t get me wrong, these are lousy jobs that will pay you just enough to live here, but if all you want is to fund a long vacation in Japan and aren’t trying to building a career here, then this might be ok for you.
Good luck!