The good people at work got me a ¥10,000 gift card to iTunes Music Store Japan for my wedding, but due to Sony’s boycott and other various factors, I found myself mostly unable to spend this virtual loot on the available music. After purchasing a single Tangerine Dream album, I decided to hightail it to the audiobooks and go with one of DJ Will Durant‘s bangers from the early daze, The Story of Philosophy. (Unabridged, suckas.)

Slipping into the Plato chapter (who never appeared in any of the Bill and Ted films since his name cannot be mispronounced), I could not help but notice a striking similarity between the ideals of government in his work The Republic and the political structure of Japan. Plato calls for a class of educated elites to rule, who spend their early days in athletic pursuits before moving onto deep intellectual/philosophical study and then competitive placement within a merit-based bureaucracy with meager pay and communal living.

Since the end of the war, Japan has essentially been a pseudo-democracy — with around 60% of the political power held by unelected career bureaucrats and the remaining bits held by elected Diet members. Almost without exception, the top bureaucrats (and many politicians) come from Japan’s singular institution of higher learning, Tokyo University (Todai) — specifically, the Law Department (法学部). Although they are not forced to live communally nor give up their children to the state like Plato’s ambitious vision, these bureaucrats take relatively lower salaries than their private sector peers. The idea is to put the brightest and most talented citizens in control of the government, thus working around the unpredictable and protean disposition of the masses. No matter what happens on the democratic side, these bureaucrats can skillfully steer the country onto the most “correct” course.

This idea, however, is not solely Platonic. The method of staffing the Japanese state closely resembles Confucian ideas on education. Confucius proffers an ideal system where students memorize “the Classics” and win access to government jobs by accurately spewing back the material. The aim is close to Pluto’s: building a fleet of gentlemen (君子) to rule the state with their enhanced wisdom and benevolence.

The Japanese system looks very close to the Platonic ideal in its stern recruiting, but it is missing a crucial component of the formula: no one learns anything at university. Kids get the basics in middle and high school, focusing on three core subjects — Japanese, math, and English. Achievement is measured at 18, and the best and brightest matriculate to universities where they proceed to do nothing for four years. All education in the actual field happens in the first years of employment. Gaining a government job has little to do with what you did at college and more about where you went to college. Pedigree as a symbol trumps the achievement the symbol is supposed to represent.

Obviously, no actual government is going to resemble the fantasies of philosophers who — surprise, surprise — think that philosophers should rule the country. But why would the Japanese system take up the overall shell of the Platonic/Confucian system and then ignore the central meat inside. The point is that the most educated (not most promising) take up the reigns of the body politic. Why not have students spend four years in intellectual pursuits on top of binge drinking with their tennis circles, as is the norm in most other lands?

There is the oft-repeated “vacation” claim about universities, that Japanese students deserve a break between “examination hell” and the bland regularity of their remaining lives. But this would presuppose that universities were once difficult and have been toned down — a historical development I am unaware of. More importantly, Japanese companies have shown a dislike of employees with prior experience or knowledge as they think over-educated students are a threat to a unified firm culture. Also in a seniority-based society, the education process most ideally would be stretched out over decades in order to make a natural hierarchy of wisdom and ability.

In some ways, the current Japanese system is a Confucian Hell — where promising youth never learn the universal wisdom of the past but instead take up a body of knowledge based on particular practical concerns of companies and government functions. No one hands down wisdom at any point in the current model. Basic skills are learned for diagnostic testing (semi-Confucian), then four years of vacation, then a lifetime of on-site vocational training. The Japanese system certainly creates a stability — but perhaps the wrong kind, stuck in slowly outmoded routines and traditions rather than more abstract philosophical ideals.

I criticize, of course, not because the Japanese system is necessarily broken, but because it is looms so near its aspirational ideals. The system is so bent up on its own protection that it essentially fears the challenge of that over-educated elite, who would in theory locate the hypocrisies and abuses of the structure and work to bring them back to the ideals. Wisdom may be secretly a threat to the status quo, which may have been Plato and Confucius’ whole reason for advocating it.

Last month, I attended a talk with an ex-bigwig from Seibu Mizuno Seiichi and downwardly-mobile market expert Miura Atsushi. They discussed how Tokyo University students of yore were terrible dressers. Back when Japan was a well-oiled machine built from top-to-bottom for the sole purpose of manufacturing-led export-based growth, Tokyo University (Todai) was the elite of elite institutions. Todai trains the government bureaucrats who essentially hold all of the political power and then retire into cushy board positions at the country’s top firms. Tokyo students thus had the career prospects, but in karmic exchange, lacked an eye for fashion and self-presentation. Spending the first sixteen years of your life in complete pursuit of memorizing population statistics, dates, and other meaningless numbers required for Confucian-style aptitude testing does not exactly make you a ladies man, let alone have the time to track down the latest duds from Van.

But times have changed. The two men noted that kids at elite institutions these days are not only good at book-learning but up with fashion, good with people, and killers with the ladies. (Or, gasp, are ladies.) Welcome to the rise of the hypermeritocracy — where the elite excel at everything.

This change in meaning of “elite” fits perfectly with the new employment system based to a higher degree on merit-based career promotion. (Depending on your philosophy, this is either ruining or saving Japanese capitalism.) Graduating from a top-tier school may get your foot in the door, but your pedigree alone will not guarantee you access to the top level positions within your own firm.

The data bears this out. In magazine President‘s October 16, 2006 cover story on “Universities and Career Success” (「大学と出世」), there was a rank of universities on how many of the graduates become executives at leading companies. Over the last twenty years, things have drifted from a country ruled politically and economically by Todai graduates to one where private university graduates (especially Keio, Waseda, and Chuo) lead the pack. The following table from President illustrates this well.

Not only have the private universities completely overtaken the national universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, less of the premier companies’ executives are from the best universities in total. Either the elite university students are going into non-listed companies or the listed companies are promoting by merit — which may not match up perfectly to the university affiliation won through first-rate test-taking ability at the age 18. The new corporate system looks to be generally less elitist than the old Japanese system. Of course, rich parents would find it easier to get their dumb children into Keio through the escalator system (putting them into the elementary or high school), but these kids will not succeed in their companies without actual effort. And it’s not like Tokyo University admissions were that “fair” to start with. The juku system requires expensive private tutoring to pass entrance exams, making the whole idea that “anyone can get into Tokyo University” a crock.

As the economic system of promotion-by-talent gets nearer the American system, elitism based on academic pedigree also declines. This echoes the American business world, where most CEOs did not attend Ivy League schools (only 10% of the Fortune 500). So now that promotion will be based on a large set of skills — smarts, charisma, social awareness — it only makes sense that the most elite schools are starting to see “hypermeritocratic” kids fill their classrooms. The economic system no longer rewards the eggheads and bookworms, so why should the elite colleges be creating them?

I just finished reading Brian McVeigh’s subtly-titled Japanese Higher Education As Myth — a work that spends 250 pages discussing why and how Japanese universities do not particularly function as a higher education system. While Japan’s secondary schooling has some obvious pluses compared to those of other post-industrial nations, I can’t imagine anyone ever defending the Japanese tertiary level institutions — even Ezra Vogel quickly admitted to “mediocre universities” in his Japan as Number One.

Kirsten Refsing breaks down the education process into four goals:

1) education – the teaching of skills
2) socialization – training responsible citizens
3) selection – distributing talent to the labor market
4) depository – getting the youth off the streets (McVeigh 11)

The Japanese system is amazingly efficient at 2, 3, and 4, but in order to mask schools’ function as an agent of social control, we generally emphasize the first reason — teaching and learning — to justify the other three. A certain level of basic skills — literacy, math, science — is crucial for constructing the workforce’s human capital, but there are real doubts whether the Japanese education system today provides students with any intellectual skills and knowledge above and beyond what is important for a smoothly-running, super-efficient society. Learning about history, critical theory, or social issues tends to pester the capitalist system, not contribute to its safety.

As someone currently enrolled in an “elite” Japanese university, I can vouch for the widely-stated comment that expectations on Japanese college students are very low. The facilities and faculty may be high-level, but there is pretty much a society-wide understanding that learning should not get in the way of shuushoku katsudou (就職活動, finding a job, starting from the end of the 3rd year and ending in spring of the 4th) and bukatsu (club activities). Things have supposedly gotten stricter with attendance lately, but I hear stories from hot-shot employees about showing up to campus “around four or five” times throughout their student life and still passing. Employers never look at grades anyway, so graduating with the lowest possible GPA is not so different than graduating at the top.

Graduating at the top, however, does not take so much effort — mostly just perfect attendance and taking the final exams. There are very, very few papers or long writing assignments, and reading is kept to a minimum. Students enrolled in elite zemi (seminars) are expected to write a thesis and do other substantial research projects, but mostly they do work as part of the zemi group.

I’ve seen nothing compare to my own undergraduate Junior Tutorial in East Asian Studies where we read 200-300 pages on a given topic, discussed it with a professor one day, discussed it with a graduate student the next day, and wrote a seven-page paper almost every week. This particular class was my trial-by-fire that whipped me into much stronger academic shape with writing, reading, and general knowledge. Japanese universities — in their current institutional role as “fun time” before a life of backbreaking employment — would be somewhat malicious to assign such a curriculum. The students may be able to do such a task, but this sort of demand breaks the trust between educator and educatee in what McVeigh calls “simulated education”: We all pretend like we’re studying and you pretend to not notice we aren’t.

Since there’s no universal standard of what “education” should be, I decline an invitation to snipe and criticize just because Japanese universities are not imparting knowledge in the same ways as the Western model, but I do think there is a connection between the anti-intellectualism (well maybe, a-intellectualism) of Japanese universities and the a-intellectualism, a-politicism, and general social apathy of Japanese society. Most Western students may get a taste of social understanding in high school, but universities are where we get a chance to get a deeper knowledge and broader perspective on the world. Not everyone necessarily needs to go to college (so says the Animal Collective in four-part harmony), but it’s certainly the easiest place to learn to be a critical, literate human being. There are some positive society-wide benefits to having a college-educated populace: higher understanding of social issues like racism/sexism/class discrimination, deeper interest in artistic endeavor, a greater social discourse. Frankly, huge swatches of Western societies lack a certain amount of these “ideal” effects, but we do have many institutions that are fueled by academic maturity (for example, The New Yorker and National Public Radio). And we all prosper under inventions created within university research facilities. Higher education causes positive externalities in society.

The Japanese, however, tend to view intellectual maturity as a slow life-long process. If you’ve ever talked to Japanese in their 30s, they are often as political and critical as anyone in the West. There are not, however, very many well-educated Japanese youths with broad social understanding, who can shoot the breeze in pseudo-intellectual discussions. I can’t claim that societies absolutely need academically-trained 20-somethings dropping mad Derrida bombs, but surely their absence has a real impact on Japanese youth culture.

The following ad for the Gaba language school asked Japanese people to fill in the blank: “If I could speak English, I would…” Ads with quotes from “real people” in Japan are often written by copywriters, but even if these aren’t actual answers, the responses provide a glimpse into the process of a Japanese company selling English to possible customers. Click on ad to see a larger picture.

Here is a translation of the first several responses:

I would live in Hawaii with lots of dogs.
I would go by myself to shop in London antique shops.
I would eat all the desserts in the world!
I would go to [my company]‘s foreign office and become project leader.
I would buy the materials for aroma therapy and mix them myself.
I would open a shiatsu massage parlor in Hollywood for celebrities.
I would lecture the loud foreigners on the train.
I would raise my children in America: one will be an artist, one a computer programmer.
I would go work in a foreign marketing firm.
I would start a dental office for foreigners.
I would run a surf shop in the Gold Coast.
I would live in a house where I could wake up and dive right into the pool.
I would want to increase my income by 100x.
I would publish a weekly manga magazine in the English language world.
I would look for a job in California that would end in the evening and I could go to in shorts.
I would do a satisfying amount of experiments at an American company that provided research money.
I would become a wife of a foreigner and raise kids in California.
I would become a buyer using my own tastes and fly around to all the world’s fashion shows.
I would challenge myself in New Zealand’s pro rugby league.
I would go across America on my graduation trip.
After I retired, I would go live with my wife in Canada.
I would watch DVDs without subtitles.
I would watch musical after musical on Broadway in NY.
I would become the world’s expert on the JFK mystery.
I would lead global-level M&As and retire in my 30s.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I would introduce Japanese traditional arts to the world, ceramics and knitting.
I would make all my subordinates Americans and start a hamburger joint with great atmosphere.

Seeing that most of these answers have little to do with English itself, for a certain segment of the population, English language ability appears to become a psychological barrier to dream fulfillment. For example, why can’t you raise your children as artists and computer programmers in Japan? Why can’t you live in a house in Thailand where you dive right into the pool when you wake up? Why can’t the guy yell at the loud foreigners on the train in Japanese? Whether these tasks are impossible in Japan or even possible in America, this ad posits that there are Japanese who feel that a lack of English prevents them from leaving Japan and the expectations/limitations of Japanese society. A far cry from “not wanting to learn English” (so thinks Momus), English ability embodies the realization of impossible dreams for the upwardly mobile. Or in another light, they are blaming their pedestrian lives on their lack of English ability. Regardless, the ad is preying on a Japanese “English complex,” which the company assumes to exist and hopes to exploit.

Towards the end, there’s one more interesting entry:

“I would become a real B-boy.”

The Postmodernists love to claim that Japan is ideal because there is no concept of “authenticity” (an elitist form of subtle discrimination!), but if this is a real quote, perhaps we can extrapolate that the Japanese are aware of the demands for authenticity, but choose to ignore them because they have no other choice. To even begin exploration in hip hop, they must abandon the idea of “keepin’ it real.” For this one (possibly imaginary) hip hop fan, only those with links to the mother tongue can be “real B-boys”: are the Japanese-only types “fake”?

Here’s some English I learned on the Yamanote line’s “Learn to Speak English” series. (No joke.) :

“Don’t monkey about him.”

“He was foxed by his girlfriend.”