JET impresses a generation: Yale professor lauds program for broad impact
"There are conspiracy theories...[about] the Japanese trying to mold world opinion and create a cadre of Manchurian candidates out there," said Yale University Prof. Michael Auslin, describing one rather paranoid view of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.
The Manchurian Candidate is a U.S. movie in which a group of Americans are secretly brainwashed for nefarious purposes while being held captive overseas.
"They may well have succeeded," Auslin added, "but I would be one of them."
He was just kidding about that last part. Auslin was indeed part of the JET Program, teaching English at two schools in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, in 1991-92, but the pleasant and affable professor appeared anything but sinister when he spoke with The Daily Yomiuri over a glass of iced tea earlier this month in Tokyo.
In a more serious moment, reflecting on the fact that the program has so far had more than 46,000 participants from 44 countries, Auslin said, "I think you're really talking, in terms of numbers, about one of the most significant cultural exchange programs ever.
on top of that, what stuns me is...if you go around to [Western] people who are involved professionally with Japan, and you do a very unscientific poll, I think I consistently get somewhere between a quarter and a third of the people have been on JET."
Calling the JET Program one of the most successful grassroots exchanges in history," Auslin said it compares favorably with such older and better-known programs as the Rhodes scholarship program in Britain and the Fulbright scholarship program in the United States in "the degree to which it has somehow, for whatever reason, inspired a fair number of people to ultimately devote their lives professionally to Japan, and that's no small feat."
This is a judgment Auslin is unusually well qualified to make. Already the author of one book on Japan's relations with the West--Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2004)--Auslin is now at work on a second.
The new book, tentatively titled Pacific Cosmopolitans, will focus on "the history of cultural exchange between Japan and the U.S., which was in no small part influenced by the luck I had with various activities including JET."
"As a scholar and then as someone who sends students off, we don't think twice about the idea of 'cultural exchange.' We just use that term," Auslin said. "But 100 years ago that didn't even exist. No one said, 'This is cultural exchange.' So there's been a real change in the way that people, number one, actually do interact [such as on the JET Program]...but then also how we think about it."
Reflecting on the place of JET in the "cultural exchange" sphere, Auslin said: "Whether or not it was designed to introduce Japan to a whole generation, in essence, of young Westerners, that's certainly what it's done. And it did it in a way that was obviously guided from the top in terms of planning and initial execution...but I think the genius of it is that the actual experience is utterly hands-off...There's no government presence on your year there, so you truly feel that this is you as a young person, in probably their mid-20s, just lucky to be in Japan--hopefully in a good situation; not everyone has a good one--but the idea [is] that it's really your own experience, what you do in this community with this job. And it's not meeting a bureaucrat every week to report, and it's not having them guide you.
"At the end of the day, it really just does come down to people-to-people exchanges, and a little bit that depends on how effective you are as both a teacher and a cultural ambassador."
Asked about his own experiences in that regard, Auslin said: "I was lucky...I only had two schools, so I was at one for three days a week and the other for two, which was really nice because I felt centered and sort of in a community."
He remembers his JET experience as a "golden period where you really have few responsibilities, but it was a lot of fun and every day was a learning experience."
As for the English-teaching aspects of the job, "we were all sort of human tape recorders, [but] I didn't mind it that much because [the Japanese teachers of English] were kind people and I just got up there and did my thing, and we'd try to make some games...I don't think ultimately it made a lot of difference, but it probably made it a little bit more fun to do English, which is maybe all you can hope for. I have no illusions that it added to the linguistic abilities of that particular set of students, but I think they had a good time at least."
Auslin's JET experience affected the way he teaches today at Yale, where his subjects include Japanese history "from ancient times to modern, [plus] usually a lecture or two a year and then what we call junior seminars. Those are on different topics, U.S.-Japan relations or the samurai...And clearly my time on JET was crucial to how I teach, because I was here and I could go to Kyoto and go to Nara, and without that I just don't think I'd have the same insight to what I'm actually teaching."
Auslin said that at least two or three of his Yale students have gone to Japan on the JET Program after graduation themselves, and he wishes the number were higher.
In addition to his classes and books, Auslin writes op-ed pieces and journal articles and has started a series of presentations on Japan-U.S. relations by lecturers from outside of academia, ranging from violinist Midori Goto to a former commander of the U.S. forces in Japan.
It's safe to assume that such a range of activities is not the work a "Manchurian candidate." But are there any real-life ways that Auslin's time in Japan changed him as a person?
"It certainly made me a sake lover, that's for sure."