The Language Teacher
September 2001
Inventing Japanese Students
James W. Porcaro
Toyama University of International Studies
A view of elementary school
My daughter's graduation from elementary school this year and her entry to junior high school leads me to reflect on her six years of primary education. It draws my concern, as well, to expected changes in her educational environment and learning experience. She attended two ordinary public schools -- one in Osaka for grades one to four, the other in Toyama for grades five and six -- and had very good experiences at both schools. During those years I was able to attend in total about two-dozen regular classroom lessons that were open to parents. From those observations, overall awareness of her school work, conversations with each of her teachers over the years, and myself having given English lessons in five different classes at those schools, it is clear to me that she was in an educational environment which generally corresponded to the observations of Merry White (1987) in The Japanese Educational Challenge.
In a typical fifth grade math classroom, for example, she found "children were shouting out ideas for possible answers, suggesting methods, exclaiming excitedly over a solution" (p. 114). She noted:
Several characteristics of the class deserve highlighting. First, priority was given to feelings, predispositions, and opportunities for discovery rather than providing facts and getting to an answer fast. The teacher emphasized process, engagement, and commitment rather than discipline . . . and outcome. Second, assignments were made to groups . . . Individual progress and achievement are closely monitored, but children are supported, praised, and allowed scope for trial and error within the group (p. 114-115).
White also concluded: "American educational rhetoric does invoke the idea of 'the whole child', value 'self-expression', and promote emotional engagement in 'discovery learning'. But Japanese teaching style, at least in primary schools [italics added], employs all three in a mode that surpasses most American efforts" (pp. 121-122).
Constructed images of Japanese students
This kind of elementary school experience belies an image of Japanese students continually propounded by both many native-speaker and Japanese English teachers, especially at the tertiary level. Indeed, EFL literature often "presents a distorted account of Japanese learners and classrooms" (Susser, 1998a, p. 49) to the extent that "the constant repetition and cross-citation of clichés about Japan invest them with 'a kind of intellectual authority' that obstructs our work as EFL teachers in Japan" (Susser, 1998b, p. 84).
Characterizations of Japanese students are often given as if they are innate, invariable, and universally manifest, leaving teachers but to accommodate them and not to expect much from their efforts to change them. Some of the traits commonly ascribed to Japanese students include passivity, shyness, suppression of individual thoughts and opinions to the constraints of group consensus, and preference for memorization over originality, formula over creativity.
But that is not my daughter. Nor, by and large, is it the other girls and boys that have been her classmates and friends throughout elementary school. (See Susser, [1998a] for citations of numerous studies that support the challenge to the aforementioned characterizations being applied with a broad brush to include Japanese elementary school students.)
Approaches to hansei
Greer (2000, p. 188) refers to hansei, group reflection sessions, used in elementary schools as a means for constantly monitoring students' actions by the group in order that they learn "correct" feelings and behaviors. Sources are cited to describe hansei as "a powerful mechanism of control . . . [to make students] conform to adult expectations" (Sato, 1996) and training that discourages nonconformity "as disruptive of group unity and a sign of character weakness" (Rohlen, 1996).
After I showed this reference to my daughter's sixth grade teacher, she readily acknowledged that manner of hansei probably fits the practice of most elementary school teachers. Yet she firmly asserted ("zettai muri") that is not her way. She uses hansei in her class distinctly to foster and encourage individual expression along with understanding and acceptance of different feelings, thoughts, and actions among her students. Indeed, such is the strength of her resolve in this matter that she persists with these objectives though she has received complaints from some mothers about her approach. The point is that hansei, for example, is not a culturally determined practice that is carried out by Japanese because they are Japanese, but a practice that is implemented in a deliberately determined manner by individual teachers.
Critiques of views of Japanese learning traits
My concern now is for what lies ahead for my daughter in junior high school and senior high school. Even then, however, insofar as the traits often ascribed to Japanese students may generally describe their cognitive style from those school levels, McVeigh (1995), for one, makes quite clear that "though a formalized learning style does seem to be prominent in many spheres of Japanese social life, there are other styles of thinking. There is nothing deterministic, or anything uniquely Japanese about [this] cognitive style" (p. 3). He explains further:
It springs forth from a politico-economically managed education system that overemphasizes examinations as a means to weed out less-than-desirable workers. This explanation, and not misty culturalist theorizings, is at the root of the Japanese style of learning . . . Given [the] goals of the Japanese politico-economic and educational system, it is not surprising that Japanese students... have developed a particular cognitive strategy that, given what occurs in the typical Japanese classroom, is a very rational response . . . quite appropriate for an exam-centered system (McVeigh, pp. 6-7).
Susser (1998a) uses the discourse of Orientalism from Edward W. Said as a framework to critique descriptions of Japanese education and students found in EFL literature on Japan. Referring to the characteristics of othering, stereotyping, representing, and essentializing that form the model of Orientalism, and reviewing a wide range of studies, he effectively debunks and discredits the stereotypes and generalizations in many accounts, "fictions [that] have been woven into a pervasive discourse that shapes our descriptions and then our perceptions of Japanese learners and classrooms" (p. 64).
In Vlastos (1998), contributors postulate and examine "invented traditions of modern Japan", finding their ideological and constructed nature, complicated relationship to social power, and use as instruments of social control that serve hegemonic interests. We might think of the common characterizations of Japanese students in the same manner as "inventions", serving the ideology of nihonjinron and the supposed uniqueness of Japaneseness, and with it the maintenance of control of Japanese students and their learning. They provide as well a cover for the wholly inadequate standard teaching of English in so many Japanese schools. We cannot deny the existence of these traits, but as for the invention of modern traditions, we need to arrive at a historical and contextual understanding: "How, by whom, under what circumstances, and to what social and political effect are certain practices and ideas formulated, institutionalized, and propagated" (p. 5).
Conclusion
We should differentiate elementary education in Japan from that of higher school levels and recognize the deliberate, determined nature of the practices of teaching and learning. As parents and educators we need to encourage and support those teachers and educational settings that provide students a full and rich learning experience. As classroom teachers of English, we must not buy into cultural determinism and pamper, promote, and perpetuate presumed learning styles that, in fact, have a shallow base and may be readily altered. We need to be adept and masterful in our teaching and aim to effect the kind of classroom environment and educational experience for our students that we deem ideal. I hope that my daughter will find at least some degree of this in her new circumstances.
References
Greer, D. (2000). "The eyes of hito": A Japanese cultural monitor of behavior in the communicative classroom. JALT Journal 22 (1), 183-195.
McVeigh, B. (1995). The formalized learning style of Japanese students. Paper presented at the JALT Conference, Nagoya.
Susser, B. (1998a). EFL's othering of Japan: Orientalism in English languageteaching. JALT Journal 20 (1), 49-82.
Susser, B. (1998b). The author responds. JALT Journal 20 (2), 83-85.
Vlastos, S. (ed.). (1998). Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
White, M. (1987). The Japanese educational challenge: A commitment to children. Tokyo: Kodansha.
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