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[nomad soul]

Fear for jobs ignites "English crisis" in Japan
By Mariko Katsumura, Reuters|Stringer
TOKYO | Thu Sep 22, 2011
(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/uk-japan-english-idUSLNE78L02A20110922)

TOKYO (Reuters) - It's eight in the morning in a Tokyo office building, and a dozen middle-aged Japanese businessmen sit inside small booths, sweating as they try to talk English to the instructors in front of them.

"I hope my wife will understand my hobby," one 40-something man says, opening his mouth widely around the English words. He is one of legions of Japanese businessmen, or "salarymen," struggling with a language they thought they had left behind them in school as fears mount that the growing push by Japanese companies into overseas business will mean a dark future for them without usable English.

This is especially true these days, with the strong yen and a lagging domestic market prompting more firms to look overseas for business opportunities essential for their bottom lines. "I had a business trip to Amsterdam last year and that really was tough. My boss spoke no English, and I had to speak English for the first time in 10 years," said Masahide Tachibana, a 39-year-old software developer. Tachibana now gets up at 5:00 a.m. to take morning lessons at a central Tokyo branch of Gaba, an English language school. "I've always wanted to brush up my English and that business trip ignited my aspirations," said Tachibana, as around him other businessmen and women pack up and hurry to work after their 45-minute, one-on-one lessons.

Japan , despite being the world's third-largest economy and a major export powerhouse, is known for its poor English-speaking ability even though six years of study are required in middle and high school. The country's average score on the TOEFL iBT, a computer-based test of English as a foreign language, in 2010 ranked 27th among 30 Asian countries, below Mongolia and Turkmenistan. Only 9 percent of 1,156 white-collar workers surveyed by Recruit Agent, a recruiting firm, claim to be able to communicate in English. Many respondents evaluated their speaking and listening aptitude as "Barely."

But things are starting to change, prompted by a growing sense of urgency about employment.

The first push came from online retailer Rakuten's 2010 decision to make English their official language. Fast Retailing, the operator of the Uniqlo apparel chain, also wants to make English its official language by 2012 and test its employees for proficiency. "Rakuten's decision triggered a shock-wave that's extended to many other companies, especially manufacturers, because they too are under pressure to expand outside a shrinking home market," said Yuriko Tsurumaki, a Recruit Agent spokeswoman. "Not all Japanese firms have businesses overseas for the time being but people are seeing possibilities and sharing a sense of crisis (about English)." Now nearly half of Japanese companies planning new hiring require applicants to be "business English users" - a big rise from 16 percent in July 2009, she said.

Highlighting fears among businessmen with poor English, a number of companies, including chip maker Elpida Memory and Murata Manufacturing Co, a maker of parts used in mobile phones and computers, are shifting some production outside Japan to cope with a currency near record highs. The surging yen is also encouraging Japanese firms to acquire businesses overseas to build more revenue pillars, with trading house Itochu buying Britain's tyre seller Kwik Fit for $1 billion. As a result, Japan's foreign language education market is growing, with learners more than willing to fork out plenty of money on lessons, DVDs or e-learning. It rose 1.6 percent to $9.8 billion in 2010 from a year earlier, said Yano Institute of Research, and is set to grow another 1.8 percent this year, making it a rare bright spot amid lagging Japanese private consumption.

"This is just the start of Japan's real globalisation. Everyone is feeling that they'll see a no-English-no-job situation," Gaba's president Kenji Kamiyama told Reuters in a recent interview. Thanks to avid English learners, Gaba says it has almost achieved its student number target for the year and predicts the upbeat trend will likely last for a while. Gaba says that on average, a student spends about 50,000 yen a month -- against an average 36,500 yen allowance for Japanese businesspeople.

Meanwhile, Rosetta Stone Japan, a Japanese unit of Rosetta Stone which provides software-based language-learning, says revenues for their English learning software more than tripled last year from a year ago. This year sales are seen doubling as more people spend for the company's software package priced at around 59,700 yen. "The English crisis shows the rapidly changing environment Japanese firms face. Most Japanese businessmen, for a long time, avoided an English-speaking environment," Gaba's Kamiyama said.

"But they now know that they can't stay that way... It's been a real kick in the pants for them." (End of article)

[Glenski]

Can I be cynical about this article? Please. I don't mean any harm.

This is a very recent article, but the news is essentially a year old about the companies that were mentioned. Overall, the idea that English is needed by businesses nowadays--or that it will definitely be needed in the very near future because of globalization--is not new at all.

I think the key part of the whole article lies in this quote:
"Now nearly half of Japanese companies planning new hiring require applicants to be 'business English users' "

IMO, what was seriously lacking from the article was an explanation of what is meant by "planning" and "business English users". Without that information, the article is just a rehash of many others over the past 2-3 years.

from the Japan Times in July:
Japanese companies looking to expand their overseas sales don't deny the merit of having employees proficient in English, but none has gone as far as to require their Japanese employees to speak English to other Japanese employees. Experts are unsure if Rakuten's ploy will succeed, saying it depends entirely on employee commitment...

Rakuten is one of a very small number of Japanese companies able to push English as its official language because Mikitani, who has an MBA from Harvard, is fluent in English and is very charismatic, analysts say, though making such a decision and getting positive results are two separate things.

"Rakuten has a culture of uniting under Mikitani's top-down decisions," UBS Securities Japan Ltd. analyst Sumito Takeda said. "For Mikitani, Rakuten is doing something normal at a normal speed, but the speed is very fast for other firms."

Other major firms have long focused on improving the English proficiency of their employees as they look to expand overseas amid the declining labor pool at home.

However, few have made it a rule to adopt English as their official language...

Rakuten has also acquired foreign companies, including Buy.com Inc. in the United States, and it has a major stake in a joint venture with Baidu Inc. in China. But the degree to which English is necessary at Rakuten is far lower than companies like Nissan and Nomura, and thus critics say it is questionable whether Rakuten employees' commitment will last.

"Even people who absolutely have to learn English give up learning. Many Rakuten employees don't need to speak English. I don't think Rakuten will succeed," said Giri Suzuki, who teaches Japanese linguistics at Taisho University in Tokyo and edited "Ronso: Eigo ga Koyogo ni naru Hi" ("Dispute: The Day English Becomes an Official Language").

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[rxk22]

I think that is is getting to the point where Japan can no longer ignore English as a global language. They have been trying to play around with it, while truly ignoring it for decades. Maybe not now, but sometime in the future they will have to bite the bullet and take it seriously. The "英語難しい�　attitude needs to go too.

but a lot of the domestic companies have been making investments overseas, as things like beer sales have been weak for a decade. They need to go overseas in order to survive the population decrease, and the stagnate economy. Companies like Meiji, Morinaga and the such will have to expand overseas as well, which will make English speaking needed.

[Glenski]

[rxk22]

[Mr_Monkey]

I was talking with a colleague of mine about this issue just the other day. He had an interesting take on it - the people at the universities and the education ministry aren't really going to do anything because it effectively invalidates how they became successful.

[rxk22]

[Mr_Monkey]

Think of how you got your degree, and the interests that, if not govern, massively influenced the outcome. Then think of how most JTEs got their degree and their license to teach English in the public sector.

First of all, you have the front-line teachers of English, usually JTEs. As far as I have been able to ascertain (and my knowledge of this is limited), teacher training in Japan is a joke. The theory is assessed through an unsurprisingly difficult exam, probably because it focusses on discrete points that are likely irrelevant to actual classroom practice (i.e. arcane grammar and what some Japanese 'pedagogue' from 50 years ago said over dinner once). The practice is not assessed. The prospective teacher undergoes a two week 'practicum' whereby they essentially shadow an experienced teacher. For two weeks. Yes, two weeks.

The rest can be inferred from this.

The uni professors got where they are because they can take tests and write research papers, not teach. The people writing policy at MEXT got where they are because they can... take tests and write internal research/policy papers, not teach.

If you want to make a success of yourself in the Japanese education system, focus on knowledge, not skills. If you want to teach, go for the private sector.

[Glenski]

[Mr_Monkey]

[Glenski]

[Shimokitazawa]

[nomad soul]

Thanks for this enlightening exchange. Although the article states, "Now nearly half of Japanese companies planning new hiring require applicants to be business English users," is Rakuten's expectation that employees need English for business purposes or that they should learn to speak English in general? Either way, that's a lot of pressure to put on one's employees, especially if they're expected to learn English quickly and proficiently. Not very realistic.

[Glenski]

nomad soul,
I do not have the inside track to Rakuten's strategy for language learning. I can say that the idea of making a Japanese company as fluent in English as he seems to tout is admirable, but I don't think it's really going to fly. The pressure is an overly charismatic businessman's way of either creating an enormously uniform group with the talents that he wants, or a major crack in a dam just waiting to widen. Japanese are not known to follow radical ideas like this very often, so I suspect a bit more of that crack before things level off.

What does he expect, you ask? Well, you can't have someone speaking just business English. That's too limiting for a learning situation. Gotta walk or crawl before you run, and that means people will have to be far more fluent in general English than they currently are, and perhaps at the same time learn some business English. Gotta picture where most of that English is going to be used, too. That is, within Japan or in overseas branch offices. To quote from the article, there's a reason for looking "outside a shrinking home market".

What I would like to know is where the "spokesman for a Recruit Agent" got the figures that "nearly half of Japanese companies planning new hiring" are doing that (undefined) planning. Data, please. Oh, and just how many (or what percent) businesses in Japan are hiring, by the way? Interesting wording, from a recruiter.