TEFL Forum: Japan's Rakuten, Uniqlo opt for total immersion in global English

Japan's Rakuten, Uniqlo opt for total immersion in global English

The Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER) has published a report about how two new 'new economy' companies in Japan, Uniqlo (casual clothing similar to the Gap) and Rakuten (a web-based 'shopping mall'), are making English the official language of their company.

These bold, controversial decisions come about mostly because their executives see overseas markets as the key to future growth. Moreover, Uniqlo is a retailer centered in Japan, but its clothing and accessories are almost entirely manufactured overseas, in China.

Japan, with its low birth rate and aging society, has actually started to record decreases in population. Although the economy has been alternating between government-subsidized low growth and stagnation for the better part of two decades, Uniqlo and Rakuten have both experienced rapid (if at times uneven) growth. Long before this, Sony Corporation, an OLD 'new economy' company (they still relied on hardware manufacturing for most of their sales) said that it was going to use English as its primary language for international operations, but it didn't ban Japanese.

The JCER piece is here, and can be downloaded in .pdf.

http://www.jcer.or.jp/eng/research/pdf/maeda20100715e.pdf

Japan Times ran an article on the phenomenon, found at the link and excerpted below.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20100822bj.html

Why so drastic an approach? Rakuten says English skills will be critical to achieve its plan of entering 27 overseas markets, where it expects to become the leading player, particularly in the field of online shopping. That part of the plan isn't so surprising. Many of Japan's major corporations are eyeing overseas markets, having largely given up on Japan's, which has been stagnating for the last decade or so and where the population is graying rapidly.

Nor is Rakuten's take-no-prisoners approach to English unique. Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., purveyor of Uniqlo casual clothing stores, announced its own in-house English-only policy this spring. Meetings with at least one non-Japanese in attendance are all to be conducted in English, and internal reports will need to be written in the language. Staff are being asked to achieve a score of at least 700 on the Test of English for International Communication, or TOEIC.

CNN recently ran TV and online stories also, link and excerpt below.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/11/15/ilist.japan.englishization/index.html?eref=rss_latest&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29

By 2012, Mikitani's pledge is to make Rakuten an English-only corporation. All communication, verbal and email, would be sent not in Japanese, but in English. It's a daunting task for a Japanese company headquartered in Tokyo.

Last year's Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) rankings showed Japanese test takers scored second worst in the East Asia region, below North Korea and Myanmar. Only Laos ranked lower than Japan.

More multimedia coverage is available at Japan Probe.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/08/12/english-only-at-rakuten/

Shiga University president: Japan's scientific research, universities in decline

In a recent Japan Times opinion piece, Takamitsu Sawa, the president of Shiga University and frequent contributor to the Op-Ed of the newspaper, laments the overall decline in research and research at the universities, linking the decline with small government budgets and the 'corporatization' of the national university system.

Key excerpts:

1.  The poor performance shown by Japanese universities [in recent global rankings] is a clear indication of the dwindling standards of the nation's science and technology. A dramatic decline has  been noted in recent years in the number of academic papers written by researchers at national universities and inter-university research institutes and printed in science journals.  Indeed, the number in fiscal 2008 was 10 percent less than in fiscal 2005.


2. What accounts for this rapid decline in Japan's share of scientific research?


First of all, I would like to point to an unusually small budget allocated to science and technology compared with other countries. In Japan, the amount of public money allocated to higher education is equivalent to a mere 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, which makes it 27th among the 28 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development....


The second factor is the 2004 policy of turning national universities into bodies called independent administrative corporations. Ever since then, university instructors have become so busy drafting documents stating medium-term targets, medium-term plans and annual plans, as well as preparing papers needed to secure funds to make their institutions more competitive, that they have had to drastically sacrifice time that otherwise could have been used for research.

The entire article can be read at Japan Times online at this link:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20101018ts.html

Study at a university in Japan

This is the Japan Times directory of universities:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/universities/japanese_universities.html