The Department

1.

The Department

Motto: The word for “university” in Chinese and Japanese: 大学 (pronounced “daigaku” in Japanese), literally meaning “great education.” It’s worth comparing this with the meaning of “universitas.”

In the early 2000s, I was convinced that the Japanese labor market no longer offered any acceptable job opportunities for me.

I had worked as a part-time lecturer (the lowest level of employment in every sense) at various institutions that called themselves universities. I had also been involved in restructuring near-bankrupt international programs. I worked in rural areas, commuting weekly between Tokyo and Hamamatsu (a provincial city 260 kilometers from the capital). After a workplace accident, however, I resigned from that job.

I continued teaching in one of Tokyo’s international programs, and in New Zealand, I collaborated with colleagues to establish a new department and major at a local college. I spent three months each year in Auckland. During this time, I received a promising job posting from a former colleague. A prestigious private university in Tokyo was seeking teachers for a newly forming department.

The job openings were advertised only outside Japan, in The Chronicle of Higher Education (a renowned American education weekly). They were looking for foreign applicants—or rather, non-Japanese, multilingual candidates.

Before preparing my application, I did thorough research. Both my Japanese and foreign colleagues working in Japan unanimously advised me not to apply.

Their reasoning was as follows: The higher education institution, besides its long history, was known for hiring almost exclusively its own graduates as teachers, managers, and administrators (over 90 percent of its staff). This “tradition” ensured loyalty to the university, as former students were familiar with the teachers, managers, and administrators. (At some prestigious American universities, this practice is strictly prohibited.)

However, this insider culture had its downsides as well. By the early 2000s, the university’s overall educational and research standards had sunk to unprecedented levels.

Unbelievable but true stories circulated about the teachers and their classes. In some faculties, most teachers scheduled their lectures early in the morning or late at night—sometimes on Saturday mornings—hoping that fewer students would attend. One professor offered students a significant discount on his new book during the first lecture, and those who bought it didn’t need to attend class at all and would still receive a passing grade automatically.

An Oxford colleague who visited the university described these classes as being like Walt Disney series—except that they weren’t funny. (In short, Mickey Mouse classes.)

At the beginning of the 2000s, as demographers had warned a decade earlier, the number of university applicants began to decline. Like other institutions, this university derived a significant portion of its income from tuition fees and entrance exams. Understandably, it feared that its already severe financial difficulties (due to massive debts) would worsen. Its reputation had deteriorated, and it was becoming less attractive to both domestic and international students.

The proposed solution was to establish a new “international” department, which the Ministry of Education believed would increase the number of both domestic and foreign students. The ministry supported this reform with significant funding, encouraging the country’s top universities to “open up” by introducing bilingual programs and requiring Japanese students to study abroad for at least one semester.

In Japan, reform often means preserving the old system while adding a few new elements. In the best-case scenario, the new slightly modifies the old; in the worst-case scenario, the old structure absorbs the new elements. Unfortunately, in this department’s case, the latter occurred.

After a lengthy bureaucratic process, the university leadership obtained the necessary approval from the ministry (and the accompanying state funding) and began sifting through applications. More than 2,000 applications were submitted for ten positions, and I was one of the applicants.

While working in New Zealand, I received notification that I had been invited to an interview in Tokyo. The university didn’t cover travel expenses. Later, after I was hired, a colleague explained that those who couldn’t afford the trip weren’t worthy of working at such a prestigious university.

According to the admissions committee’s letter, the interview was to be conducted in English, and I was required to prepare detailed descriptions of four different courses in six copies, which I had to personally hand over to the committee members before the interview.

The interview, contrary to the letter, was conducted in Japanese. Two weeks later, back in New Zealand, I was informed that I had been hired. (The new department began teaching a year later.)

Despite this, I received two letters after my successful admission. One required me to declare that I would not seek any other jobs until the department started operating a year later. The other letter, titled “A Contract-Like Document That Is Not a Contract,” listed the weekly teaching hours, the duration of paid leave, and the possibility of joining the university’s pension fund—making it seem like a “retirement” job. (I only learned about my salary when I received my first paycheck in April 2004.)

In the spring of 2004, before the academic year began, the “new” department’s staff gathered. It turned out that the department wasn’t really new. Four-fifths of the staff consisted of employees who had taught “English conversation” on other faculties or taught various unrelated subjects. Only eight of us—newly hired foreign and Japanese colleagues who had previously lived abroad—were clearly in the minority. The department had 56 full-time employees, including a head and three deputies who had also transferred from other faculties.

I still remember one transferred colleague’s words, directed at us newcomers: “We worked for months to set up this new department. Now it’s your turn—we’ve done enough.” In return for agreeing to join the “new” department, university leadership had promised them various informal privileges that we newcomers knew nothing about.

The first semester began with two transferred colleagues immediately going on two years’ paid sabbatical. This mattered because the ministry had set enrollment targets for the department’s first eight semesters. Since the number of transferred staff decreased, we newcomers had to teach more hours than originally planned. During the first two years, eight transferred staff members went on sabbatical.

The university’s reform, which I had seen implemented in other institutions, initially seemed to work here too. However, behind the scenes, familiar patterns re-emerged…