JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION
is often contrasted with western management practices that are insensitive to input
from factory workers (Dore 1973). Outside the business sense it also has the
connotation in Japanese of simply continuous improvement and, although it is not
always a conscious part of the working, social or home life, an emphasis on small,
incremental change over time is certainly evident in Japan (Imai 1997). Hori’s
participant observation in a monastery bears out the ubiquitous nature of this
concept in the culture of teaching and learning in Japan. “Kaizen, the constant step-
by-step analysis, standardization, and improvement of tasks in, for example, a
Japanese automobile factory, nicely parallels the monk’s constant attempt to make
his way of working more and more efficient … both are institutionalized ways of
learning from failure” (Hori 1996, p. 47).
Closely related to kaizen is hansei, another process that has proven important to
my study of meetings at EUC because it is purported to be such a conscious part of
the Japanese professional culture. Hansei (literally “reflection,” “introspection,” or
“reconsideration”) is a self-reflective critical process that is taught during formal
schooling in Japan, but is later utilized in a variety of situations: high school,
university clubs, company training programs, etc. (Rohlen & LeTendre 1996b, p.
7). This critical self-awareness and reflection is an important part of schooling in
Japan. The process of hansei as the focus on errors as a useful data for reflection
involves an inherent element of goal setting to improve (kaizen) on past
performance. This nuance became evident to me when I misused the term in a
faculty meeting and was subsequently warned by a colleague for not considering
the long-term implication of actually following through on the self-criticism and
demonstrating concrete plans for implementing self-reform measures. Nancy Sato
(2004) also notes this complementary element of goal setting.
Basic skills in cooperation are taught by teachers and “the primary means for
learning to work with others was, I think, hansei (reflection). It’s hard to spend
even a few hours in an elementary classroom without experiencing hansei. After
group activities, group members often reflected on the quality of their cooperation”
(Lewis 1995). In the professional world some argue that even among the most
accomplished, “there is a continual search for improvement, a looking outside
oneself (hansei) or one’s company for renewed dedication and insight. The
increments of improvement are often miniscule, but they are real all the same.
Perfectability [kaizen] builds on past accomplishments” (Rohlen & LeTendre
1996a, p. 375).
If not as often discussed directly in the literature on Japanese business as
nemawashi or kaizen, hansei is mentioned frequently as an important concept by
observers of education. “I think it’s an important puzzle piece in our understanding
of Japanese education” says Lewis (1995, p. 122). She feels that hansei is a
powerful process and “undergirds discipline, group formation, efforts to foster the
‘whole child’s’ development, and academic learning as well” (Lewis 1995, p. 170).
Is this also a key concept influencing the reform discourses at EUC? “Is it
possible,” Lewis asks rhetorically, “to maintain a habit of self-criticism and yet
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CHAPTER 1
have the benefits of high self-esteem, such as willingness to undertake
challenges?” In the classrooms she observed her answer was “yes.”
There is a healthy self-criticism of academic practice at EUC. Lewis and others
(Goodman, personal communication) have attributed to hansei the fact that
“Japanese children and parents consistently rate children’s educational
achievement less favorably than do American parents and children—an ironic fact,
given the higher actual achievement of Japanese children” (Lewis 1995, p. 121).
This same mechanism functions in the reform processes at the level of Japanese
HE. Nemawashi, kaizen, and hansei prove to be useful constructs when analyzing
the meeting discourses unfolding in the many social arenas at EUC, proceedings
that appear to the outsider not to be very constructive. These professional processes
of inclusion, improvement, and introspection both influence the professors’ role
identity as “professor” as well as drive the institutional process of reform.
Aisatsu genre
Clammer (2000) has lamented the lack of just this kind of creative analysis of
Japanese society. He feels Japanese society has been subjected to an
overabundance of political economic, culturalist, and “classical” theories. These
approaches are static in nature, that is, “they concentrate … on structural
characteristics of the society and culture and on sets of classificatory principles,
which are supposed somehow to “capture” the reality that actually constitutes
Japan …” (Clammer 2000, p. 204). What may be missing is the important
recognition of indigenous categories of thought and action in the language of
Japanese society. For example, through ethnographic description of the Ilongots of
the Philippines, Michelle Rosaldo (1982), the late linguistic anthropologist,
demonstrates convincingly that the indigenous speech act theories of western
linguists reflect more the “locally prevalent” and subjective, even biased, notions
of academics than any sort of universal, objective reality. Her argument resonates
with David Parkin’s reminder that the “etic rationality of the external observer…is
assumed to be over and above these folk rationalities and to be based on universal
rather than particular cultural rules, an assumption which ignores ethnocentric
intellectual bias” (Parkin 1976, p. 166). In this book, though I do not make bold
claims of convincingly demonstrating a salient failing of ethnocentrism in the
anthropology of Japan, hopefully I am at least sensitive to the flexibility of
indigenous categories, a diversity that necessitates close inspection by the
anthropologist.
In my observation of university meetings I found that it is the “small cultures”
of activities within a social group rather than the nature of the community itself
that influences the language use of its members. The performative focus of
interaction exhibited by speakers contrasts with the social function of the event,
resulting in a myriad of language possibilities beyond prediction through the
application of simple permutation theories. In my ethnographic account, some
social events or arenas, such as the faculty senate, contrast with others, such as
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