A series of six articles in Shukan Gendai (3 March) looked at what changes are occurring at Japan’s universities in the current era of low birth rates.
In the fifth article in the series, the magazine voices a surprisingly negative view of so-called kikoku shijo, the term used to describe Japanese returnees, who have been raised and educated abroad. Its eye-catching headline, quoting a human resources manager at a major corporation, reads, “If English is the only thing they’re good at, we don’t need them to work here”.
The article begins with a quote from an individual identified only as “Mr A” at a car dealership that has hired new sales staff to work at its headquarters. Problems, he says, have repeatedly cropped up with one particular new arrival, who was brought up in the United States, concerning her way of interacting with potential customers.
“‘Is there something with which you’re dissatisfied?’ she asked an indecisive customer”, reported Mr A. “Even after I warned her about using that tone, she asked me, po faced, ‘Did I say something wrong?’
“It was clear she wasn’t being malicious, but in a situation where a customer is considering purchasing a car, it would have been more appropriate to adopt a more humble tone and ask, ‘Might there be something that’s not clear to you?’. The problem is, her Japanese just isn’t very good”.
According to “Mr B”, who works in human resources for a major trading firm, “The policy of hiring candidates who are adept at English (scoring 900 or higher in the TOEIC examination) typically involves top-down directives from upper management who are promoting globalisation. But human resources departments are concerned that new staff are unable to meet Japan’s societal requirements, and when this becomes a problem in the organisation, the responsibility invariably falls on their department”.
In terms of general knowledge, their shortcomings are often evident from written tests. “They can’t solve maths problems for maths learnt at the primary school level and can’t even correctly write the name of the current prime minister”, said “Mr C”, a human resources manager at a major manufacturing firm. “In total, their English ability makes up for the shortfall, but their ability is below that of graduates from top schools, such as Keio and Waseda”.
Nor are the Japan offices of foreign businesses an exception. At one firm, “complaints were circulating from the US headquarters that this particular Japanese staff member ‘couldn’t understand English’”. What they meant in this case was that he lacked a specialised understanding of finance and securities.
The article doesn’t go quite as far as suggesting the returnees’ acquisition of foreign language skills overseas is of little benefit, but it is clearly critical of their weakness in working with others as a close-knit group—an attribute to which great importance is attached in Japan.
This is by no means a new debate, but the Shukan Gendai’s writer weakens his argument to some extent by extolling “traditional Japanese corporate hiring practices”, since “lifelong employment” and related traditions in the Japanese workplace have been eroding since the 1990s.